This document discusses best practices for monitoring Vblock converged infrastructure using Fusion Storm and Nimsoft. It outlines the challenges of managing Vblock, Fusion Storm's services for Vblock including monitoring and managed services, and how Nimsoft can provide unified monitoring of the entire Vblock environment from applications to networking to storage. Nimsoft allows for proactive monitoring, service level monitoring, event correlation and analysis to manage the complexity of Vblock.

1. Best Practices for Vblock Monitoring
with Fusion Storm and Nimsoft
Manage Complexity with Confidence
Vince Conroy Stephen Smith
CTO Sr. Mgr., Product Marketing
FusionStorm Nimsoft
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2. Agenda
› The Challenge: Managing Vblock Converged
Infrastructure
› Fusion Storm – Best Practices and Tips for Managing
Vblock
› Nimsoft for Monitoring Vblock
›Q&A
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3. The Challenge:
Managing Vblock Converged Infrastructure
» Vblock: Private-cloud oriented
solutions built on VMware, EMC,
and Cisco technology
» Require a new kind of
performance and availability
solution
» What happens when something
goes wrong in the “black box”?
» Need to be able to triage for root
cause analysis, prevent service
level problems and outages
- Is it the Virtual environment?
Physical servers? Network or
Fabric? Storage? Application?
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4. Vince Conroy
Fusion Storm CTO
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5. Best Practices for Monitoring
Vblock
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 5

6. Full Lifecycle IT Services
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud / Managed Services
Consulting Services to Products and Professional 24/7 lifecycle services to
optimize, secure and enable Services to solve business right-source and support
business growth and technology challenges the reliable delivery of IT
• Data Center • Data Center Infrastructure • Cloud/Dedicated Hosting
• Security • Networking • Managed Services
• Business Software • Communications • PointCare Support
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 6

7. The Journey towards “IT as a Service”…
Stages of Adoption and Maturity
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3
85%
Automation
Desktop/Application
70%
“Tier-1” Production Systems
30%
Business Continuity
15% “Tier-2” Production Systems
Application Development, Testing and “Sandbox”
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 7

8. VCE Vblock Infrastructure Packages
What is it:
The combined best-of-breed technologies from Cisco and
EMC, together with VMware – pre-integrated, tested, and Solution Packages
validated to redefine the foundation of datacenter
virtualized infrastructure.
Rich APIs
How it works:
Rather than buying and assembling individual
components, now acquire validated Vblock Infrastructure
Packages direct or from partners with a seamless services Resource
Management
and support experience.
Benefits:
• Accelerating the journey to pervasive virtualization and
private cloud computing while lowering risk and Security
operating expenses
• Customer assets (operating systems, applications, and Network
Compute
data) are on-boarded as solution packages
Virtualization Storage
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 8

9. FusionStorm Services for Vblock
 Business needs assessment
 Sizing for application and workload requirements
 Product fulfillment
 Project management
 Deployment services
 Configuration services
 Application integration
 Knowledge transfer
 Vblock hosting in our data centers
 24/7 comprehensive managed services
 Dedicated or shared-Vblock models
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 9

10. FusionStorm Cloud Consulting Services
Plan Build Operate
consulting services deployment services managed services
• Business Assessment • Proof of Concept • IT Xpress Cloud Hosting
• Infrastructure Assessment • Procurement • MS Xpress Managed Services
• Cloud Strategy Development • Project Management • Cloud Automation
• Architecture & Design • Hardware Integration • 24x7 Support
• Application Rationalization • Application Integration • Operational Consulting
• Security Consulting • Data Migration • Application Services
• “Right-Sourcing” • Knowledge Transfer • Business Process Monitoring
< Cloud Delivery Models >
On-Premise Private Clouds
FusionStorm IT Xpress Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 10

11. MS Xpress Managed Services for Vblock
 Monitoring
 Remediation
 Change Administration
• Network
• Storage
• Virtual/Physical servers
 vCloud Director Management
 OS Management
 Database Administration
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 11

