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Senior Editor Denise Dubie guides you through the latest developments in management tools and services.
As the reality of virtualization sets in at more enterprise IT shops, more management vendors are incorporating the capabilities to control the virtual environments with their monitoring tools.
Virtualization, which industry watchers say will move further into production nets this year, is a means of abstracting software from its physical counterpart to create a more flexible and dynamic data center. The technology lets IT managers, for instance, create multiple virtual server instances in one physical machine, maximizing space, computing power and resources, advocates say. A 2006 Forrester Research survey showed of some 1,770 companies polled, more then 50% had put the technology to use in production and pilot networks.
"Server virtualization moved from a niche Unix technology to mainstream use in x86 servers in many firms in 2005," reads the report released early this year.
Such facts and figures are exactly what management vendors need to hear to get their products up to speed in monitoring and managing the more fluid environments created with virtualization technology from the likes of VMware. Management veterans such as BMC, CA, HP and IBM put support for virtual environments in their tools and newer players like Hyperic, Opsware and Netuitive. And the vendors are doing this not a moment too soon as the dynamic environments require more careful, complex management skills.
Now service-level management software maker Nimsoft enabled its NimBUS product to also take on the virtual realm.
NimBUS for VMware, which is priced at $750 per probe per virtual machine, can be downloaded from the Internet and installed within hours, the company says. The add-on software works with the company's flagship product, which installs on a dedicated server, and depending on the customer environment, can use distributed software agents to monitor response time and other metrics on IT components. The software also can work without distributed agents, using industry-standard APIs to collect performance metrics from servers and network devices.
NimBUS for VMware adds more than 40 health checks for virtual resources assigned by the virtual machine, such as systems, CPU, memory, disk and network I/O. The software is also equipped to check VMware's ESX server resources for the same metrics, and includes some 100 health checks for the operating system installed on the virtual machine. The software supports Windows, Linux and Unix plus NetWare. The company says NimBUS for VMware coupled with the service-level management metrics collected by the flagship NimBUS product can provide a complete picture of health and performance across the virtual and physical server environments.
Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.
Diagnosing why an application is slow is hard, at times taking days or weeks to isolate and resolve. This paper explains the challenges involved using current management tools, provides a 'wish list' for application management and analysis, and explains the need for an application system-wide approach that monitors entire applications, not components.
This paper highlights the impact of virtualization on application performance. "Managing Application Performance in Virtual Environments" states: "Best-in-Class organizations are predominately taking actions around improving visibility across both physical and virtual systems, assessing the business impact of application performance and understanding interdependencies of applications in virtualized environments."
Forrester Research analyst Glenn O'Donnell and BlueStripe co-founder Vic Nyman discuss a breakthrough approach to application problem management. Learn the new approach for ITSM problem management, which provides: Rapid isolation of application slow-downs to specific components for quick problem resolution, 24/7 monitoring for proactive notification of potential issues before end users are impacted and much more.
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Blue Stripe Software
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Improving Application Performance Troubleshooting
Diagnosing why an application is slow is hard, at times taking days or weeks to isolate and resolve. This paper explains the challenges involved using current management tools, provides a 'wish list' for application management and analysis, and explains the need for an application system-wide approach that monitors entire applications, not components.
Download Whitepaper
Virtual Vigilance: Managing Application Performance in Virtual Environments
This paper highlights the impact of virtualization on application performance. "Managing Application Performance in Virtual Environments" states: "Best-in-Class organizations are predominately taking actions around improving visibility across both physical and virtual systems, assessing the business impact of application performance and understanding interdependencies of applications in virtualized environments."
Download Whitepaper
Application Service Requests: The Missing Link for Pragmatic ITSM
Forrester Research analyst Glenn O'Donnell and BlueStripe co-founder Vic Nyman discuss a breakthrough approach to application problem management. Learn the new approach for ITSM problem management, which provides: Rapid isolation of application slow-downs to specific components for quick problem resolution, 24/7 monitoring for proactive notification of potential issues before end users are impacted and much more.
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