New VMware vCenter Log Insight – Cool Features

I wanted to take a moment to jot down a few cool impressions on VMware’s new vCenter Log Insight.  vCenter Log Insight was recently announced, and is initially available in beta – but still providing a number of very cool features and integration with vCenter Operations Manager.

I want to first highlight the easy to use query language.  In this example we are investigating an intermittent SCSI / latency problem – using the power of logs, we were able to quickly find the common “unstructured” data thread.  I liked this simplistic approach rather than having to learn and support a complex / proprietary query language as in other tools.

By simply entering “SCSI performance deteriorated” we start to pick-up quite a bit of data and I can see the frequency these events have hit, as well as the spike at June 20, @ 12pm– now I can start refining this query to fit my needs.

I can even drill-down using linked “extracted fields”, as well as extract additional fields based on how you wish to refine your query making it repeatable and easy to use/learn.

Next, it would be helpful to understand things like average SCSI latency over time – refining the query even further you, can choose “average” function over a specified period of time.

Furthermore this may be a query that you may want to run multiple times, therefore you can add it to a new, or existing dashboard.  Also adding constraints, or thresholds, gives the user the ability to monitor queries and filter out data that is not significant.

Finally, and this is the cool part, vCenter Operations Manager integration allows Log Insight data to vCOps, giving a single view into the structured and unstructured performance data allowing for a more comprehensive and accurate view of your virtualized / cloud and supporting physical infrastructure.

For more information check out the vCenter Log Insight product web page and view the introduction video.

@benscheerer

Cloud Automation ROI – The business impact of accelerating IT service delivery

Improved operational efficiency is certainly a compelling motivation for deploying a dynamic on-demand private cloud infrastructure.

In fact, the automated service delivery capabilities of VMware’s cloud automation software have improved VMware customer’s operational efficiency by an average of 80% or more by utilizing resources on more strategic initiatives.  However, if you were to ask our customers with a year or more of deployment experience what their biggest benefit was, the response would likely be improved service delivery times that enable greater productivity or allow the business to address new opportunities quicker than the competition.

Getting compute resources into the hands of business enables companies to access new business opportunities.  For companies who rely on IT systems to differentiate their business, VMware’s cloud automation software allows companies to dramatically shorten the delivery time of initial provisioning and ongoing changes from days to hours and minutes.

Our latest blog post (Cloud Automation ROI – The business impact of accelerating  IT service delivery ) highlights how VMware’s cloud automation software can help your company improve business productivity, enable new business opportunity and help you keep up with the accelerating pace of business.

Need help deploying your private cloud infrastructure or developing your Cloud Automation business justification? Contact us and our experts can help your team build the business case and the solution that will maximize your IT productivity.

@bscheerer

2011: VMware a Winner

As I reflect on my first 6 months at VMware (and all of 2011) I see a bright future at a company that really “gets it”. A few of my observations as we enter into the new-year:

1) Management is at the forefront of VMware’s strategy: This is no surprise, as VMware customers matured with the technology so has their needs to push the envelope even further. I see VMware in-step with customer needs, in fact VMware took a fresh approach at performance management within the past year by building both a team (culminated from experience across the software management giants) and technology unique to advancing the cloud and end-user computing. By the way, VMware has been the management business from practically the beginning – DRS, vMotion, SRM, just to throw a few out there! There’s a lot to cover on this topic as well as a lot coming in 2012 that will continue to define, shape and deliver on the VMware vision.

2) The analyst’s see and get the VMware management strategy. The Virtualization Practice named VMware as a Winner in 2011: “VMware [a winner] – for combining resource utilization based performance management and capacity management with configuration management, and bubbling all of the metrics up into Health, Efficiency, and Risk scores with self-learning analytics in vCenter Operations.”  IDC ranked VMware #1 in the Cloud and Virtualization Management (June 2011, IDC #228817) markets (by revenue).

