CMDB

Jun 17 2008   10:41PM GMT

Performance and Availability vs. Analytics - Part 5 of 5

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, Analytics, CMDB, DCAB, IT Process Automation, BSM

Finally, the last installment of this 5 part series (which was originally a ? part series). This last segment took a little more time then expected to get to. These days you can find BSM definitions and products all over the place. So the question I’ve been asking myself is BSM different then Analytics (as defined in our Data Center Automation Blueprint).

First up, here are some of the best definitions of Business Service Management:

• Business Service Management is about enabling IT operations and support staff with empowering information that helps them to understand the impact on the business in business terms
• Business Service Management is the integration and consolidation of systems management with business management
• Business Service Management is about understanding the business perspective also known as the “top down perspective”. What value, revenue, cost, churn, ROI, etc. can be associated with the IT services, applications, processes, transactions, etc. being delivered and supported by your IT organization?
• Business Service Management is an IT operations management software product that links the availability and performance status of IT infrastructure components to business-oriented IT services that enable business processes
• Business Service Management metric might look at the dollar impact of server downtime as opposed to an ITSM (IT-focused) metric that identifies the percent uptime for the same server
• First-generation BSM solutions offer:
  • a way of defining and describing business processes;
  • discovery (partly manual, partly automatic) of IT service components;
  • mapped (partly manual, partly automatic) business processes to IT components;
  • adapters to other infrastructure management products;
  • Measure end-to-end performance for business processes;
  • Measure the business impact of downtime;
  • analyz the root causes of incidents resulting in downtime;
  • provided dashboard views so that selected target audiences can combine relevant information.

In part 4, I defined the Data Center Automation Blueprint’s analytics category as “a roll-up aggregation view of metrics that are mapped to the business metrics and goals.”

So from what I’ve heard/read etc, Analytics is a major component/subset of BSM…but BSM isn’t specifically or just analytics.   BUT, if you combine (from the DCAB) Resource Reconciliation, Process Orchestration and Analytics into one bundle things are looking very, very close to BSM as I read it.  With that said, going forward we will continue to watch/discuss BSM and it’s specific applicability to the data center.

To jump back to any of the previous topics in this series follow the below links:

Part one covered data collection
Part two covered applying analytics and business/service mapping to those collection points
Part three covered evolving the Data Center Automation Blueprint from Performance & Availability to Service Assurance.
Part four coverd the term analytics and how it’s applied as a standalone category and within categories of the DCAB.

Next action item would be a couple key updates to the Data Center Automation Blueprint.

Jun 2 2008   5:00AM GMT

Mapping HP Software to the Data Center Automation Blueprint - take 2

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, CMDB, HP Software, Symantec, EMC

I recently took a pass at mapping HP Software’s offerings to the Data Center Automation Blueprint after a call I had with a product executive from the Business Service Automation group (majority of the Opsware products went here). I also attempted to use the HP software website to piece together the Business Service Management side of things (where legacy OpenView and many Mercury products are). Recently, I had a chance to talk with a product executive from the Business Service Management side and learned while my mapping was close, it was slightly off. So now it’s time to take a pass at updating things.

The amazing thing I will say about the HP Software portfolio is it has pulled together a great set of formerly standalone vendors (e.g., Mercury, Opsware, Peregrine and legacy OpenView line) to offer comprehensive coverage for automating and managing your entire IT infrastructure. Their capabilities go well beyond the Data Center.

