As bmrad pointed out in the Beta 1 Post, we've been working really hard to extend the integration with NPM and SAM introduced in Virtualization Manager 6.0. The team has been hyper-focused on simplifying configuration of the integration in order to bring you App-aware infrastructure monitoring, while preserving your flexibility to start with the tool you want (e.g. SAM or VMAN) and leverage the integration in the places which make the most sense. The features I'm going to outline here come directly from you and what you've told us matter most to detecting and remediating problems quickly in your virtualized environment.
Synchronization Wizard
I'm not going to go into elaborate detail here about the Sync Wizard, as bmrad did an excellent job of that in the Beta 1 Post. However, I did want to thank all of our Beta participants for giving us great feedback on the usability of the Wizard workflow. The Product Team completely understands that it doesn't matter how great the integration is, if you can't get the integration setup in the first place, none of the rest matters. With the feedback from Beta 1, we were able to streamline the messaging and workflow in the Wizard to get you up and running with the integration in minutes. We're not saying it's perfect (and definitely let us know where things don't make sense still!), but it should go a long way to making sure you never see broken integration resources ever again.
Baselines (Dynamic Thresholds) on Clusters, Hosts, VM's, and Datastores
As we discussed in the Beta 1 Post, the VMAN integration is now taking advantage of Dynamic Threshold, or Baselines, for thresholds and alerting purposes. An IT environment is a dynamic place, and when you add virtualized infrastructure to the mix, complexity leaps an order of magnitude. Isn't it about time that your alerting system recognized that fact? Well now it can!
So what can you set baseline threshold on? Our conversations with you determined the most important attributes across Datastores, VM's, Hosts, and Clusters for us to add to this release.. Obviously, we couldn't talk to everyone, and therefore are very interested in your feedback if there are other key metrics that would be valuable to baseline for your environment! In 6.1, you can set dynamic thresholds against the following virtual objects:
Clusters
| Hosts
| VirtualMachines
| Datastore
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Given that, let's see what it might look like if I want to go set a CPU Load baseline threshold against Virtual Hosts in my environment. CPU Load is an important metric to measure on Hosts with Baselines. I may have Hosts that run heavily loaded all of the time and the VM's perform acceptably on those. Therefore, I may not care to use a static threshold like 80% Warning / 90% Critical, but instead just want my alerting system to tell me "when this host is under abnormally high load." So let's get started....
| What You'll Do | What You'll See |
|---|---|
| First step, of course, is to make sure that you've got the integration enabled. Simply go to Settings->Virtualization Settings->Enable Virtualization Manager Integration and enter the IP and credentials for your VMAN appliance. This will launch you directly into our new (VMAN 6.1) Synchronization Wizard. For more information on the Sync Wizard, reference the Beta 1 Blog Post. |
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| Once the wizard is done syncing your environment, the integration is now setup and ready to go. You now will have access to all of the additional baseline goodness I mentioned above. So the first place to head to is back to the Settings page. On the main Settings page, you'll see a new sub-heading - Manage Virtual Devices. This was formerly the "Virtualization Polling Settings" menu option for VIM, but we've now extended it for setting Thresholds on your Virtual Devices and thus the name change. |  |
| Once you get to the Manage Virtual Devices page, select the Thresholds tab. This will reveal a dropdown menu where you can select virtual object types - VC's, Clusters, Hosts, VM's, Datastores - to view in the selection box below. You can also search here to further refine your selection. Given our example use case, I'm going to select Hosts here to view all the Virtual Hosts in my environment. This will show both VMware and Hyper-V hosts that are enabled by the integration (i.e. visible to VMAN and Orion). |  |
| Now that I've filtered the view to see all the Virtual Hosts in my environment, I can now multi-select the Hosts on which I want to set a Threshold. This might be useful if I want to set Static Threshold on some subset of my hosts and use automatic Dynamic Threshold for others. With multi-select I can do either quickly. Once I've selected all the Hosts I need, I click Edit Thresholds. |  |
Now we're into the heart of the matter. The "Edit Properties" screen presents me with several key pieces of information:
Our example use case involves setting CPU Load on these Hosts, so I'll select the CPU Load checkbox. This will reveal the current settings for that metric. In order to override the "Global Orion Threshold" with a custom value or baseline, select the checkbox next to "Override Global Orion Threshold or Set Dynamic Threshold."
