– Ken Klapproth, Vice President of Marketing with Entuity (www.entuity.com), says:
How can a network management suite shape the face of today’s data center?
Contemporary data centers utilize a varying mix of physical and virtual infrastructures, delivering a mix of legacy, enterprise, SaaS, and cloud applications, accessing data stored locally, in SANs, and in the cloud, resulting in an increasingly complex flow of traffic types, services, and applications. Technologies used in this mix are also blurring lines of responsibilities of maintenance and deployment. Virtual servers – traditionally the purview of Systems Engineers – now include virtual switches having implications for Network Engineers. Automatic load balancing of virtual machines – traditionally managed by Systems Engineers – can have dramatic impacts on network loads, raising concerns of Network Engineers. Successfully managing today’s data centers for optimal performance and efficiency not only requires covering the available range of technologies, but also the availability of rich, actionable data for a range of disciplines. An enterprise-scalable network management system can proactively monitor the full range of hardware – both physical and virtual – and services used in today’s data centers for optimal business value.
What is the Eye of the Storm®?
Entuity’s Eye of the Storm® (EYE) Enterprise is a scalable, multi-server network management solution for medium to large enterprises, managing some of the largest and most dynamic networks for demanding organizations around the world. EYE automatically and continually discovers and captures in-depth network data and analytics, and provides integrated fault, device- and flow-based performance management capabilities that help enterprises, service providers, and system integrators reduce network downtime, commit to, deliver, assure and prove service levels, and ensure network configuration compliance. Real-time notifications of physical network and configuration changes, visibility to virtual servers and environments, and open data accessibility prevent user-impacting business service interruptions and enable transparent business-level reporting through high level and detailed reports, corporate dashboards, or mash-ups. EYE integrates all the requisite enterprise-class, contemporary network management functionality – from auto-discovery and inventory, to fault and event, to elemental and flow-based performance – for virtual and physical infrastructures that reduces the expense and complexity of managing data centers.
Benefits for data center/IT managers:
EYE Enterprise is designed for managed service providers (MSPs), system integrators, outsourcers, and large federated enterprises to reduce operational and capital costs, reduce network downtime, achieve sustainability goals, commit to, deliver and prove service level commitments, ensure network configuration compliance, and optimize performance of private cloud environments. EYE’s versatility allows IT organizations to realize peak efficiency from IT services while maximizing return from existing infrastructures.
Tips for data center/IT managers who are in the market for this type of product?
There are quite a range of network management solutions available on the market today from freeware/open source solutions, to appliances, to stand-alone single purpose tools, to all-encompassing frameworks. Each represents some level of compromise between upfront and long term costs. The key to truly saving time, effort, aggravation, and costs is automation – eliminating manual and error-prone steps. Any time you must import/export a flat file or swivel from one application to another in order to reconcile information, it is costing you time and money. There is plenty of good advice on industry blogs and forums to help you with your decision.
Choosing a network management solution – or any enterprise application – is a balance between capital costs – buying the software/hardware – and operational costs. While open source tools or low cost, stand-alone tools may seem attractive at first, you may find your operational costs become too burdensome. Entuity has a free white paper contrasting the different approaches available here: http://www.entuity.com/contactus/white-paper-raisebar.html