• Configuration & Change
  • for networks - Network Automation Software (formerly Opsware, formerly Rendition)
  • for servers, applications & databases - Server Automation Software (formerly Opsware)
  • for storage - Storage Essentials Software (formerly AppIQ)
• Performance & Availability
  • Products that are Availability (event) centric for the Data Center Infrastructure
    • for networks - HP Network Node Manager software - agent-less approach
    • for servers, applications & databases
      • HP Operations Manager software - agent-based approach
      • HP SiteScope software - agent-less
      • (NOTE:  agent-based requires a proprietary agent to be installed on a system, agent-less leverages either industry standard or de-facto standard protocols or embedded management agents)
    • for applications - HP TransactionVision software - agent-based performance and availability software for services/applications/databases
  • Products that are Performance & Capacity (periodic time-series collected data) centric for the Data Center Infrastructure
    • for networks - HP Performance Insight software - agent-less approach
    • for servers, applications & databases - HP Performance Manager software - agent-based approach
    • for applications - HP Real-User Monitor software - monitors applications/services/data traffic flows
    • for end-to-end services/applications/network/databases/etc - HP Problem Isolation software - uses advanced correlations and analytics in an attempt to identify the specific problem or condition.
• Resource Reconciliation
  • Universal CMDB software (formerly Mercury, formerly AppLogic)
• Process Orchestration
  • Operations Orchestration Software (formerly Opsware, formerly iConclude)

So that means for the other functional areas of the Data Center Automation Blueprint we have:

• Analytics
  • HP Dashboard software & HP Business Service Level Management - offers a unified user interface consolidating reports and statistics spanning multiple other product lines within Performance & Availability to IT Service Desks.
• Security & Prevention
  • HP WebInspect software - web application vulnerability scanning
    • **NOTE: In my eyes, this is more a security extension to the QA and Testing products from Mercury then part of a security & prevention software portfolio like that of Symantec, McAfee or EMC RSA.

So there we have it (i think). Now please correct me if I’m wrong.  As mentioned previously, s major hole is in the area of security & prevention.  Second, would you go to HP for your storage management needs over EMC or Symantec (Veritas) when they only seem to have a single storage management product.  I don’t see offerings focused exclusively on monitoring availability and performance, but I may have overlooked it.

Bottom line after all this.  HP is the one to chase from having a comprehensive Data Center Automation strategy.  The unique thing is this can be creatively coupled with various hardware and service offerings they have.  In addition, with the pending EDS acquisition…they ARE the gorilla leading Data Center Automation sector toward the vision of someday being a “lights out data center.”  We still have a long ways to go, but HP Software is well down that road compared to others.

Apr 14 2008   9:45PM GMT

Mapping HP Software to the Data Center Automation Blueprint

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, Analytics, CMDB, DCAB, HP Software, Integrien, Netuitive, GridApp Systems

I had the chance to recently chat with an executive at HP to breakdown what pieces and parts ended up where post Peregrine, Mercury and Opsware acquisitions. Here is my attempted and mapping them to the Data Center Automation Blueprint.

• Configuration & Change
  • for networks - Network Automation Software (formerly Opsware, formerly Rendition)
  • for servers - Server Automation Software (formerly Opsware)
  • for storage - Storage Essentials Software (formerly Appilog)
• Resource Reconciliation
  • Universal CMDB software (formerly Mercury, formerly AppLogic)
• Process Orchestration - Operations Orchestration Software (formerly Opsware, formerly iConclude)

The focus of our call was around the above areas…from here I’m trying to piece together by using the website and the knowledge that:

• The Business Service Management group is where all the monitoring products reside; Mercury (excluding QA products) and original OpenView monitoring products. There still seems like a ton of overlap here…
• The IT Service Management is where Peregrine and the original HP Service Desk products reside.

So that means for the other functional areas of the Data Center Automation Blueprint we have:

• Analytics
  • HP Dashboard software & HP Business Service Level Management - each offers a unified user interface consolidating reports and statistics spanning multiple other product lines within Performance & Availability to IT Service Desks.
• Performance & Availability
  • Products that are event/availability centric for the Data Center Infrastructure
    • HP Network Node Manager software - agent-less performance and availability software for networks
    • HP Operations Manager software - agent-based performance and availability software for servers/services/applications/databases.
    • HP Problem Isolation software - agent-less performance and availability software for servers/services/application/databases.
    • HP Process Monitor software & HP TransactionVision software - agent-based performance and availability software for services/applications/databases
  • Products that are trend/capacity centric for the Data Center Infrastructure
    • HP Performance Insight software - agent-less time series performance and capacity reporting software for networks that also consolidates data for reporting on servers/services/applications/databases
    • HP SiteScope software - agent-less performance and availability software for servers/services/applications/databases
    • HP Performance Manager software & HP GlancePlus software - agent-based time series performance & capacity statistics collected from servers/services/applications/databases.l
    • HP Real-User Monitor software - monitors applications/services/data traffic flows
• Security & Prevention
  • HP WebInspect software - web application vulnerability scanning
    • **NOTE: In my eyes, this is more a security extension to the QA and Testing products from Mercury then part of a security & prevention software portfolio like that of Symantec, McAfee or EMC RSA.

