Simplify Datacenter Consolidation and Virtualization Projects from Start to Finish
As a network manager or systems administrator, it is likely you have already embraced virtualization as the basis to build your private cloud, or are planning to do so. Virtualization reduces hardware costs and overall total cost of ownership, and gives you tremendous flexibility to quickly provision server capacity whenever your business or applications so demand.
If you are in the planning or early deployment stages, you will need the right solution to help you:
- Discover, map and document everything connected to your network – hardware/software assets as well as port-to-port connectivity
- Identify underutilized resources that can be moved to the private cloud
- Baseline network traffic and bandwidth usage prior to moving to the cloud
If you are already in the cloud, there is a new set of management challenges to consider, such as how to:
- Discover and document both physical and virtualized resources and associations
- Maintain an accurate physical to VM mapping at all times
- Ensure that applications perform at optimal pre-virtualization levels
- Integrate alerting, escalation and response procedures across virtual and physical resources
- Rapidly locate the root cause of a performance problem
WhatsUp in the Cloud gives you all of the cloud-ready features that you need, proven performance in over 100,000 networks worldwide, and complete deployment ease at a fraction of the cost. For over 20 years, WhatsUp Gold has served thousands of enterprise organizations. With worldwide presence and a history of continuous technical innovation, we are your trusted partner for cloud management success.
How our Network Management Solutions will help you with your private cloud projects:
|
Pre-Planning Stages |
WhatsConnected |
Discover, map, inventory and document everything connected to your network |
| | WhatsUp Gold | Import your information with a simple mouse click into WhatsUp Gold, and start monitoring performance right away. Identify under-utilized resources that can be moved to the cloud. |
| | Flow Monitor |
Baseline normal network traffic activity |
| |
Managing the Cloud | WhatsConnected |
Discover, map, inventory and document physical and virtual resources |
| | WhatsUp Gold / WhatsVirtual | Ensure optimal performance on an on-going basis, and secure your network via real-time alerts on key vCenter security events. Plus with WhatsVirtual, you can manage and control physical and virtual resources from the same interface, save time, and simplify troubleshooting efforts. |
| | Flow Monitor | Go deeper into network traffic and understand bandwidth usage – understand who and how. Compare network traffic behavior for pre-cloud and post-cloud conditions to quickly identify bottlenecks |
Plan and Ensure Success of your Private Cloud Deployment
Discover, Map, Document & Report on your Network with WhatsConnected
Before you plan which servers and resources should be virtualized, you need to know what is running in your infrastructure, their interdependencies and how everything is connected down to the individual port. Use WhatsConnected to automatically discover, map, inventory and document your network (devices, servers, and software assets) and port-to-port connectivity in minutes! Using its powerful auto-discovery, dynamic mapping capabilities and simple one-click integration with Visio™, your team will always have crucial topology information at their fingertips. And if you have already virtualized some hardware assets, WhatsConnected will automatically discover and map physical to virtual associations for you.
A layer 2/3 discovery is actually an eye-opener for many organizations since they can discover “forgotten” or unused hardware resources that can be repurposed and moved to the cloud.
Monitor and Identify Underutilized Resources with WhatsUp Gold
Once you’ve discovered what you have and how everything is connected, use one-click integration with WhatsUp Gold to seamless export all topological and hardware asset information, and start monitoring performance right away.
What to Monitor:
Networking Devices
Key metrics such as interface utilization and other metrics stored in their MIBs, such as interface errors and discards, CPU and Memory utilization.
Systems, servers and workstations (Windows, Unix, Linux & MAC)
Processor utilization, memory, processes, storage and file system, as well as disk I/O — identify both under and over utilized resources.
Hardware Performance Indicators
Temperate, power supply and fans — quickly detect if there are instances of overheating or component failures
With WhatsUp Gold’s powerful monitoring, alerting and notification capabilities, combined with mobile access, custom dashboard views and over 200+ reports, you will have actionable intelligence to identify underutilized resources (which can be moved to the cloud) and make smarter decisions, faster.
Baseline Network Traffic with WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor
Configure Flow Monitor to go deep into your flow data to analyze, alert and report on the different types of traffic traversing your network. This is how it works: Each flow-enabled router or switch collects and aggregates information about traffic passing through it, and when configured to do so, transmits the information to WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor. That way you can:
- Understand which users, applications and protocols are consuming your bandwidth, and oversee quality of service received by all applications, especially mission-critical applications.
