1Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

to ask when selecting a solution to monitor your Cloud

pReSented bY

Can You Really Manage the Cloud

2Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

ldquoThe winners will be the companies that

understand how the cloud makes new offers

and products possible Some will find that

lower prices are possible if IT costs drop from

15 percent of the operating budget to 1 percent

or less Others will find whole new ways to serve

customers and create markets

You do not want to be the CIO or CTO who

is being asked lsquoWhy canrsquot we do what our

competition is doingrsquo You want to be the one

forcing competitors to answer that questionrdquo

ndash dan Woods Forbes

2Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

ldquoThe winners will be the companies that

understand how the cloud makes new offers

and products possible Some will find that

lower prices are possible if IT costs drop from

15 percent of the operating budget to 1 percent

or less Others will find whole new ways to serve

customers and create markets

You do not want to be the CIO or CTO who

is being asked lsquoWhy canrsquot we do what our

competition is doingrsquo You want to be the one

forcing competitors to answer that questionrdquo

ndash dan Woods Forbes

3Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

The Race to the Cloud

the last five years have seen a revolutionary shift when it comes to operating technology infrastructure with the advent of virtualization and Cloud Computing What was once a vision of it-as-a-Service is now rapidly becoming a reality as it organizations are now responsible for driving innovative change while offering more and more services at the utmost level of reliability

in order to meet these challenges head-on enterprises and service providers are finding they need a new approach when it comes to managing and monitoring their end-to-end environment Using expensive brittle legacy tools does not enable the responsiveness required by business stakeholders and customers

ldquoIf our management techniques are stuck in medieval times how do we expect to ever truly reap the rewards of ldquodynamic ITrdquo Itrsquos $amp^ We never will We can put all the VMware in the world all over our environment and without the ability to AUTONOMOUSLY manage it it will always suck Why Because it will always come down to the lowest common denominatorndashthe ultimate point of failurendasha personrsquos ability to make the right decision at the exact right time and execute it perfectlyrdquo

mdash Steve duplessie enterprise Strategy Group

the point of this ebook is to offer you a guide as you search for a way to manage the Cloud based on our experience working with some of the most innovative companies in the world who are effectively and efficiently managing Cloud Computing and highly virtualized infrastructures we offer the following list of questions to guide you as you select a cloud management solution

no matter if you are thinking of going to the Cloud at some point or building one as we speak we hope that these questions help you make the best decision possible when it comes time to take your it management system to the next level

thanks

Josh duncan and Floyd StimlingZenoss ndash the Cloud Management Company

4Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Availability and Performance Monitoring

How do you provide performance and availability across the entire IT infrastructure that is behind the Cloud

5Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Availability and Performance Monitoring

no matter that Agility-as-a-Service is getting all the attention the basics are the basics

ndash but now more than ever itrsquos all connected

applications servers storage and network resources are so dependant on each other

that the smallest of changes can ripple through the environment causing severe

consequences both downstream and upstream

6Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Availability and Performance Monitoring

ldquoOne of the key things about virtual environments

is that you no longer have individual pieces of a

data center but an integrated environment that

is now behaving holistically The cloud is just an

extension of thatrdquo

ndash daniel heimlich it business edge

7Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Availability and Performance Monitoring

And for good measurehelliphellip 1 What do you really monitor and how do you look beyond the numbers

a networking devices ndash routers switches firewalls

b physical servers

c environmental controls

d how about operating systems and applications

e Storage devices

2 What about legacy event management systems that you arenrsquot quite

ready to get rid of yet

3 how easy is it to create custom integrations for old or new devices

4 do i have to deploy any agents

8Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Event Management and Alerting

How can you help me address problems before they impact my end users (ie what are all these systems telling me)

9Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Event Management and Alerting

ldquoRising complexity of applications and business

services are forcing IT to think and manage

differently We have moved from a few applications

via browser based applications through N-tier

composite applications to applications which are

highly integrated across multiple tiers (Data center

clouds all kinds) In a world of integrated business

services we need to manage from the top downrdquo

ndash eveline OehrlichSenior analyst infrastructure amp OperationsForrester Research inc

10Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Event Management and Alerting

ldquoA 999 IT infrastructure uptime metric

doesnrsquot matter when business applications are

unavailable end-users are dissatisfied and no one

knows the true state of the IT infrastructure when

they need to know itrdquo

ndash david Williams Gartner

11Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

And for good measurehelliphellip 1 Can you suppress events that donrsquot need to be seen

2 how do you handle complex events that need to be transformed before they are

processed

3 What about automatically solving problems when a known event is received

4 how can i alert my team when there is a real issue that needs to be addressed

5 how about integrations with ticketing systems such as Remedy

6 how can i take this to the next level and automate my response based on a set of

policy definitions ndash [so i can run my business the way i want]

Event Management and Alerting

12Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Infrastructure Visibility

How can I get a real-time end-to-end view of the services I am providing once everything is virtualized and is constantly moving

13Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Infrastructure Visibility

ldquoMore than ever we need to know where things

are Discovery and tracking of assets and

applications in real time is more important than

ever As configurations can be easily changed

and applications easily moved control of the data

center requires complete visibility Configuration

management systems must adapt to this new

environmentrdquo

mdash Jean-pierre Garbani Forrester Research inc

14Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

And for good measurehelliphellip 1 What information can be displayed in your dashboard and how can i customize