As you can, see in the screenshot to the right, the current CPU Load thresholds are static thresholds:
We want to use Dyanmic Baselines for this metric. All I have to do in this case is select the Use Dynamic Baseline Threshold button and it will automatically set these Hosts to use Dynamic Thresholds for this metric.
Voila! We won't show an explicit value for these baseline thresholds, because they will be different for each node. If you want to see the baseline history (statistical data over time), you'll need to edit a single node at a time. |
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| So let's go check out one of the ESX Hosts we set the threshold on. If you look at the Host Details page, you can see that the Resource Utilization graph is showing Yellow and Red bars for the warning and critical thresholds we've now set. Oh BTW - that Resource Utilization sparkline chart? Also new in VMAN 6.1 for all vNodes! |  |
Advanced Alerting - Now with a Virtual Twist!
OK, so now that I've set my dynamic threshold, how do I actually get alerted? Well, with VMAN 6.1, you can now alert on the VMAN data presented in the integration. So I can use Orion's Advanced Alert Manager to set alerts just as I would any other Orion object. We've even included a subset of the standard VMAN alerts out-of-the-box. These alerts include:
| Cluster | Host | VM | Datastore/Cluster Shared Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
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So continuing our example for above, let's take a dive in the Orion Advanced Alert Manager and setup an alert on our threshold:
| What To Do | What You'll See |
|---|---|
| First, go ahead and RDP to the Orion Server to access the Orion Advanced Alert Manager. Go ahead and click on "Configure Alerts" which will launch the Alert Manager application. |  |
| In the picture to the right, I've highlighted one of the new out-of-the-box integrated alerts "Host CPU Utilization." Let's take a look at what this alerts trigger conditions are. |  |
| You can see that this alert is set to fire whenever any Virtual Host's CPU Utilization is greater than or equal to 70%. This is a static trigger level. You'll also notice that the alert is set to trigger after 15 minutes sustained. This is to ensure that at least 2 polling intervals have occurred before firing this alert as default performance collection is in 10 minute intervals. If you set this alert sustain condition for less than 10 minutes you will get noisy alerts that probably won't serve your intentions. |  |
| I'd like to take a second to point out that you can setup alerts on not only Virtual Hosts, but also Clusters, VM's and Datastores. Available alert-able metrics for each can be determined by selecting an object type, selecting the metric field, and then navigating through the hover menus. |   |
Now, back to setting up our dynamic alert. It's easiest to just copy an existing alert if you're a beginner, so that's what I've done. I can then hit "Edit" and change the name of the alert. More interesting is the alert condition. I use the same "CPU Utlization" metric, but instead of "Greater than or Equal to" I set it to be a Threshold alert. I want to alert if either a Warning or Critical Threshold is triggered, so I set the alert to trigger if either condition is reached. And that's pretty much it! Hit OK and off you go. |   |
Web-Based Reporting - Leverage the Newest Orion Core Feature on Your Virtual Data
So now you've seen how to set a dynamic threshold and alert on that, all in Orion, all on data collected by VMAN. Pretty cool, huh? Well the last piece is Orion Reporting. Orion has recently introduced Web-based Reporting, and I'm happy to say that the Web-based Reporting system can also now be used to report on the data presented in the VMAN integration. As a quick example, let's go ahead and quickly show you a report I created to show me all of the VM's in my environment with High CPU Load.
| What To Do | What You'll See |
|---|---|
| First step - Go ahead and navigate to the Orion Reports view on the Home tab. Once you're there, click on Manage Reports, then "Create New Report." |   |
| My report is just going to be a simple table, so I'll choose "Custom Table" on the next screen. |  |
I'm going to create a table that relies on a Dynamic Query. This way, as VM's get added and removed from my virtual infrastructure, my reports do not have to be updated to include/exclude them specifically. I can do that if the need arises, but not for this example.
