Surgient Success

Besides MOM and CA, does the VQMS application have any alert systems that can be setup to send an alert to an administrator of an issue?  I haven't come across any place within the app itself that I can setup to send me an alert if a deployed server is having a problem, or the VCS, app server, performance...  If not, any plans in incorporating it in future releases? 

Klaus,

The Surgient platform which VQMS is built on, has two easy alerting mechanisms: direct email and Syslog (Internet RFC-compliant).   You can configure Surgient to email you in the Management Console under Settings > System Messaging > Pencil icon to edit.  The email address you enter can be an individual address or a group alias you manage in your company mail server.

Surgient also plugs into third-party systems management tools that handle Syslog messages. A lightweight utility that handles Syslog on Windows is Kiwi Syslog.  The big systems management vendors IBM-Tivoli, CA, BMC, HP can all consume Syslog messages as well.

If you need further abiility to monitor VQMS, there is a rich extension path built-in for sending our events to the Windows Event Log, or any other monitoring solution.  Contact your Surgient rep if you want to go down this path.

Klaus:

Besides MOM and CA, does the VQMS application have any alert systems that can be setup to send an alert to an administrator of an issue?  I haven't come across any place within the app itself that I can setup to send me an alert if a deployed server is having a problem, or the VCS, app server, performance...  If not, any plans in incorporating it in future releases? 

I think Richard hit it on the head.  The product does a really good job at logging data, so using something like Kiwi to pull that out into a syslog and then have it consumable by your current monitoring app should probably work best. What do you currently use for monitoring in your environment? 

David, to answer your question, we currently are using MOM and CA for the majority of our reporting.  We have a few other reporting tools, but MOM and CA are the major reporting tools.  We will have to look into something like Kiwi>Syslog as an additional solution. 

Klaus:

David, to answer your question, we currently are using MOM and CA for the majority of our reporting.  We have a few other reporting tools, but MOM and CA are the major reporting tools.  We will have to look into something like Kiwi>Syslog as an additional solution. 

Try out Kiwi, they offer a free version which should allow you to see if it works (and it might fit all your needs) and they also have a full version which is really reasonable and inexpensive as far as price goes. 

Pardon my curiousity, is it that one of those monitoring solutions (MOM and CA) just doesn't meet all your needs that you have to use both of them? 

David

MOM and CA are used differently in our environment.  CA Unicenter also feeds into our CA Service desk application which can directly open cases.  I was orignally referring to just the Surgient app itself having the ability to send out alerts.  We have our VQMS isolated from prod, behind a firewall on several VLANS and don't use the prod MOM and CA systems.  We are building onces just in the VQMS CTE environment. 

(Klaus and I)
Also plan to implement CA, MOM, SMS, and Trend (AV) monitoring for our VM Hosts, Surgient App servers, and VM Staging servers within our Surgient environment.  Our CA, MOM, SMS, and Trend Management servers will be external to our Surgient Vlan/network. 

Richard, have you had any success with this, or seen other clients implement this type of monitoring from a production network into a segregated virtulized environment?  We want to be able to keep our envirnoments seperate, but at the same time secure (patched, up to date with antivirus, etc).

Thank you,
-Matt

Mtrentler:

Richard, have you had any success with this, or seen other clients implement this type of monitoring from a production network into a segregated virtualized environment?  We want to be able to keep our environments separate, but at the same time secure (patched, up to date with antivirus, etc).

It is very common for Surgient to integrate to an existing production monitoring environment.  This is why we built the external hooks into the product.  Typically we see a complete copper to switch to server to os to app to transaction monitoring stream all flow into an event correlator and that is data mined into line of business problem determination dashboard and a root cause analysis system.

Change management is handled a little differently depending on security policies for patches and updates in your various computing environments: server rooms, DMZs, intranet services, internal IT apps, extranet, desktops and mobile users.  Some environments are isolated, static and frozen, others are on a monthly patch cycle following QA patch testing through VQMS.

You said :

"Typically we see a complete copper to switch to server to os to app to transaction monitoring stream all flow into an event correlator and that is data mined into line of business problem determination dashboard and a root cause analysis system. "

Is this something that is built into the Surgient App?  I was wondering if you have seen the infrastructure servers such as these (CA, MOM, SMS, & Trend) effectivly communicate and provide it's solution FROM a production network TO a segregated network (in our case seperated by Vlans) (for our Surgient Environment)?  We are planning to implement this and any help or suggestions before hand would be helpful.

Thanks
-Matt

SysLog message sourcing is built-into Surgient as well as Windows Event Logging.  You can also build custom integration adapters. And you can adjust the verbosity levels that our product emits but the rest of monitoring plumbing and processing is squarely in the realm of your systems management vendors (BMC, CA. IBM, HP, Microsoft, etc)

Thank you Richard, that helps.  We truely want to keep everything standard and monitor these servers through our managment tools centrally located on our production network.  As well as ensure that we maintaine patches and keep AV up to date as well.  We have Change Management here also, and have to play by the rules.  But it is good to know that we can always utilize the advanced features that Surgient provides to us administrators.
-Matt

I think I have a better understanding of what you (Klaus and Matt) are talking about within your environment.  And thanks for sharing that information. 

One of the nice things about what Surgient has done and is doing with their product is in the fact that they are making it extensible.  So if you have some sort of monitoring solution, you can typically tie in the Surgient system errors or warnings into your monitoring solution in some form or fashion.  Some things are easier than others, but in reality, almost anything seems possible with the amount of time, money or effort you want to put behind it.

David,

You seem to have a handle of what is going on in the VQMS area.  Can you describe your environment?  What virtual platform are you running on?  How many servers are you deploying in a cloud?  What are your goals with using Surgient VQMS?

Klaus 

In fact Matt, this is something we are going to setup.  We will dump the SysLog message sourcing that is built-into Surgient into our CA workflow and have it automate a message to us dependant on certain attributes that will be skimmed from the logs.  If anyone is actively doing this with CA, please chime in and give us your contact info.  Thanks

Klaus 

Klaus, I have a deep background of Surgient's products.  Unfortunately, I'm a writer about the virtualization space and I no longer actually have my hands on the heart in the operating room.  I write InfoWorld's Virtualization Report and I own and operate the virtualization news site, VMBlog.com.  But don't hold that against me, I'm still technical (not just playing a technical person on TV).  :)  I'm just not touching the product for 8+ hours a day anymore.

I've used the product with VMware GSX Server back in the day, with Microsoft Virtual Server and with VMware ESX Server.  I've put all three of their virtualization products through their paces over the years in both small and large environments (from single digit to double digit numbers of hosts).  I can't give you specifics on VQMS 5.3 since it came out after my time.  But since I write about this market and this niche space, I am still keeping myself involved and familiar with the goings on.  Thanks!