Uni Root. An Introduction to Uni Systems enterprise-class, cloud on-demand infrastructure monitoring service. White Paper Solution Brief

Transcription

1 Uni Root An Introduction to Uni Systems enterprise-class, cloud on-demand infrastructure monitoring service White Paper Solution Brief

2 Contents Introduction... 3 The Service Architecture... 3 How Uni SystemsUni-Root service working... 3 The Uni SystemsUni-Root Security Architecture... 4 Capabilities of the Uni SystemsUni-Root enterprise monitoring service... 5 The key deliverables of Uni-Root enterprise monitoring service... 7 Benefits of the Uni SystemseG enterprise-on-tap Service... 7 Pricing Model

3 Introduction If you are facing a performance problem and want to troubleshoot it, or you need visibility into how your critical business services are performing, or you want historical reports about the performance of your key applications, you no longer have to wait for days to get the procurement done, to have servers available for the monitoring system, to have the database server configured to host the monitoring system's data store, and then to have the monitoring system installed. Leveraging the power of cloud computing and the Web, Uni SystemsCloud On-demand infrastructure monitoring (Uni Root) offering makes the industry leading eg Enterprise solution available as an on-demand service that can be provisioned in minutes. You no longer need to have dedicated hardware to host the monitoring system, nor do you need to spend the time and effort installing and configuring the monitoring system. The Service Architecture Using eg Enterprise's 100% web-based architecture, Uni Systems Uni Root makes performance and configuration monitoring available to you a service over the Web. You only install eg's lightweight software agents on key servers in your network (agentless monitoring options are also available). These agents begin communicating with Uni Root cloud-hosted management server and start monitoring your infrastructure. Within a few minutes of setting up the agents, you can start seeing performance statistics for your key servers, network devices, and applications. Using a web browser, you can access hundreds of network, server and application performance reports in real-time, from anywhere, at any time. You can use this service to monitor your key servers only, your business critical applications, or your entire infrastructure end-to-end. How Uni Root service works The Uni Root Enterprise manager is remotely hosted in Uni SystemsDynamic Datacenter. Agents are installed locally, on the customer s premises. These agents begin communicating with Uni Systems cloud-hosted management server and starts monitoring. Uni Systems Uni Root has the capability to support 120+ applications, 10+ operating systems, and 7 virtualization platforms. Within a few minutes of setting up the agents, you can start seeing performance statistics for your key servers, network devices, and applications. Using a web browser, you can access 3

4 hundreds of network, server and application performance reports in real-time, from anywhere, at any time. You can use this service to monitor your key servers only, your business critical applications, or your entire infrastructure end-to-end. Figure 1: Service Architecture The Uni Root Security Architecture Security considerations are often of critical importance for any enterprise that is considering whether to host a management system in-house or to subscribe to a cloud-based service. Uni Root offers unparalleled security as part of its service architecture. Figure 1 above depicts how the agent to manager communication works. The salient features of this architecture are: 100% web-based communication: All the communication between the agent and the manager is using HTTP/HTTPS - i.e., over port 80/443. If HTTPS is used, all communication is encrypted over transmission, thereby making it near impossible for the data to be tapped during transmission over the wire. Uni-directional communication: All the communications between the agent and manager are initiated by the agent (i.e., the manager never initiates a connection to the agent). Hence, the agent does not listen on any TCP ports and you are not opening any new TCP ports on the servers that you are installing the agents on. This ensures that there are no new security risks added on the servers on which the agents are deployed. Firewall-friendly architecture: Since all the communication is web-based, and since the agent initiates all communications to the manager, as long as users within your network can browse the web from the systems on which the Uni Root agents 4