So there we have it (i think). Now please correct me if I’m wrong, but one thing I didn’t see in the portfolio was anything that does proactive performance analytics like Integrien, Netuitive or ProactiveNet (acquired by BMC)? Besides that, from an outside perspective they merely have a very confusing Performance & Availability functional category (due to Mercury/OpenView overlap) that does seem to have all the pieces. So for HP Software, it’s just about executing and tying things together based on end-to-end use cases from their customers. One other area to keep an eye on is Configuration & Change for databases (from companies like GridApp). As more and more enteprises deploy the Server Automation Software, they may start wanting to get more detailed in the world of databases, if so that may be a build/buy decision point to consider in the future. One other thing based on what I’ve read is all these products are busy making sure they extend beyond physical systems support into the virtualized world.

I guess one outstanding thing to ponder is why shouldn’t HP also offer a comprehensive security & prevention offering to help them better compete against IBM? At some point many people assume/expect security and operations to converge, why not help drive that with a comprehensive security offering?

Mar 5 2008   7:59PM GMT

Top Enterprise Management Tools vs. Data Center Automation Blueprint

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, Analytics, Application monitoring, CMDB, DCAB, HP Software, IBM Tivoli, InfoVista, IT Process Automation, Netuitive, RBA, RealOps, Run Book Automation, Systems monitoring, BMC, Network configuration, Network monitoring, Networkingchannel, Performance management, CA, NetQoS, Opnet, Tideway

I was doing some “light” reading this morning and came upon this recent article:  Top 10 Enterprise Management Tools

It’s focused on Complete Enterprise Management, not specifically focused on the Data Center so I thought I would summarize and then compare/contrast/discuss:

• Network Fault & Performance: CA eHealth & Spectrum
• Consolidated Event Management: IBM Tivoli Netcool
• Service Impact Monitoring : IBM Tivoli Business Service Manage & Service Level Advisor
• Application Discovery Mapping: Tideway Foundation
• Business Intelligence: Cognos
• ITSM Workflow, CMDB and Service Desk: BMC Remedy ITSM and Atrium
• Network & Systems Configuration Managment: HP Automation (formerly Opsware SAS & NAS)
• Process Automation: BMC RunBook Automation

Since it isn’t data center centric, it’s light on automated management for applications & databases.  It also chooses to stay away from the very congested and sometimes confusing security/protection market.

Next up, I thought  it would be fun to do a quick mapping to the Data Center Automation Blueprint.

• Network Fault & Performance, Consolidated Event Management, Service Impact Monitoring = Availability & Performance
• Application Discovery Mapping, CMDB = IT Resource Reconciliation
• Business Intelligence = Analytics (maybe…Analytics is still a work in progress…need to figure out this vs. BSM etc)
• ITSM Workflow, Service Desk = outside of DCAB listed as Manual Task Orchestration

I was surprised not to see an End-User Application Performance Monitoring category.  These products either do their duty from passive agents on the endpoint or from data center appliances using slick algorithms, TCPIP theory, etc.  Maybe that could have indirectly been rolled under Network Fault & Performance as CA acquired Wily which offers that.  The other one missing was more towards Capacity Planning and Trending Analytics, either based off historical data like what Opnet offers or from real-time data patterns from Netuitive.

