Optimizing service assurance for XenServer virtual infrastructures with Xangati

Transcription

1 Solutions Brief Optimizing service assurance for XenServer virtual infrastructures with Xangati As IT organizations adopt application, desktop and server virtualization solutions as the primary method for delivering services to its employees, they face the challenge of a distributed virtual platform, where there are numerous interconnected components which make up the resources used by end users. How these are monitored in real time will determine the end user s experience and the IT admin s ability to manage and fault find should problems arise.

2 Solutions Brief Optimizing service assurance for XenServer virtual infrastructures with Xangati 2 XenServer is a type-one hypervisor platform, running on bare-metal and optimized for XenApp and XenDesktop workloads. With tight integration between it and the virtualized application and desktop infrastructure layers, XenServer delivers a highly performing and scalable platform with market leading features and the best end user experience. This whitepaper provides an overview of how XenServer, partnered with Xangati s product suites, can assist IT organizations maintain service assurance for their virtualized infrastructure. Key Benefits Save money Improve the IT infrastructure operational efficiency by making better-informed IT purchase decisions Meet SLAs Perform multi-layer infrastructure layer monitoring with root cause analysis, predictive analytics, and well-informed remediation advice Increase productivity Improve the running efficiency of your hosted virtual application and desktop infrastructure Mitigate risks Eliminate virtualized infrastructure resource contention, such as from noisy neighbors Faster time-to-resolution Leverage powerful, portable, DVR-like recordings to speed the IT helpdesk s issue resolution The service assurance challenge Virtualized infrastructures have long proven their ability to provide significant infrastructure layer CAPEX and OPEX benefits for today s modern businesses. With this new world of abstraction and resource sharing, these same businesses are challenged to meet service level agreements for their application workloads and as such, require a more focused attention on how optimally the infrastructure is operating and the availability of resources to it. IT operations have the ultimate responsibility for service assurance, something that in the past was met, barely, with a set of largely independent performance monitoring tools. Siloed infrastructure components each with their own monitoring tools, required IT helpdesks to often collate and sort through considerable quantities of disparate sets of data to carry out issue resolution. IT administrators require a more flexible and efficient method to ensure predictable workload performance for virtualized infrastructures, enabling them to meet SLAs and minimize disruptions whilst maintaining a satisfying end-user experience and workload performance. Performance analytics for XenServer XenServer, based on the open source Xen hypervisor, is a highly scalable, type-one virtualization platform designed to host hundreds of server, cloud and desktop workloads (virtual machines). As a leading virtualization management platform, XenServer abstracts the underlying host server hardware from the running workloads, enabling different vendors servers, storage and networking adapters to be normalized. Combined with XenServer s enhanced graphics capability, this hardware normalization provides for a rich platform to support the higher infrastructure tiers in an application and desktop virtualization scenario. This however, comes with a challenge in monitoring and service analytics across the different virtualized infrastructure layers. Xangati s product suites offer a robust virtual infrastructure performance management platform that works with application and desktop workload types, providing service assurance analytics for all virtual infrastructures layers. Supplied as a self-installable virtual appliance, it maps and automatically discovers all functional components within your Citrix infrastructure, including XenServer, XenApp, XenDesktop and NetScaler and provides clarity about the IT infrastructure health status from Day 1.

3 Solutions Brief Optimizing service assurance for XenServer virtual infrastructures with Xangati 3 Xangati VI Suite Xangati VDI Suite Xangati VirtualApp Suite Xangati WebApp Suite Core analytics functionality for XenServer The core of Xangati s solution is a real-time, in-memory, cross-silo and time correlated metrics engine, which collects data on a second-by-second basis. Xangati provides granular visibility across datacenters and out to mobile devices without agents, yet with full awareness of users, applications and services. Predictive analytics, leveraging exclusive patented StormTracker technology, helps IT administrators to mitigate risks by determining the root cause of resource contention storms and provide the necessary steps to resolve bottlenecks and ensure the virtual infrastructure and workloads are optimized. The Xangati VI Suite is able to monitor a range of XenServer resources, collecting metrics on the hypervisor, VMs, open virtual switches (OVSs) and storage repositories (SRs), providing real-time visualization and analysis. XenServer Metrics Host VM CPU (average Memory (total/free/reclaimed IO throughput (read/write) IOPS (read/write) Latency OVS (NetFlow data) VBD (Virtual Block Device) Table 1. Xangati core analytics functionality VI Suite can also track and monitor the use of storage appliances, such as NetApp and correlate them to XenServer hosts, VMs and storage repositories, supplying a more detailed picture of infrastructure resource usage.

4 Solutions Brief Optimizing service assurance for XenServer virtual infrastructures with Xangati 4 With the additional Xangati VDI, VirtualApp and WebApp Suites, monitoring data from virtual application and desktop infrastructures based on XenDesktop and XenApp can also be correlated, providing real-time analysis of the performance and user experience of the XenApp and XenDesktop resources. Figure 1. Xangati s multi-citrix product support ranges across all aspects of the infrastructure. Learn more For further information on XenServer and the other Citrix products, please visit /products. Or contact a Citrix s sales expert on (U.S. toll-free number) or other worldwide sales numbers at /contact/sales. Further information regarding Xangati can be found at, www3./go/citrix, or contact the sales organization at sales@ or

5 Solutions Brief Optimizing service assurance for XenServer virtual infrastructures with Xangati 5 Corporate Headquarters Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA Silicon Valley Headquarters Santa Clara, CA, USA EMEA Headquarters Schaffhausen, Switzerland India Development Center Bangalore, India Online Division Headquarters Santa Barbara, CA, USA Pacific Headquarters Hong Kong, China Latin America Headquarters Coral Gables, FL, USA UK Development Center Chalfont, United Kingdom About Citrix Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) is leading the transition to software-defining the workplace, uniting virtualization, mobility management, networking and SaaS solutions to enable new ways for businesses and people to work better. Citrix solutions power business mobility through secure, mobile workspaces that provide people with instant access to apps, desktops, data and communications on any device, over any network and cloud. With annual revenue in 2014 of $3.14 billion, Citrix solutions are in use at more than 330,000 organizations and by over 100 million users globally. Learn more at Copyright 2015 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, NetScaler App Delivery Controller, NetScaler, XenServer, XenApp, XenDesktop, TriScale and NetScaler SDX are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. and other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. About Xangati Xangati is a Silicon Valley virtualization performance monitoring and service assurance analytics innovator, providing performance metrics visibility for complex virtualized data centers and hybrid cloud environments. Organizations such as Comcast, British Gas, Colliers, Harvard University and the U.S. Army have leveraged Xangati to resolve end-user issues more quickly, optimize virtual applications, diagnose root causes of contention storms and assure overall infrastructure health. Xangati management dashboards, built on patented in-memory architecture, provide a live, continuous and interactional view into the entire IT infrastructure with predictive analytics and prescriptive remediation actions. To learn more about Xangati, go to or xangati Xangati - All rights reserved 0915/PDF/10504