Infrastructure Management Software Blog : Operations Manager

The best way to manage VMware environments

pspielvogel — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:28:00 GMT

Virtualization management seems to be the hottest topic for discussion, among both customers, partners, and my product marketing and product management peers. I was recently involved in a conversation with some sales people about why HP’s approach is unique.

The reference platform for virtualization management of VMware environments is vCenter (formerly Virtual Center). But, many customers do not want their virtualization experts to spend their (very expensive) time managing first level events. So, they look to a centralized management console such as Operations Manager to handle events from both the virtual and physical IT infrastructure. This is the value behind a consolidated event and performance management approach.

So, the challenge is how to get information about the virtual infrastructure into central event console. The old way, which we used to do, was to install our agents on the VMware hypervisor. We worked closely with VMware to ensure that it worked and was supportable but customers got nervous because the general advice is "do not install anything in the hypervisor". Obviously, if the hypervisor becomes unstable then all of the virtual machines suffer.

The new, and recommended by VMware, approach is to use the vMA or “vSphere Management Assistant”. The vMA is a pre-build Linux virtual machine. It is built and owned by VMware and is downloaded free of charge from their web site. You run the vMA just like any other virtual machine.

The vMA includes all of the VMware-approved and supported interfaces and APIs to enable access to VMware environment monitoring. It provides access to information such as current configuration of the VMs, fault information and very accurate performance information. This is the new way that VMware wants other management systems to get their information from the hypervisor. vMA provides more granular, fine grained, and real-time information than you can get from vCenter. HP was the first vendor to release a management product using the vMA.

We install our agent and Virtualization SPI onto the vMA and make use of the interfaces. One vMA can provide access to monitoring information from multiple VMware server hosts. The “resolution” of the data that we get with the Virtualization SPI vs. vCenter is really just a reflection on what customers told us they wanted. I'm sure that VMware could provide much of the same detail - certainly for a VMware server - but they did not. Customers told us they wanted more - "Don't just give us what Virtual Center provides, go deeper".

The advantage of using the HP Virtualization SPI and Operations Manager is that you can see very granular fault and performance data for both physical and virtual infrastructure in your Operations Manager console. This means your tier 1 operators can manage events and handle basic triage and remediation functions. This keeps your virtualization experts focused on more strategic tasks, until they need to manage an escalation.

This is just one example of HP’s close ties with VMware. We also have integration between HP Insight Control and vCenter that allows customers to manage both physical and virtual infrastructure through the VMware vCenter console. We announced this capability at VMworld in September.
This is aimed at server administrators who want a single expert tool for troubleshooting complex problems that could span the hardware and hypervisor.

For HP Operations Center, Jon Haworth and Peter Spielvogel.

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Software Universe in Hamburg sneak preview

pspielvogel — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:53:00 GMT

Software Universe is only five weeks away. We hold this event twice each year, alternating between a United States and European location. The upcoming event is in Hamburg at the Congress Centre Hamburg (CCH) from Wednesday, December 16th – Friday, December 18th 2009.

(If you missed our last Software Universe in Las Vegas, you can download some of the presentations here.)

I’m very excited about this year’s show, as it gives me a chance to connect with many European customers and colleagues, many of whom I have only “met” through email and phone calls. In addition, there are many interesting presentations. Some highlights* (based on their relevancy to managing IT infrastructure - both physical and virtual) include:

Wednesday December 16

16:00-16:45	Optimizing cost by automating your ITIL v3 processes Jeroen Bronkhorst, Hewlett-Packard
17:00 - 17:45	“Monitoring ....inside the Cloud" Vincenzo Asaro, Telecom Italia
18:00 - 18:45	Orchestrating Virtual Infrastructures with HP OO Ralph Capasso, Hewlett-Packard