Needless to say I found it a really nice write-up and summary of those products/offerings.  The only thing I struggle with is all of the big 4 (BMC, CA, HP, IBM) are represented in this mix.  Which means you will have 4 sales guys all continously battling it out to grab more land.  This may be good from a cost competition standpoint, but it’s a real fiasco for making sure all parts are playing nicely with each other or simply managing those vendor relationships.  Bottom line, you’re always going to have at least one of the big 4 in there as they continue to snap-up the innovative smaller companies/ technologies to enhance their portfolio and offer differentiation.  So I’d typically recommend a strategy where you pick 2 of the big 4 and keep them in check versus each other while continually looking for those innovative start-up’s to fill in the gaps.  Here is an example of how you could do this using the categories in the original article.

• Network Fault & Performance: HP Network Node Manager, Operations Manager, Performance Insight
• Consolidated Event Management: IBM Tivoli Netcool
• Service Impact Monitoring : IBM Tivoli Business Service Manage & Service Level Adviser
• Application Discovery Mapping: IBM Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager
• Business Intelligence: Cognos (which IBM recently acquired)
• ITSM Workflow, CMDB and Service Desk: HP AssetCenter (former Peregrine)
• Network & Systems Configuration Managment: HP Data Center Automation (formerly Opsware SAS & NAS)
• Process Automation: HP Operations Orchestration (formerly iConclude that Opsware acquired)

Or, if you want to completely rebel and go the non-big 4 route, take a look at the above mappings to the DCAB and look for a name that’s not big-4.  Example:  Network Fault & Performance: InfoVista or NetQoS

Feb 21 2008   11:18PM GMT

IT Resource Reconciliation (CMDB) - Top 5 Capabilities

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, CMDB, DCAB, Tideway

The crew over a Tideway offered up and impressive in-depth product demo last week. It made me realize I haven’t circled back to throw down my top five features for this functional area of the Data Center Automation Blueprint we’ve been working on.

With that said, I was impressed with their comprehensive agent-less discovery vs. the agent centric approach of Symantec (Relicore), HP (Opsware), IBM (Collation), CA (Cendura) or the passive-flow based from EMC (nLayers). I know some of these vendors can do some discovery through an agent-less approach but to get comprehensive feature functionality they will lead you toward deploying their agents.

So on to the top five features…

1) Comprehensive discovery engine that can automate the identification of and it’s communications relationships for any IT resource (e.g., applications, databases, services, systems, storage, network etc)

2) Impressive visibility capabilities including multi-layer topological / dependency mapping illustrations while offering comprehensive reporting options (e.g., graphical summaries down to detailed lists)

3) Reconciliation automation where this solution serves as the “source of truth” for the current state of the IT resources in the data center. At a minimum this should offer the ability to report differences between this and other Data Center Automation solutions. The real deal would have embedded automation/integrations that keep all products synchronized, saving major amounts of time for the system administrators and avoiding an event from occurring when it unfortunately wasn’t being monitored.

4) Accurate fingerprinting (e.g., discovery-to-data model mapping). Making sure the discovery process has the ability to keep up with newer software versions, new vendors etc for all the possible IT resources in the data center.

5) A fast search engine to quickly find an IT resource you are: troubleshooting, need to review prior to putting in a change order to understand potential impact or may be susceptible to a recently announced security threat, etc.

5b) A policy engine, built on the search engine, that enables users to define desired attributes for specific types of IT resources and be notified immediately when something doesn’t match that desired state so it can be remediated.

One other thing I noticed about the Tideway product that was appealing was it’s transparent approach. All communications between their product and each IT resource are visible down to the specific commands that are run. This enable the product to quickly build trust with the user since they can see the specific queries/commands used and their results.

I know their are other desired features so let’s hear them!

Speaking of that, at some point I need to put together the “table stakes” features that any DCAB product should have. You know what I mean - slick dashboard (e.g. iGoogle), RBAC, SDK/API, Grouping, etc, etc, etc.

I’ve also made a few more updates to the wiki summary version of the Data Center Automation Blueprint, come take a look and throw down some feedback.

Jan 31 2008   5:04PM GMT

Month in Review - January 2008

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, Application monitoring, CMDB, IT Process Automation, ITIL, RBA, Run Book Automation, OSS, Virtualization

Thanks for all your feedback and insights during this months postings. Keep them coming!