2 how about limiting the infrastructure view depending on your role in the

organization (multi-tenant access)

3 Can you let me see how all my devices are performing based on a location or

custom group

4 What about business service views that show an end-to-end view of all the devices

making up a service

5 Can you ldquoshow merdquo where the system issue is located and easily explain how this

impacts my business

Infrastructure Visibility

15Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Dynamic Resource Management

How can you help mitigate the complexity and manage the risks associated with our dynamic resources The future may be cloudy but my operations better be clear or the lightning will rain down

16Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Dynamic Resource Management

Server consolidation virtualization and Cloud technologies are now part of

doing business

this means that resources that used to be deployed once and then managed

are now constantly shifting

the only way to manage this type of environment is to be aware of exactly

whatrsquos happening in real-time

if you have to take a blade server offline do you know what applications and

services will be impacted

17Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Dynamic Resource Management

ldquoThe rate of change in these environments and the

degree of resource sharing of these environments

makes a continuous self-discovered understanding

of configuration essential to the ability to assure

infrastructure and applications performancerdquo

mdash bernd harzog analyst at the Virtualization practice

18Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

And for good measurehelliphellip 1 how do you manage virtual resources and give me the visibility to manage how

my resources are assigned

2 how can you help me troubleshoot and alert when dynamic changes negatively impact my performance levels (for example a vMotion into an improperly configured resource pool) before there is a customer impact

3 how can you help me manage Cloud resources such as amazon eC2 VMware vCloud

4 What about integrated devices such as Cisco UCS

5 Whatrsquos coming next how easy will it be for you to integrate with it [prove it give a recent example where you rapidly integrated with a new technology]

6 What about business service views that show an end-to-end view of all the devices making up a service

Dynamic Resource Management

19Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Datacenter Insight

How can you transcend IT silos to provide me with the information needed to make operational and strategic planning decisions (I need Insight not Reporting Regurgitation)

20Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Datacenter Insight

ldquoWhether your goal is to improve operational

efficiencies or to provide new services you need

to capture understand and use all of your data ndash

analytics must be core to your thinking The value

is not in any specific analytic algorithms nor in

having everyone become an expert in statistics

itrsquos in leveraging analytics and analytic

applications for specific business goalsrdquo

ndash dennis Kennelly ibM

21Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

And for good measurehelliphellip

1 how can you help me build a comprehensive real-time model with automated dependencies of my entire datacenter

2 now ndash how can you help me analyze all this information

What information do you provide to help make fine-tuning decisions on a daily basis for my teams managing physical virtual and Cloud infrastructures

What about in-depth insights in order to make intelligent it-as-a-Service strategic planning decisions

Datacenter Insight

22Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

How hard is it to really make all this work

23Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Bonus Round

ldquoIT will play a critical role in business

transformations If yoursquore going to change where

you operate to include other countries if yoursquore

going to take your product into adjacent industry

markets you need technology to give you the scale

and connectivity to reach those markets and work

with new customers in an effective wayrdquo

mdash Mark Mcdonald Gartner

24Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

And for good measurehelliphellip 1 how many different products do you require to get all this functionality2 Was the product built by system admins (and when was the original product

written anyway this century) Can it be configured by command line Can you extend the data capture the screens provide your own integrations3 Can you touch and do everything before you buy4 how fast can you get it up and running5 how does the product scale [prove it provide an example where product is

running at Enterprise scale]6 What are my deployment options7 Can you offer multi-tenant deployments8 how can you help enable local management with centralized oversight (for

dispersed geographic locations)9 Can this solution adapt to my business or does my business have to adapt to

the product

Bonus Round

25Can You Really Manage the Cloud 5 Burning Questions to Ask ShaRe thiS

Resources

Other Resources ldquoCloud donrsquotsrdquo advice to avoid Wasted investment dan Woods Forbes

Grow Up the new World Of Managing it Stuff Steve duplessie enterprise Strategy Group

a Growing Challenge data Management and the Cloud arthur Cole Forrester

the importance of information delivery in it Operations david Williams Gartner Research

11 predictions for 2011 eveline Oehrlich

the Cloud technology Challenge Jean-pierre Garbani

predictive analytics is Within Your Reach denis Kennelly ibM

Want to hear how Zenoss is today delivering Cloud management solutions at

scale for the leading Cloud providers in the industry Learn more here

ShaRe thiS 26pReSented bY

Authors

Floyd Strimling technology evangelist Zenoss

Floyd Strimling is a technology evangelist at Zenoss who enjoys creating debating and following technology trends with the goal of making them a reality Floydrsquos unique background spans both hardware and software environments with experience in Cloud Computingautonomic Computing datacenter automation Virtualization networking and Security

Josh duncan product evangelist Zenoss

Josh leads product Marketing at Zenoss and is an active blogger on the topic of infrastructure and cloud monitoring on the Zenoss blog Josh has spent the last 13 years working for technology companies like dell bank of america and accenture implementing and setting technology direction While at bank of america Josh was responsible for enterprise architecture and worked on the initial shared infrastructure and grid computing efforts

COnneCt With ZenOSS