I'm going to report on "Virtual Machines." However, I don't want a list of all VM's, because that's not really interesting. I'm only interested in VM's that have high CPU Load. Therefore, I'll add a conditional to the report to only report on VM's where CPU Load is greater than or equal to 50%. From here, you can name your datasource something meaningful, or just hit "Add to Layout." |  |
| I'll now add Columns to my table. Since this is a simple report, I'll just add the VM's "Name" and "CPU Load." Since I'm specifically trying to identify problems with CPU Load, I'll also have my report sort the results by CPU Load in Descending order. I don't need to add any filtering conditions here in the "Filter results" section, because my datasource I configured for the whole report is already doing that. |  |
I can now generate a preview of my report to see the data.Note that none of these VM's are Orion "Nodes" - these are all VMAN objects - vNodes - presented in Orion. From here, I can add properties, like adding it to Favorite Reports, or create report schedules. For our purposes, this is where we'll end, since this is not meant to be a full tutorial on the Orion Report Writer. |  |
Account Limitations - Role-based Access Control, Orion Style
I'll wrap up by briefly discussing Account Limitations, also known as Role-based Access Control. This has been a longstanding requests from VMAN customers and we're very happy we are able to deliver it through the integration in this release by leveraging Orion's Account Limitations feature. This functionality has become more critical as folks use VMware and Hyper-V estates as Private Cloud infrastructure. User access can now be restricted under different level of the virtual "hierarchy." For example, if I have a large environment with multiple vCenters, I can limit users to see only the virtual objects - hosts, vm's, clusters, datacenters, - under a single vCenter. These limitations can now be applied in the following ways:
- View everything under a Single or Group of:
- vCenters
- Datacenters
- Clusters
- Hosts
- View a single or group of VM's
- Datastores don't fit neatly in the above hierarchy, so they have their own control.
Note that the embedded Flex (Flash) views from VMAN shown in the Orion interface (e.g. the Map view) is all or nothing since the limitations are applied on the Orion side, not on the VMAN side. There's not much to show here, as Account Limitations just limit your view of the infrastructure, so it doesn't really make for interesting screenshots. Nonetheless, this should be a useful feature for our customers running these products in a private cloud deployment.
That's all folks! Don't forget to sign-up for the Beta and give us some feedback!
We have completed another bulk of the development effort and are now focused on testing the latest release of Network Configuration Manager (NCM); We have Beta2 for NCM v7.3 available. This is your chance to install the latest version and provide feedback on the new features and fixes. Providing feedback during the beta is the best way to ensure that your feedback will be incorporated in to the release. To participate, simply fill out this survey and you will be sent the download links for the Beta. Remember, Betas cannot be installed in production and you cannot upgrade the Beta to any other future versions.
The following enhancement have been added to NCM so far:
- NCM and NPM databases merged
- Optimized DB schema
- Account limitations are applied to NCM jobs.
- Core node management page is used to add/remove devices from NCM.
- In the discovery wizard, users can choose whether to import newly discovered nodes into NCM.
- Node Sync is gone!
- Subviews are fully supported.
- A completely new version of the Configuration Management page
- EoL/EoS info on (NCM) node details page
- Admins can now clear all transfers for all users from the Transfer Status page in the Web UI.
- Limit policy reports for individual accounts
- Jobs Summary table can be sorted according to any column.
- NCM supports SWISv3 now.
Volunteers Wanted!
Before I describe all the great new improvements in details, I would like to ask you to help us with the database migration tuning. We would like to test the database merge procedure and collect statistics from as many real environments as possible. We can offer the following:
- Detailed instructions on the procedure (Database Migration Assistance).
- Assistance from NCM engineering team.
- Extra portion of thwack points (on top of the usual amount + badge for Beta testers).
- Good feeling that you helped improve the product .
Benefits of the Merged Databases
The merge of NCM and NPM databases enable NCM users to take advantage of certain features of the Orion Platform (Core) that were not possible to use before.
Improved Node Management
As there is no concept of "NCM Node" anymore, "Licensed by NCM" has become just a flag for Orion nodes. What does it mean? You can manage all NCM properties using the Core none management infrastructure:
Improved Node Details
The merged DB made it possible to use sub-views -- you can easily review NCM node details next to information from other Orion modules.
New Configuration Management UI
This is a great improvement in usability of the NCM Web UI in this release. Unlike the old UI, the new one is much more node-centric to make the workflows much smoother: First you select the devices and then perform an action. The new UI enables you to accomplish a chain of tasks efficiently as you can work with the same set of nodes repeatedly.
- You can group your devices by up to three parameters.
- The node selection is persistant; even if you switch to another group of nodes or another page, your selection is preserved.
Since SolarWinds acquisition of Confio back in October 2013, customers have asked about the differences between Server & Application Monitor AppInsight for SQL and Database Performance Analyzer (formerly Confio Ignite). Although both products monitor SQL Servers, their purposes are unique and different, two sides of the same coin.