Development of Data Center Automation Blueprint (DCAB)

• Digging into the DCAB’s functional areas:  Configuration & Change - provisioning, patching, deployment, auditing, etc.
• Digging into the DCAB’s functional areas:  Security & Protection - variety of proactive & reactive approaches
• Digging into the DCAB’s functional areas: Process Orchestration - automation across silos
• What are the most desired features in IT Process Orchestration (e.g., RBA) - discussion on key features
• Digging into the DCAB’s functional areas:  Resource Reconciliation - CMDB, Asset Mgmt, etc.

Discussions beyond the DCAB functional areas

• Came across a great BSM blog series in process - the quest for the ultimate heads-up display for CxO’s
• Will virtualization end world hunger, bring down gas prices? - no, but it is important for the world of DCA.

Overall DCA Trends and Observations

• Data Center Automation 2008 perspectives - discussion on some year end and looking ahead topics.
• Cisco & BMC?  Why IT fears ITIL? - pondering a couple articles I read after the holidays brought these topics up.
• Innovations and evolutions in Performance Management - discussions about performance management beyond reporting

Current events in DCA

• Quick Monday Summary of events from last week/weekend -  Some current events around Open Source and APM
• Couple recent notes on CMDB, aka Resource Reconciliation - other write-ups and some awards in the category

Keep the feedback and conversations flowing.  As I’ve mentioned before I just enjoy learning and talking about the innovation occurring in DCA…I’m really hoping and attempting to facilitate dialog from vendors and customers alike on various topics.  So don’t be shy, create an ID and leave some thoughts/comments!

Jan 25 2008   9:00AM GMT

Couple recent notes on CMDB, aka Resource Reconciliation

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, CMDB, Opalis, Scalent, Symantec, BMC, NetIQ, CA

Another great post by Glenn O’Donnell; CMDB is the new integration mechanism. I’m looking forward to seeing his forthcoming book on the same topic!

2007 TechTarget Products of the Year - Data Center include (categories by DCAB functional categories):

Resource Reconciliation (category combined with Configuration & Change) solutions from CA, BMC and Scalent

A couple other categories that map to the DCAB are;

Process Orchestration solutions from Symantec, Opalis and CA

Performance & Capacity solutions from NetIQ, BalancePoint and CiRBA

I find the CiRBA solution very intriguing after my read and post on Innovations in Performance Management yesterday.

Jan 18 2008   4:14PM GMT

Digging into the DCAB’s 6 functional areas: Resource Reconciliation

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, CMDB, HP Software, IBM Tivoli, ITIL, Symantec, BMC, EMC

 The second up and coming area goes by many names these days.  Some call it next-generation asset management, many others call it CMDB.

I’m calling it resource reconciliation as I would like to see it extend beyond a discovery engine, IT asset database, dependency mapping and the necessary graphical topology and reports.  I also believe that these tools not only should communicate directly with the infrastructure outlined in the Data Center Automation Blueprint (DCAB) - but also synchronize and provide reconciliation capabilities with the 5 other DCAB functions.

What I’m saying is I want to make sure that all my other functional products always are 100% accurate to what my IT infrastructure contains.  There is no reason my performance & capacity products don’t know about a specific IT resource.  Nor, do I want multiple discovery engines combing my infrastructure setting off false alarms in my security products or requiring me to open additional communication avenues making the infrastructure less secure.

Here are a list of the vendors I know of, this space saw some major consolidation during  2006.

BMC
CA (Cendura acquisition)
EMC (nLayers acquisition)
HP (Opsware acquisition)
IBM (Collation acquisition)
Symantec (Relicore acquisition)
Tideway

Another area I’m researching and pondering inclusion in this category are service catalogs (e.g. NewScale)  Any thoughts or opinions on how they compare to the players/products  above?

Jan 9 2008   7:06PM GMT

Cisco and BMC? Why IT fears ITIL?

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, BladeLogic, CMDB, ITIL, BMC, Cisco

Here are a couple more reads as I play catch-up from the holidays. First up, ITIL then some thoughts around a recent interview with John Chambers at Cisco.

