I have been bursting at the seams to write about this topic. Now that the Server & Application Monitor (SAM) Release Candidate is available, I can tell you all about it. As many of you may know, SAM already has an ability to monitor workloads that are running in the cloud. The Orion® agent and agentless based technology allows SAM the flexibility to monitor all of your workloads on-premises as well as in the public cloud.
Now with SAM 6.4 or VMAN 7.1, you can collect configuration and metric data directly from Amazon Web Services® (AWS), and have that data visualized along with the rest of the environment you are already monitoring. All you need are your AWS account credentials.
Once you have your account configured in the Orion console, you will then be able to see all of your EC2™ instances and EBS volumes within one summary screen.
If you have multiple AWS accounts, no problem. Add each one, so the Orion platform can discover all of the associated cloud instances and know which AWS region they are running in.
Just like the detail that is available with existing Orion Nodes, you can drill down and see more information about individual cloud instances, including attached EBS volumes, default CloudWatch™ metrics, and configuration settings like Auto Scaling Group membership.
Now, if you want to go deeper into monitoring your workloads running in the cloud, beyond what AWS provides, all you have to do is manage the cloud instance as an Orion Node. We even created a handy mechanism for you to do so, directly from the Cloud Instance Details page.
This will give you the ability to monitor what’s running on the OS, directly from the cloud instances. At that point, all you have to do is switch between the Orion Node Details view and the Cloud Instance Details view to have complete visibility.
As an added benefit, you can apply your existing SAM Application Templates and visualize the end to end infrastructure relationships with AppStack™.
Our goal with introducing this feature was to ensure that no matter where your workloads are running, you will have the information you need to ensure their health and availability. We know that the landscape of IT is changing, and as increasing public cloud adoption transforms traditional IT environments into hybrid ones, we need to deliver the tools necessary for adapting to this new complexity.
But wait, there’s more!
Since you made it to the bottom of this post, I thought I would share something extra with you. If you have read the recent post, Drag & Drop Answers to Your Toughest IT Questions, you will be aware of the new PerfStack feature that is also available. What you may not have known is that the cloud instance data, mentioned above, is also available in PerfStack, allowing hybrid environment comparisons and correlations with on-premises workloads.
So, what are you waiting for? Log into the Customer Portal and download SAM 6.4. If you have any feedback or questions, feel free to post them in the Server & Applications Monitor Release Candidate group as well.
