Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

In the previous article, I introduced the software-defined storage products delivered by VMware, Virtual SAN and vCenter SiteRecovery Manager, and this article describes in detail the data center management and automation product groups delivered by VMware.

Data center management and automation

In previous issues, I described in detail the software-defined computing, networking, and storage delivered by VMware. Careful readers will find that if the computing resources, network resources, and storage resources in the data center are virtualized, the IT department can control the various resources in the data center more flexibly and provide better support and services for the business unit. However, it also poses a greater challenge to the IT department for the management of the data center. How to manage hundreds of virtual machines more effectively, how to quickly change the network topology to meet the new business needs of enterprises, how to increase computing power agile and intelligently, how to expand network bandwidth, and storage capacity to deal with various problems in daily operation, VMware gives his own answer.

Operation and maintenance management

Intelligent management software is the core of software-defined data center. Policy-driven automation can continuously and dynamically adjust infrastructure resources according to business and workload to maintain better user satisfaction. VMware vCenter OperationsManagement Suite (hereinafter referred to as vCOps) uses proprietary analytics capabilities and a unified approach to manage data center performance, capacity, and configuration. VCOps enables IT departments to have better visualization and accurate information for data centers in dynamic, virtual, and even cloud environments to ensure service levels, optimal resource usage and configuration management. [1]

VCOps is not a simple monitoring software, it is a unified monitoring platform. It can not only monitor VMware virtual infrastructure, but also monitor physical servers, applications, and virtualization products of other vendors, and even directly extract the original time sequence data from a single monitoring software of other vendors and import it into their own data storage, such as IBM's Tivoli,HP 's OpenView,EMC 's SMARTS, and other open source monitoring software. Similar to the health index defined by the security software for a single PC, vCOps defines three indicators of data center health, risk and efficiency, so that data center administrators can more intuitively understand the overall state of the data center, just like physical examination and acceleration of the data center all the time.

At the same time, using the unique dynamic threshold and intelligent alarm function, vCOps can automatically and more accurately analyze various types of data, eliminate short-term abnormal data, and judge the trend of performance changes, so as to report system performance problems before end-users complain and ordinary monitoring tools alarm. The intelligent alarm function can also help the IT department locate the cause of the problem and provide possible solutions to assist the IT department to quickly solve the potential problems that are about to occur. In addition, vCOps policy-based automation can automatically trigger a series of workflows to optimize the use of resources, improve the efficiency of operation and maintenance, and enhance the management of system configuration.

Here is a short video that introduces vCOps to help you understand. Http://bcove.me/rthk2ixo

Log management

Throughout the infrastructure of the data center, including servers, storage arrays, routers, switches and firewalls, log information is generated continuously, and the speed of log information generation is much faster than that of administrators. On average, VMware ESXi hosts generate 250MB log files every day, and the format and content of log files are not particularly friendly to administrators, which makes most data center administrators usually spend hours a week viewing, analyzing log files, and locating the root cause of the problem. [2]

Log management is a hot field that has sprung up with big data in recent years. VMware vCenter LogInsight (hereinafter referred to as LogInsight) just released a new version 2.0 this week, which uses machine learning to collect, analyze and display logs in real time, and provide a better visual interface for data center administrators. At the same time, it provides high-performance search capabilities to help administrators quickly locate problems, whether it's physical systems, virtualized platforms, or cloud environments.

LogInsight can automatically collect and organize information to help administrators quickly find the root causes of errors. IT departments find errors, and the time to solve problems is reduced by an average of 50%. [3] by setting up an appropriate alarm mechanism in LogInsight, the IT department has gradually changed from a firefighter to a participant in the future business development strategy. On the other hand, it has a price advantage over other log management software in the industry, such as Splunk,LogInsight, and can be perfectly integrated with vCOps, allowing administrators to manage all resources in the data center from a single entry.

Here is a short video that introduces LogInsight to help you understand. Http://bcove.me/5bp6a8ff

In the next article, I will continue to introduce VMware's other data center management software, which can help IT deliver IT as a service.

Referenc

[1] vCOps billboard, http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vcenter/VMware-vCenter-Operations-Management-Suite-Datasheet.pdf

[2] end chaotic data center log management, http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/End-Your-Data-Center-Logging-Chaos-with-VMware-vCenter-Log-Insight.pdf

[3] LogInsight produces direct value to IT operations, http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/log_insight_delivers_customer_value.pdf

A brief introduction to the author

Thank you

R & D Manager, VMware Storage and availability Division

He is currently the R & D Manager of VMware Storage and availability Division, committed to the research and development of software-defined data center systems, and has in-depth understanding and rich practical experience in enterprise products and technology solutions such as virtualization, cloud computing, distributed object storage systems and big data. Prior to that, he worked for EMC in the research and development of distributed object storage systems.

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