10 Reasons why ITIL spooks IT managers, originally written back in October by NetworkWorld, it was noted by another blog I read so I checked it out. One more I would like to add making it 11 is around challenges with “organizational stability”. Companies evolve to fast - i know sounds odd (e.g. reorganizations), technologies keep offering new approaches or benefits (e.g., virtualization), M&A activity that requires trying to blend two different organization and the technical and political challenges that offers Bottom line, there are just way to many things conspiring against something so all-inclusive from the top-down that takes years and years and year to accomplish. It touches ever part of the business and it’s snot elf-contained or focused like deploying a new financial application. Now I’m not saying ITIL isn’t useful, for example CMDB (e.g., configuration management) is something all large enterprises should have in my eyes. The amount of savings could/would be immense around effective utilization of resources, reducing redundancies, keeping every thing/one on the same page and the list goes on (more on that when we talk resource reconciliation next week).

Cisco’s John Chambers interview with Paul Musich titled “Cisco Charts New Course” was an enjoyable read as you attempt to read in between the lines and ponder Cisco’s strategy.

My personal thoughts from this center around Cisco’s push into collaborative applications being about driving bandwidth intensive applications to sell more/protect current investments companies have made in network plumbing (everything but servers, storage, desktops) while trying to find a bigger piece of the IT pie. They have to be careful not to upset the apple cart as they wish to bite off more of that IT budget pie. Since applications aren’t core to the main players that channel/sell (e.g., HP, IBM, EMC, Microsoft) their current cash cow products this ensures only light co-opetition today versus hard head-to-head competition. To date their application choices have been very calculated around unified communications and collaboration, not generalized. So with that said I’m not so sure they are about to just yet take that big jump and go after a more general application strategy (e.g., BEA). I think they have some maturing plans here which include finding a way to more efficiently manage applications, then maybe later in 2008 or early 2009 watch for that next step down the stack from actual applications to enabling the development of applications. I started pondering this back in December where I started making the case for Cisco acquiring BMC. With that said, if they do “go large” in IT management and grab BMC instead of someone like BladeLogic then scrap my thought on them doing the BEA thing.

Dec 17 2007   5:59PM GMT

Next pass on Data Center Automation “Blueprint”

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, CMDB, eTOM, FCAPS, IT Process Automation, ITIL, Application monitoring, Network monitoring, Performance management, Security, Storage, Virtualization, RBA, Run Book Automation, Systems monitoring, Systemschannel, WAN optimization

Thanks for the feedback, I’ve incorporated some points that have been made into an updated version of the Data Center Automation Blueprint (DCAB).

As mentioned previous this is a work in progress and I love getting feedback, ideas, concerns etc. with the model. As mentioned previously I’m trying to build a functional model (at the 30,000 foot level) that represents key software functionality to automate the data center towards someday becoming “lights out.”

Also, with that said, it needs to be comprehensive but not overwhelming. I want to keep the yellow DCA functional areas limited in number…if this grows to be much more then the current six I feel it becomes too complex. So to add any new areas I need to assess how do they compare to the current areas and could I combine any areas.

One I’m struggling with right now is I’ve received feedback that analytics itself is an area. The interesting thing is analytics currently fits to some degree within each of the 4 horizontal functional areas (e.g., Configuration/Change, Security/Protection) as each of those products offer advanced reporting and as that progresses they do predictive reporting and analytics around that functional area.

Analytics would also show up at the dashboard level (currently beyond the scope of what I’m defining as the functional areas of the Data Center Automation Blueprint) where you would correlate business intelligence, patterns etc. across not just Data Center Automation functional categories but also across manual task orchestration (e.g., service/help desk) details.

Thoughts?

One more thing to clear up, I know some (many) of these functional categories and their products extend beyond the Data Center. The lens this blog looks through is exclusively focused on the challenges posed by large, complex data centers. For example, I know performance products are also useful in all sized companies (big & small) and also beyond the data center (e.g., headquarters, remote offices, partner networks, etc).