Jean-Francois Piot, vice-president of Microsoft Global Market at GSX Solutions (www.gsx.com), says:
The need for enhanced SCOM Exchange monitoring
While SCOM for Exchange is seen as a robust monitoring tool that provides a wide range of server level statistics, many SCOM environments could benefit from more advanced user and service level monitoring and reports.
GSX Monitor and Analyzer aims to fill that gap with a powerful application performance monitoring solution that enables IT administrators and managers to proactively maintain their enterprise collaboration environment from a single user interface. Its robust executive dashboard and reporting tool highlight key trends and performance metrics, enabling you to prioritize and act on emerging issues before they impact users.
How GSX compliments SCOM
GSX compliments SCOM for Exchange in terms of simplicity, relevancy, end user performance, and reporting.
Simplicity
GSX Monitor and Analyzer can be installed and configured in less than an hour. It requires no agent on your servers, and thresholds can be configured in a matter of minutes. In-place upgrades are made via the GSX Monitor station.
Relevancy
GSX Monitor only sends alerts on issues that impact your users or service. This helps you to keep a step ahead of any issues since you don’t need to sift through hundreds of nuisance alerts to find what’s important. You can then correlate these alerts with any SCOM notifications to help quickly resolve the issues.
End user performance
GSX Monitor and Analyzer ensure performance from a user perspective. It is one thing for a server to be up and running, it is another matter entirely for the service to be performing as the user expects. GSX Monitor alerts you to user impacts and GSX Analyzer helps you with capacity planning and measuring performance against any set SLA. The focus is always on what’s most important: your users’ experience and the services you provide.
Reporting
GSX Monitor gives you access to all current statistics and graphs of recent performance. GSX Analyzer lets you view historical statistics, trend your growth, and even forecast the future. This allows you to pinpoint any negative trends, stay a step ahead of performance issues, and plan for capacity growth. What’s more, you can view a dynamic snapshot of SLA performance, set a performance indicator’s SLA, and then select the number of KPIs that are critical to achieving your SLA. If performance isn’t meeting the SLA, you can quickly determine which server is impacting it and how. For example, if server availability is supposed to be 99.9% but you see that you’re only at 98%, you can quickly locate the offending server with only 80% availability and continuous RAM utilization of 99%. To meet the SLA, you can then add more RAM or remove the server from your environment.
A comprehensive solution
To conclude, GSX Monitor and Analyze provides the comprehensive reporting and analysis you need to help fill the gaps in your SCOM Exchange environment and deliver the performance that your users expect. Together, SCOM, GSX Monitor, and GSX Analyzer provide a comprehensive solution to your Exchange monitoring, analysis and troubleshooting needs.