12. Monitoring Challenges for MSPs/CSPs
 Monitoring for a broad range of IT systems including networking, severs,
storage systems, operating systems, hypervisors, database s, applications
and more – for Vblock, all of these
 Deliver consistent levels of availability and performance alerting/reporting
 Deliver industry-leading SLAs with flexible SLA reporting
 “Single pane of glass” for Service Desk technicians and engineers
 Be able to handle dynamically changing environments, especially cloud
 Provide transparency to customers via a comprehensive Web Portal
 Integrated ITSM via Nimsoft Service Desk
 We selected Nimsoft Monitor + Service Desk for the above reasons
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 12

13. How we use Nimsoft Monitor w/Vblock
• Nimsoft Application , Web and End-to-End
Applications probes, custom scripting (many apps supported)
• Nimsoft database probes for Oracle, SQL Server,
Database mySQL, others
OS • Nimsoft OS probes for Windows, Linux, Unix
Hypervisor • Nimsoft VMware probe
Server HW • Nimsoft probe for Cisco UCS
Storage • Nimsoft probe for EMC VNX/VMAX
Network • Nimsoft Cisco network probes
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 13

14. Nimsoft Monitor for Vblock
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 14

15. Monitoring/ITSM Best Practices
 Default monitoring metrics come from a template for repeatability
 We use a hypervisor-level “VMware” probe on all vSphere clusters, but…
 …. we also use the OS-level probes for Linux and Windows on the guest
VMs for additional flexibility and deeper monitoring at the VM level
 What matters most is monitoring at the application level because that’s
really all that customers see and care about
 End-user SLAs should include application-level performance/response time
whenever possible
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 15

16. Monitoring/ITSM Best Practices
 We create custom scripts or probes for special needs/applications – we
have yet to find any situation that we can’t monitor with Nimsoft
 We use Nimsoft reporting to manage all infrastructure resources across
multiple data centers globally (Nimsoft Unified Reporter)
 We interface Nimsoft Monitoring with several other systems (including our
new Nimsoft Service Desk ticketing system)
IT Consulting Technology Solutions Cloud/Managed Services 16

17. Nimsoft for Vblock
Stephen Smith
Sr. Mgr. Product Marketing
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18. Nimsoft for Vblock
›Nimsoft completes the solution
for Vblock with:
» Discovery
» Proactive Monitoring
» Service Level Monitoring
» Event correlation and analysis
›Unified Monitoring
» Scalable, secure, extensible
» Multi-tenant
» Secure Remote Monitoring
» SaaS or On Premise
» Intuitive Web 2.0 visualization
» Usage metering
Simple pricing model!
 Single price for entire Vblock
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19. With Nimsoft for Vblock
› Triage problems across the entire Vblock
environment
› Operational Optimization
» Migration: Monitor inside & outside the
Vblock
» Prevent outages from happening -
Proactive Monitoring
» Quickly identify problems - Root cause
analysis
» Eliminate the need to manually
configure monitoring
» Prevent under-use and over-
commitment of resources
» Single Portal for Unified Monitoring
› Customer Service
» Secure support for multiple customers
» Highlight the cost of an internal solution
vs. a public cloud
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20. Nimsoft: Manage complexity with confidence
Unified. Ubiquitous.
IT Management Monitor and Service Desk.
Now available anywhere.
as a service Cloud-ready.
Agent-optional; easily deployed
on-premises or in the Cloud.
Multi-tenant.
Scale easily to provide every
client a personalized view.
Easy. Extensible.
Simple point & click configuration.
Command line & APIs available.
Usage-based.
Self-service; meter and charge
for resources consumed.
Social.
Access crowd-sourced
knowledge and best practices.
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21. Nimsoft for Vblock: Learn More
» Nimsoft:
» Stephen.Smith@nimsoft.com › Gartner Data Center & IT
» FusionStorm: » November 28 - 29, 2011
VConroy@fusionstorm.com » London, UK
› Gartner Data Center
» Learn more: www.nimsoft.com » December 4 - 8, 2011,
- EMA white paper » Las Vegas, NV
- Datasheet, slideshow, more
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