- Properly measure bandwidth usage—verify ISP providers billing, or properly plan for spikes in bandwidth usage and avoid dropped packages or delays
- Protect your network – tracking traffic anomalies can help you quickly detect the introduction of viruses and worms into the corporate network
Understanding and baselining netowork traffic should be a standard phase of your datacenter consolidation/virtualization pre-deployment plans. That way you can compare network and bandwidth usage before and after moving to the cloud to ensure that end-user experience will not be negatively impacted.
Running Your Private Cloud at Peak Efficiency
Discover, Map, Document & Prevent Virtual Proliferation with WhatsConnected
One of the greatest strengths of virtualization is the ease with which IT administrators can use the technology to create, copy, and dispose of new virtual machines (VMs) at a moment’s notice. While this flexibility lets you maximize your hardware resources, it can severely hinder troubleshooting efforts and increase MTTR (mean time to resolution), without the right maps to visualize physical to virtual associations at all times. Plus virtual sprawl, or the rapid proliferation of unmanaged VMs in your environment, can quickly become a problem for you as well. The solution?
Know your infrastructure at the physical and virtual layers: Use WhatsConnected to automatically discover, map, inventory and document your network (devices, servers, virtual resources and software assets) and port-to-port connectivity in minutes! Using its powerful auto-discovery and dynamic mapping capabilities and simple one-click integration with Visio™, your team will always have accurate topology maps and physical to virtual association available at all times. With WhatsConnected in place you can easily track the number of VMs deployed in your environment and where they are located (even if they move) prevent virtual sprawl, and simplify your troubleshooting efforts.
Ensure Cloud Performance with WhatsUp Gold & WhatsUp Virtual
The best way to optimize your private cloud performance is to discover, map, monitor and control your network devices, servers, applications, virtual resources, network traffic and events from a SINGLE interface. WhatsVirtual lets you discover, map, monitor and manage your VMware virtual server environment exactly in the same way and from the same console as your physical server infrastructure.
WhatsVirtual integrates with the powerful VMware API to collect performance metrics across VMs, virtual clusters and hosts, and oversee VMware vMotion or High Availability live migrations. In addition it provides powerful capability for controlling virtual machines and virtual clusters through a number of management actions such as: power on, power off, suspend, reset, and virtual machine backup from a single console to save time.
Here is a list of key areas to oversee with WhatsUp Gold & WhatsVirtual
Networking Devices
Key metrics such as interface utilization and other metrics stored in their MIBs, such as interface errors and discards, CPU and Memory utilization.
Systems, servers and workstations (Windows, Unix, Linux & MAC)
Processor utilization, memory, processes, storage and file system, as well as disk I/O — identify both under and over utilized resources.
Resources – VM, cluster and host levels
CPU, Interface, Memory, and disk utilization on the host level (to protect yourself against snapshots growing to the limit of your volume)
vCenter events
Security-centric events (such account creation/deletion, access to a host) as well as generic errors such as migration errors, clusters being overcommitted, insufficient failover resources, general VM errorr, etc.
Hardware Performance Indicators
Temperate, power supply and fans — quickly detect if there are instances of overheating or component failures
With WhatsUp Gold’s and WhatsVirtual's powerful monitoring, alerting and notification capabilities, combined with mobile access, custom dashboard views and over 200+ reports, you will have actionable intelligence to secure your network and identify problem faster, much faster.
Network Traffic/Virtual Switch Monitoring with WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor
Changes to the underlying infrastructure—due to datacenter consolidation efforts, virtualization or private clouds initiatives – could change traffic patterns in your network, and introduce the need for a bandwidth upgrade. Collecting, analyzing, alerting and reporting on NetFlow (or equivalent) from switches, routers and virtual switches should be a key component of your cloud monitoring strategy. Flow Monitor can help you:
- Understand which users, applications and protocols are consuming your bandwidth, and oversee quality of service received by mission-critical applications running in a private cloud
- Properly measure bandwidth usage—verify ISP providers billing, or properly plan for spikes in bandwidth usage and avoid dropped packages or delays
- Protect your network—tracking traffic anomalies can help quickly detect the introduction of viruses and worms into the corporate network
In addition, you should baseline network traffic prior to a virtualization project, and compare with post-virtualization reports to ensure that your bandwidth needs are properly met in the cloud.
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