Thursday December 17

09:00 - 09:45	Automating operations management with HP Operations Orchestration Ralph Capasso, Hewlett-Packard
09:00 - 09:45	HP management of VMware vSphere: How does VMware fit in with your HP Software Infrastructure? Terry Lyons, VMware
10:00 - 10:45	The all new Operations Center licensing model: escaping the hardware bonds Jon Haworth and Peter Crosby, Hewlett-Packard
11:45 - 12:30	HP Operations Manager i: Best practices and lessons learned at CMT Kai-Uwe Jensen, Hewlett-Packard
15:15 - 16:00	BTO Impact of Virtualization on IT Management Dennis Corning, Hewlett-Packard
15:15 - 16:00	Operations Center, the road ahead Norm Follett, Hewlett-Packard
16:30 - 17:15	HP Operations Manager on Linux Lillian Hull and Hans-Peter Schmollinger, Hewlett-Packard
16:30 - 17:15	Capabilities in a Virtualized environment Lutz Bartsch, Hewlett-Packard

Friday December 18

09:00 - 09:45	Virtualization SPI - VMware management plug-in for HP Operations Center Jagannath Harish Gangaiah, Hewlett-Packard
11:45 - 12:30	HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping: a solution to regain control on your infrastructure Thomas Wirtz, Hewlett-Packard
11:45 - 12:30	Integrated approach to monitoring and the challenges encountered and overcome Mark Laird and Romain Maitret, Steria Ltd

* dates, times, and speakers subject to change

Hope to see you there.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group on LinkedIn.

Operations Manager Basics (product overview videos)

pspielvogel — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:29:00 GMT

I spent the past two days in a planning meeting with my product marketing peers from different product groups including infrastructure monitoring, application monitoring, network monitoring, CMDB, service management, and IT financial management. We reviewed all our respective product plans and our go to market strategies (you will need to watch during the year to learn what we decided). While everyone had some idea about what high-level problems each product line solves, some people were not familiar with specific Operations Manager functionality, especially the current version's capabilities.

They asked for the fastest and easiest way to come up to speed. After some thought, I pointed them to two videos - one for Operations Manager (focused on consolidated event and performance management) and another for Operations Manager i (focused on advanced event reduction using topology-based event correlation). I have posted the links below.

HP Operations Manager
Peter Spielvogel and Jon Haworth discuss how Operations Manager allows customers to monitor heterogeneous IT environments, reduce management costs, and speed time to problem resolution.

(While the demo is on Operations Manager on Windows (OMW), the functionality is virtually the same for Operations Manager on Linux (OML) and Operations Manager on Unix (OMU).)

HP Operations Manager i
Jon Haworth and Dan Haller talk about increasing IT event processing efficiency with OMi.

If you have additional questions, please let me know.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group on LinkedIn.

Automating Operations Management (free webinar and white paper)

pspielvogel — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:05:00 GMT

Automation has become a hot topic in IT. The NY Times recently posted a blog titled “Beware, Humans. The Era of Automation Software Has Begun”. It contains quotes from HP’s Ann Livermore, Executive Vice President, HP Enterprise Business.

I am speaking at a webinar tomorrow that discusses how to automation IT management using a combination of HP Operations Manager and HP Operations Orchestration. My colleague Ralph Capasso will also be speaking and running a live demo of how Operations Manager and HP Operations Orchestration work seamlessly together to diagnose, triage, and repair IT problems.

If you are tired of spending your IT budget on fixing the same recurring problems, then this webinar is for you.

Here is the abstract:

Automating Operations Management
HP Operations Manager & HP Operations Orchestration better together

Manual processes are resource-intensive and error-prone yet over 70% of 2009 IT budgets go into keeping current operations running.

With use case scenarios, customer case studies , and demos, learn how HP Operations Manager and HP Operations Orchestration together can help you:

• Reduce time to resolve issues from hours to seconds
• Automate the handling of up to 65% alerts from your IT infrastructure
• Save over $4M annually by automating handling of alerts

Learn how to create a predictable and cost-efficient approach. HP Operations Manager and HP Operations Orchestration work together to automate routine processes that isolate and diagnose service-impacting problems in complex environments.

Register now at www.hp.com/go/oodemo.
(If you read this post after September 30, 2009, this link will take you to a recording of the webinar).

The registration process is a bit clunky, so please follow these steps to avoid confusion:

1. visit the site: www.hp.com/go/oodemo
2. click on register

3. complete the form and click on “submit” on the upper right side of the page (you will need to scroll back to the top)
4. Wait for the top panel to paint and select the live “Automating Operations Management” event. It will then provide you a calendar entry with the login details.