Many of you are already enjoying AppInsight for SQL in SAM 6.0 with its awesome systems-focused views into SQL Server, you're finding out whose connected and how long, being notified before your database runs out of space, digging into to the error logs, and seeing a plethora of performance statistics. AppInsight for SQL surpasses pure systems monitoring by answering the next question - what queries are slow. But what if you need a deeper dive into to your queries to answer the next set of questions - is this query behaving abnormally? Why is it running slow? Is the user, application or client experiencing poor performance elsewhere?.. or causing it!? You need Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) for this!
DPA pinpoints the most significant database performance issues by using response time analysis - analyzing the time applications, and ultimately end-users, wait for data from the database. DPA decomposes responses time into distinct wait types and allows you to identify the exact cause of the slowness - down to a specific query from a specific source for a specific slice of time (down to the second if you want it). This provides you actionable insight into why your queries are slow and how to best resolve the them.
Thinking in network terms, it's similar to the difference between network performance monitoring (like NPM) and flow analysis (like NTA) - NPM tells you which ports/interfaces are slow, NTA tells you who and why. Without NTA, you're left either guessing or pulling up desktop tools to diagnose the packets manually. Without DPA, you are lacking the same visibility into your queries - so break out a cup of coffee for a late night of one-off query analysis.
So you may be asking yourself, which side of the coin do I need? Databases are the backbone of modern applications and slow performance affects your business and costs you money. In a converging infrastructure, slowness can come in many forms: under-allocated resources, misconfiguration, resource contention, poorly constructed queries, untested code, to name a few. Without visibility to both sides, you won't have the complete analysis of the problems you are working every day:
| Problem | AppInsight for SQL | Database Performance Analyzer |
|---|---|---|
| Urgent: The application is slow right now | Use performance thresholds and baselines to identify the current problem and isolate it to an infrastructure, application or database issue. Leverage real time capabilities (process, events) for further diagnosis. | Follow the histograms analysis (aka "the big bars") and quickly find the offending query, dissect it with response time analysis to discover why it is slow. |
| Planning: Growth of data and transaction load | Review performance and capacity trends of applications and databases on current resources and extrapolate if the they can handle the expected increase in load. | Identify queries consuming the most time and explore possible solutions including query optimization, configuration tweaks and scaling hardware. |
| Development: Building, Testing and Releasing | During development, monitor for changes in resource consumption and query times, drill down to real time information (processes, events) to investigate. | Developers can analyze changes through the development life-cycle and use the same tool as the DBA to make sure that changes don't have hidden consequences in Production. |
| Herding Cats: Intermittent slow downs | Review history of hosts, servers, applications and database and isolate the time frame and source of the problem. | Quickly identify and drill down to the time of the problem by following the histogram analysis, dissect offending queries to find its source and why the query is slow. |
AppInsight for SQL and DPA compliment each other by providing two views of the the database - one for System Administrators and one for DBA's and Developers.
 | AppInsight for SQL
Database Performance Analyzer
| |
Putting AppInsight for SQL and Database Performance Analyzer together, you'll see both sides of the SQL Server coin... and this will only get better as .
Orion Network Atlas, is a great utility for creating custom network diagrams. The tool is considered “Semi-Automated” Network Mapping Software. It uses the discovered network data in Orion and allows users to design physical and logical topology diagrams by dragging and dropping of nodes in to the design canvas. It automatically builds connections between nodes, using the Connect Now functionality and has the ability to bring up the designed map onto the Orion Web Console.
While Orion Network Atlas has been around for some years now, there are some areas in the product which you may not know existed. This blog aims to expose those features, and help you in creating informative network diagrams and at the same time help you with better presentation.
VARIABLES OBJECT DISPLAY - LABELS
As an Orion Admin, you may want to display added information (like Device type or IP Address) of your important nodes being represented on your Orion Web Console. This helps in faster troubleshooting of an issue, if something goes wrong. With Orion Network Atlas you have the ability to add variables as labels on to your Atlas Maps. These variables parse real values automatically once displayed on your Orion Console.
Custom Properties values can also be represented on the map.
In the side example, I displayed Node name, Machine Type, IP Address for all my objects and for my Dell SonicWall firewalls displayed my Custom Property – Asset ID on the Orion Console. Below, how I achieved it
- I drag and drop the nodes (interesting) on to the drawing canvas, changed my default Label to the following variables
- ${caption} – Returns the node name
- ${machinetype} – Returns the node manufacturer
- ${ip_address} – Returns the IP Address of the node
- Asset ID ${Assettag} – This is a custom property field, created in Orion and returns the entered data on the console.
