Service Management for Virtualized Applications
Evident ClearStone provides operational and financial transparency into virtualized resources and applications running on Real-Time Infrastructures (virtual computing and data grids) and allows application owners, business users, operational staff and IT architects to meet targeted performance standards. Evident ClearStone provides the information required for setting policy and dynamic capacity management – and for sharing resources in a utility operating model. For example, the information can be used to justify adding or removing capacity based on actual usage, reducing over-provisioning while improving alignment with the demands of the business.
Data collection and analytics will continue to expand as driven by market needs. Evident ClearStone is designed to be an automated tool that can be customized and extended by software vendors and users.
Evident ClearStone meters both compute (physical and virtual) and data grid usage, and correlates those with additional IT metrics (e.g. off-grid server usage and LAN/WAN network consumption), adds application and business information, and presents dashboards, reports and analytics for business, operational, and IT users. Chargeback is supported for grid computing pools – with differential rating for dedicated, harvested and scavenged machines.
Evident ClearStone inspects and analyzes usage of selected services and infrastructure in “near real-time” producing snapshots of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) based on SLA’s. The solution also incorporates domain intelligence to identify anomalies that could result in alerts/notifications, such as SLA-exceptions if KPI’s are not being satisfied.
Features & Benefits
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Advanced Architecture Using Web Technologies
Java-based application that is integrated within a Web Service Container, J2EE Application Frameworks, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Event Processing Engine for near real-time reporting, and a Web-based Reporting Engine and Report Portal. |
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Leverage leading-edge, open-source web technologies like MULE, Hibernate, Spring and BIRT for easier integration into virtual application environments and existing management and analytics platforms. |
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Scalable and Reliable Data Collection
Collection of granular grid operational and performance data directly from the compute grid manager (i.e. broker), the data cache manager for data grids, off-grid servers via an EMS, or the enterprise network. Data collection is accomplished via JDBC and/or JMX interfaces to existing core components within the utility grid, EMS tools, and other interfaces to network switches/routers. |
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Web technologies allow ease of integration with a variety of data sources to meet different customer requirements. Collection from multiple sources provides a holistic management view of the virtualized application infrastructure. |
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Evident ClearStone Pipeline Processing
Componentized, reusable and XML configurable data processing objects that aggregate, correlate and map business context to the raw grid data collected from the 3rd party grid management components. Processing is structured as one or more data processing “pipelines”. |
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Reconfigurable processing logic that allows the solution to be structured to meet varying application requirements and end-user needs. |
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Data Warehouse and Operational Cache
Integrated Data Warehouse to store the enriched grid utility information and perform additional report processing through specific database Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) functions. Support for an Operational Cache that contains the near real-time information used for event reporting and SLA management of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). |
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Data store to maintain service trending information and provide structured business reports, and an operational cache for near real-time operations reporting and SLA management. Most major databases are supported. |
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Service-Level Reporting and Analytics
Web-based reporting portal that delivers pre-defined reports to meet the needs of business users (application owners), IT operational staff (grid/infrastructure management), and IT architects (overall service design). |
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A single reporting solution that addresses the needs of different users of RTI-based services as well as the operational staff. |
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Service Accounting (Chargeback)
Rated usage for the elapsed time of task runs for each service across each grid engine. A rate class is defined as the cost to be applied to the usage of a specific engine or engine group by a service at the task level. CPU hours are rated by engine type. Three engine types and rates are defined:
- Dedicated Servers
- Scavenged Servers
- Harvested Desktops
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Provides an economic model whereby business groups are incented to share non-dedicated grid resources, subject to being preempted by their own applications. Each engine is “owned” by a specific group, but these resources can be shared when they are free to process task from other applications. The corporate objective is to increase utilization across departmental IT infrastructure while having each department chargeback others for utilizing its available engines. |
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