vOpenData is an open community project that grew from the question “What is the average VMDK size for deployed virtual machines?” We wanted to create an open community database that is purely driven by users submitting their virtual infrastructure configurations. Leveraging the powerful virtualization community and applying simple analytics they want to be able to provide various trending statistics and data for virtualized environments.

The guys behind the project have developed a dedicated website, where you can see all the statistics, and get the scripts to contribute. They are available both in Perl and Powershell, and allows you to easily grab informations from your infrastructure, anonymize them (so do not even start complaining about possible data leakages, they only get generic data) and compress them in a useful zip file you can then upload in the website.

As any “community based” project, also vOpenData will succeed as long as YOU will contribute. Think about it as a capacity planning tool based on real worldwide statistics about thousands of virtual machines, that allows you to answer with real information to the first question “What is the average VMDK size for deployed virtual machines?”. The more data are uploaded, the more accurated informations will be freely available to everyone.

To contribute, you simply have to register into the website and add the infrastructures you have access to. Consultants have the possibility to upload data about their several customers, so they can increase even further the database.

Results are freely visible, even without registration, at this web page, and you can see an example down here.

Dont’ be shy, CONTRIBUTE!