TIP: The best way of replicating the same variables across other node objects, is by copying the assigned variables from one node object label and pasting it to the others. Another way, for applying variables to other nodes is by pasting the copied variables to other label objects Label Properties page (Right-Click – Properties).
UnDP STATISTICS VALUES
Ever wondered how to display UnDP statistics value on your Orion Map console? For example, in the past you may have had performance issues with a particular device and now you want to actively monitor the temperature of this router on your Orion map console.
The first step to achieve this is by defining and creating an UnDP for monitoring temperature for the device. To know how to create a custom UnDP, please follow this video
Once you have created your UnDP (in my case, ciscoEnvMonTemperatureStatusValueFahrenheit), you will see it automatically visible under Custom Node Pollers section of your Node(s). Simply drag this UnDP variable on to your map and change the label to the following macro ${CurrentValue}. The result is illustrated in the screenshot below
P.S: This capability was introduced in NPM version 10.6.
VARIABLES OBJECT DISPLAY - TOOL TIP
For a large map, displaying additional information using labels may not be ideal and could make your maps looks clumsy. For this reason, you may want to display additional information for your map objects as Tool tip. To achieve this, first
- Log into your Orion Console
- On your Map resource select "Edit".
- On the right side of the page click on "Customize Map Tool tip"
- Enter appropriate variables (Custom Properties & UnDP variables can also be added) into the laid empty boxes
- Click submit and hover over your nodes on the map.
TIP: In order to view the available variables you can use in Orion, Check out the Appendix A section of SolarWinds Orion Network Atlas Admin Guide (Page 49 onwards)
BACKGROUND OVERLAY
Many users bring in network diagrams designed in Microsoft Visio as background images in Orion Network Atlas. The most common way to bring background images into Atlas is by selecting the Home tab in the Toolbar and using the Background Image button.
Orion Atlas has another trick in its sleeves to bring in background images. Simply perform a Print Screen of your required image and paste it into your Atlas design canvas. With this flexibility you can bring images on the fly without having to save, search and upload images. Another use-case would be if there is a need to bring in specific vendor device graphics into your design and assigning the imported graphics to your particular Orion Node object. Below steps will help guide you to accomplish this task
- Copy the desired graphics to the Clipboard
- Right-click on your Atlas design canvas and select the paste option
- Choose "Paste the image from the Clipboard as a new object"
- Give this new object a unique name
- Right-Click this new object and select Properties option
- Under the Status tab, drag and drop your desired Orion node object (in this case, I drag Orion node 172.25.113.250 and dropped it into assignment field)
- You now have Orion node 172.25.113.250, assigned to the imported object.
QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR (QAT)
Brandon Shopp, has written a great blog on this subject. You can find how to use this tool bar to your advantage here
MAP RESTRICTIONS
As an Orion Admin there might be a need, not to visibly display map objects to all users in your organization. For Security reasons, you may want to restrict the display of objects in your DMZ to your NOC users.To enable and set up these restrictions, follow the below laid out steps
- Log into your Orion Console as Admin.
- Go into the Orion Website Administration page (Top right corner and click on Settings)
- Click on Manage Accounts under User Accounts resource.
- Select the User account you want to add map restrictions to
- Find "Add Limitation" Button and click on it
- Select the appropriate Limitation type from the available list ( in my case, I choose the Radio button "Group of Nodes")
- Select the list of nodes you want to limit viewing and hit on submit
- Next, Launch and Log into Orion Network Atlas
- Bring up the saved map or the map being designed and right-click the map and select Map Properties
- Select the radio button "Remove nodes that users do not have permission to View"
I hope you have learned some powerful features Orion Network Atlas brings and that you will try out these functions to help you in creating better network diagrams which suits your environment. We are actively working on improving our software, this is evident with the improvements we are bringing into Network Atlas with NPM 10.7. In case you missed what's coming in with NPM 10.7, check out Rob Hock's blog post
Survey: To bring further improvements into the product, we need to understand how you use Orion Network Atlas in your organization and what are the features you hope to see in future releases. For this reason, we would appreciate your time in taking the survey (Button below) and making a difference.