5 are deployed, the Uni Root agents will be able to communicate with the eg manager without needing any additional firewall configuration. No new ports needed to be added to the firewalls, no new rules need to be configured on the firewalls. Does not involve business-sensitive information: The Uni Root agents collect performance statistics pertaining to the target servers and applications. Metrics such as disk activity/usage, CPU usage, application statistics, etc., are reported by the agent to the management console. The Uni Root service does not monitor business related information (credit card information, etc.), and the information transmitted between the agent and the manager can be audited by the IT administrators at anytime, using packet sniffers. Support for monitoring multiple private networks: Since the Uni Root agent initiates all the communications, Uni-Root even supports servers that are assigned private IP addresses, and networks that are behind network address translation (NAT) devices. That is, you do not have to have your servers on the Internet to use this service the servers can be in your Intranet. Secure, authenticated web-based access to the monitoring console: Users subscribing to the Uni Root service are NOT provided rights to directly access the Uni Root on-tap system or its database. All accesses will be through a web browser interface. Each user s data is securely maintained and all accesses to the service are authenticated. Subscribers are provided a secure login to the Uni Root service. A password is provided when the subscriber login is first created. Subscribers can login and change the credentials at any time. An auditing capability enabled on the Uni SystemseG enterprise-on-tap system allows us to track and audit all accesses to the system. Personalized views and role-based access: Uni Root service implements personalized views. Every user of the service is allowed restricted access to only those networks, servers, and applications that are part of the user s monitored infrastructure. This implies that a particular user s metrics, alerts, and reports will not be accessible/disclosed to any other user of the Uni Root service. Secure storage and no direct access to configuration data: For monitoring your infrastructure, Uni SystemsUni Root maintains configurations about your environment. This includes IP addresses, file locations, SNMP communities, passwords, etc. All the configuration data is securely maintained within the Uni SystemseG enterprise-on-tap management console and is not accessible to any of the users of the service. Where appropriate, industry standard encryption techniques are used so the data is not available in plain text format. Capabilities of the Uni Root enterprise monitoring service The Uni Systems Monitoring Service offers the following key capabilities: 5

6 A single pane of glass for a complete end-to-end service view: Uni Root tracks every layer of every tier of the infrastructure including the virtualization platform, network devices, storage devices, web frontend, database server, profile servers, and Active Directory. Automatic baselines of KPIs to enable administrators plan service rollouts efficiently: Time of day baselines for every tier indicate what the norms for each tier are, and any deviations from the norm are highlighted as proactive alerts to administrators. Correlation of performance across silos and layers to pinpoint the Rootcause of problems automatically: Accurate diagnosis of problems helps administrators ensure peak service quality and low downtime. Deep inside view of each virtual machine: Without requiring agents in each virtual machine, this unique capability provides details of top applications using resources inside the VM. Figure 2: Different capabilities of Uni-Root service: a layer model representing the state of each application or server being monitored, a topology graph showing the end-to-end data flow within a business service, and a performance report showing the summary of performance for an application are shown here. Track and correlate configuration changes with performance changes: Often a configuration change can result in performance degradation. To handle such 6

7 situations, Uni Root based on the eg enterprise-on-tap technology, correlates performance changes with configuration changes, so administrators can easily detect and fix such situations. Configuration tracking is a separately licensed, valueadded option to the eg-on-tap service. Extensive web-based historical reports: Uni Root service includes enterprise class reporting capabilities. Specialized reports are available for executives and operations staff comparing the performance of every infrastructure tier, top N reports highlighting peak usage areas, etc. The key deliverables of Uni Root enterprise monitoring service Web-based console providing real-time views and alerts relating to performance metrics for each of the servers, network devices, applications you are monitoring. Detailed diagnosis of metrics is also provided where appropriate, for additional diagnosis. Web-based reporting console from where you have access to hundreds of reports regarding the historical usage and performance of the infrastructure you are monitoring. Benefits of the Uni Root and EG enterprise-on-tap Service The Uni Root Service offers the following benefits to enterprises and service providers: You do not have to provision hardware and software for the monitoring system. The set up of the monitoring is hassle-free. Your IT staff focuses on their core tasks and do not need to learn administration/configuration of a new solution. They can focus their time on analyzing and interpreting the metrics collected by the monitoring system and to determine what needs to be changed in the infrastructure to meet the service level expectations of users. You can turn on/off the service as required i.e., you can increase or decrease the number of network devices, servers, applications you are monitoring. For a nominal fee, Uni Systemsinfrastructure experts are available to help you audit the performance of your infrastructure and deliver a performance report that can help you identify bottlenecks, determine performance optimizations you can perform, and plan the capacity of your infrastructure. Pricing Model 7

8 Uni Root monitoring service is offered as a subscription-based service. Subscriptions are quarterly and you get to specify the number of networks, applications, and servers monitored. 8