3) Lots of expertise under one roof. When I was at CA a few years back, it was no surprise to us that VMware would venture into the management realm, in fact we anticipated it – but we always defended our position as a management business with 30+ years experience where VMware was an inexperienced management newcomer. Two years later I joined the VMware Management business unit all staffed by the leading talent from HP, IBM, BMC, Quest and CA (and more) – not to mention the legacy that these individuals brought with them. Collectively we’ve been able to draw from our experiences, learn from our respective company’s past mistakes and start with a clean slate – best of all with a highly innovative and creative culture to back us up!

I am soooo looking forward to what is in store for next year. I’ve set goals to meet with as many customers as possible, attend and present where people are willing to listen and continue writing on the challenges of managing the new “converged” infrastructure. I am proud to be working for a true innovator, whose culture includes the best and brightest in our industry – which is further exemplified by a tradition of software that is iron clad and rock solid “it simply works!”

Signing off for 2011 – the future is bright for 2012!  Everyone have a safe, healthy and prosperous new year!

Ben – bscheerer@vmware.com

IDC Ranks VMware as the Worldwide Cloud Systems Management Software Market Share Leader

New research by IDC analyst Mary Johnson Turner ranked VMware as the leader in the hotly contested cloud systems management software space, as defined by IDC (IDC Report #231493, November 2011).

VMware leads this space with a 15.2 share of the $271.7 million spend in 2010, comprising of vCloud Director (vCD) licenses, the vCenter management platform as well as supporting management software components from the vCenter Operations suite of solutions.

“There is a very tight race among the top three vendors in this market; together they command nearly 44 percent of the total market,” said Mary Johnston Turner, Research Vice President, Enterprise System Management Software at IDC. “This is still a fairly nascent market that IDC expects will experience rapid growth through 2015, by which time cloud systems management software capabilities will be on the must-have list for enterprise and service provider customers alike.”

IDC’s definition of the cloud systems management software market spans a range of systems management monitoring, control, optimization and analytic functionality to the extent it is deployed into an automated, self-serve, consumption-aware public or private cloud operations environment.

Full charge ahead for VMware as it announced a new round of solutions last October (VMware Unveils Management Portfolio for the Cloud Era) designed specifically to deliver on its public, private & hybrid cloud strategy.  A strategy which has won praise from key analyst in the cloud & virtualization space “VMware is and likely will remain next year not only the most important, but the best system software vendor on the planet.” (The Virtualization Practice. Grading VMware’s 2011)

A Fresh Approach

It’s been nearly 3 months since I started with VMware.  I came over as a nearly 15-year veteran in the enterprise management software space – the past 6 focused on virtualization and cloud.  I’ve seen the transformation of the dynamic data center – and while working in the management space, helped a traditional vendor adapt and “message” to that change.  But the reality is, traditional IT management is encumbered by legacy approaches to management, models based and siloed approaches only further demonstrate the fact that the thinking behind traditional IT management does not flow into the dynamic virtualized and cloud environment.

One of the reasons I came over to VMware was that VMware, a pioneer in virtualization an cloud, had an opportunity to take a fresh approach to management without the legacy investment in outdated technology to hold it back.  I saw that in order to really keep pace with the highly virtualized and cloud environments, behavioral analytics was the answer.  Truly understanding the behavior, unique to your environment, over the course of days, weeks, months, or years sets the standard for identifying real root cause to issues with an innate understanding to all variants in your specific environment.

Effective management goes beyond “monitoring” individual metrics.  Monitoring popular metrics in vSphere such as percent ready and the balloon driver only lead to partial conclusions – VMware analytics and “super metrics” encompass a holistic understanding of thousands of metrics boiled up to key representation of health, risk and efficiency…

Gone are the days where VI admins rely on simple metrics and loose correlation and static rules to assist in managing limited and defined use cases.  Comprehensive, and proven analytics (not to mention tight integration with vSphere) is not only key, but also necessary in moving forward with any cloud journey.  Stay tuned on more insight and thoughts behind virtualization and cloud – I’m back!

-Ben