Evolutionary Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring with Predictive Analytics. By David Davis, vexpert Co-Founder, ActualTech Media October 2014

Transcription

1 Evolutionary Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring with Predictive Analytics By David Davis, vexpert Co-Founder, ActualTech Media October 2014

2 Introduction As more physical servers are moved into the virtual infrastructure, administrators must ensure that they are monitoring their virtual infrastructure to prevent performance issues, misconfigurations, and capacity bottlenecks before they cause degradation of critical enterprise applications. Unfortunately, most of the virtualization monitoring solutions available don t make that task easy. While traditional tools may provide some value, they also include the following complications: A reactive monitoring approach that waits for application performance to be degraded before alerting Little to no assistance remediating problems once they are found No learning intelligence to improve alerting and insight over time A high upfront software cost that makes the tool difficult to justify and obtain capital expenditure (CAPEX) approval for They are difficult to configure and take too long to show value during a proof of concept (POC) Four Traits of a Quality Virtual Infrastructure Performance and Capacity Monitoring Tool Let s look at four traits to aid you in the selection of your next tool. Trait 1. SaaS / OPEX Approach Traditionally, enterprise applications were a one-time CAPEX, or purchase, with a yearly support and maintenance contract. These types of large CAPEX purchases, also known as the CAPEX approach, required IT professionals to find or deploy a server to test the application on, install the application, invest a significant amount of time to configure the tool, struggle to prove the value of the application, and then present a proposal to management justifying the purchase of an expensive tool that doesn't show immediate value or financial return. If the POC didn t end with a purchase, time and resources were completely wasted, and the IT pro's career is now at risk. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the CAPEX approach is the software as a service (SaaS) approach also known as the Operational Expense (OPEX) approach. SaaS / OPEX Approach Benefits No upfront cost Easy administration Easy POC Painless upgrades Collective intelligence Evolutionary Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring with Predictive Analytics Page 2

3 With the SaaS approach, your next virtualization monitoring tool will: Make POC easy because it will not require any dedicated in-house infrastructure. Not require the purchase of an OS license for the management server or server hardware to run the application on. Not have an underlying OS to upgrade and secure. Not need hardware support and maintenance contracts. Not require a CAPEX that you have to justify. Be paid with a recurrent, operational expense (OPEX) that could likely be put on a company credit card. Either quickly show value during the POC or it can simply be deleted. Shouldn t your next virtualization monitoring tool use the SaaS approach? Trait 2. Immediate Results Usually, once a virtualization monitoring tool is installed and configured, it can take days or weeks before those tools provide useful and actionable information. Your next virtualization monitoring tool should provide you with immediate results. Those immediate results should come within minutes for small environments and within a few hours for virtual infrastructures with thousands of virtual machines. Compare those almost immediate results to the weeks or even months that other virtualization monitoring tools currently take to provide you actionable intelligence and show their value. Shouldn t your next virtualization monitoring tool provide you with immediate results? Trait 3. Proactive Design Too many tools in the virtualization monitoring space today take the flawed design approach that if there is a problem, they will help you solve it. While that may sound helpful, what they really need to do is prevent problems from happening in the first place. You don't need a virtualization monitoring tool that gives you pretty speedometers and graphs. Instead, what you need is a tool that can: learn your environment identify trends prevent problems before they happen keep app-owners as well as end users happy Then, if by the rare chance that a problem occurs, what you need is a tool that quickly identifies the root cause of the problem and recommends a solution, based on best practices and what other companies have done to solve it. Shouldn t your next virtualization monitoring tool proactively solve your problems, before they happen? Evolutionary Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring with Predictive Analytics Page 3

4 Trait 4. Collective Intelligence The idea of collective intelligence has been around since the early 1900s. Over the years it has been applied to biology, animals, and other forms of scientific study where a group works together to collaborate and pool their efforts to solve a problem. In virtualization management, collective intelligence is used when the knowledge gained from thousands of virtual infrastructures is pooled and then applied to solve the problems found in other virtual infrastructures. If your environment is in a constant state of change, why would you want your monitoring tool to be frozen? It s illogical to have a monitoring tool that only improves when a few developers add a few new features and then send out a patch or update once or twice a year. Don t keep trying to solve the same problems that other companies solved long ago. SaaS applications are centralized by nature and are the ideal place to leverage the power of collective intelligence. Your monitoring tool can prevent problems by learning the types of problems, and the solutions that solved them, across thousands of other virtual infrastructures and applying this knowledge to your environment. With the SaaS approach, your monitoring tool can adapt and improve as frequently as your environment is changing eliminating the bi-yearly update cycles that most management applications require. Shouldn t your next virtualization monitoring tool apply collective intelligence? Evolutionary Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring with Predictive Analytics Page 4

5 Checklist: Requirements for Your Next Virtualization Monitoring Tool Based on what we have covered so far, what should your next virtualization monitoring tool provide you? Here is a checklist to help you make the right selection: SaaS / OPEX Approach Yes No Is a new on-premise software purchase required? No Are any OS licenses required? No Do you need dedicated in-house infrastructure? No Do you need to purchase servers? No Is it a capital expense? (as opposed to operational) No Immediate Results Yes No Do you see results within minutes or a few hours? Yes Proactive Design Yes No Can it learn the environment? Yes Can it identify trends? Yes Is it able to prevent problems before they happen? Yes Collective Intelligence Yes No Can it prevent more and more problems based on problems solved in other virtual infrastructures, improving over time? Yes Can it optimize your environment based on ideal configurations used in other virtual infrastructures, improving over time? Yes Evolutionary Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring with Predictive Analytics Page 5

6 Final Recommendations Companies are investing more and more in their virtual infrastructures. It's up to you to ensure that you have a tool that can monitor this infrastructure, and monitor it well. Before you buy any virtualization monitoring tool, make sure that you have seen first hand, how it can quickly provide you value and prevent your problems. Unforeseen downtime can cost your company millions and can cost you your job. In most cases, the right virtualization monitoring tool can make all the difference. Learn more about a tool that meets all of the above recommendations and is quickly being adopted by more and more smart virtualization admins by visiting - Evolutionary Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring with Predictive Analytics Page 6

7 About the Author David Davis is a video training author at Pluralsight.com, the global leader in video training for IT pros. He holds several certifications including VCP5, VCAP-DCA, CCIE #9369, and has been awarded the VMware vexpert award 6 years running. Additionally, David has spoken at major conferences like VMworld and authored hundreds of articles for websites and print publications, mostly around virtualization. David's personal blog is Evolutionary Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring with Predictive Analytics Page 7