If you want to learn more about the topic prior to the webinar, you can read the attached white paper. See bottom of this page to download the PDF file (EMA_HP-OO_WP_20090812b_4AA2-8864ENW.pdf), next to the word "attachment".

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

VMworld - Day 2: Vision for virtualization aware IT management (podcast)

pspielvogel — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:33:00 GMT

Podcast added on 9/16/09

Shay Mowlem, Director of Virtualization for HP Software, presented on his “Vision for virtualization aware IT management.” During his talk, he made the case that Virtualization goes beyond the surface objective of server consolidation. The real promise of virtualization is to create a dynamic environment in which IT can assemble systems and services around business use cases. In short, virtualization allows IT to be more responsive.

Shay presented a vision in which the IT infrastructure scales based on granular usage patterns, which of course change with the needs of the business. While virtualization resolves some of the hardware issues, it introduces some new management challenges. There is much more complexity with the additional virtualization layers, which means more moving parts in any business service.

So, management means creating a consolidated view of service elements and standardizing on common management platform. In such a dynamic environment, automation is essential. In fact, Shay stated that virtualization is the biggest driver for automation he has ever seen.

He presented an integrated approach for virtualized service management.

identify vulnerability
isolate root cause
identify required changes
submit change request
implement changs
verification and compliance

Having an integrated view of events and performance, physical and virtual, is critical.

Software license governance becomes an even bigger issue with virtualization. It was a problem before, but now with virtual machines, it is even more challenging.

Podcast of Shay Mowlem discussing the impact of virtualization on IT operations.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

VMworld - Day 2: Virtualization is about NOT building a new $100M data center

pspielvogel — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:20:00 GMT

I attended a great session at VMworld called “Conquering cost and complexity in virtualized environments”. It was a panel discussion moderated by Mark Linesh, VP at HP. The key speakers were Michelle Bailey, VP at IDC, and Rob Taylor EDS (an HP company).

Michelle ran thorough some statistics related to trends in virtualization. Here are some highlights:

Spending on new servers has been flat since 1996.
The number of installed servers has increased from 5 million in 1996 to 35 million in 2009.
The number of physical servers is predicted to flatten due to virtualization.

The admin cost, however, is expected to increase. This cost grows with the number of servers, both physical and virtual. The “hidden cost of IT” is the number of system administrators. This is why the cost of people is the largest cost in the data center.

Power and cooling costs also scale with number of servers. Where this was a rounding error back in 1996, these costs are becoming very significant today.

Organizations need a new set of economics around the datacenter. Virtualization is the answer!

Virtualization helps contain the number of new physical systems coming into data center. In fact, the number of virtual servers is exploding. Administrators still need to address the management costs of patching and maintenance on virtual as well as physical servers. Automation will address this problem.

The application workload relies on servers, storage, and network.

IT management cost is still 70% maintenance and 30% innovation. (Here’s that ratio again.) Companies need to flip that ratio.

2009 is the tipping point in which the number of virtual servers will match number of physical servers. This will require a fundamental shift in the way people manage their infrastructure.

Virtualization has solved the CapEx problem. It has not yet addressed the OpEx problem.

Virtualization also introduces some interesting dynamics regarding long-time IT processes, for example, server provisioning. Some shops can set up a new virtual machine in 20 minutes. Imagine the organizational impact if their user base knew this and called in expecting such a fast turn-around time for all requests. So, this company still makes their constituents wait 3-5 weeks to prevent them from asking for a new machine every 20 minutes. In essence, they keep the same business processes in place as before. More progressive companies may want to take a different approach. But one key lesson is that standardization and discipline are critical for managing sprawling IT environments.

The panel discussion closed with the following summary:
Virtualization is about avoiding or delaying building a new $100M data center.

Follow the action at VMworld on Twitter at #HPVMW.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

VMworld - Day 1: Ann Livermore announces Virtualization SPI

pspielvogel — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:27:00 GMT

The first main day of the VMworld show was great. Over 10,000 people filled Moscone center to learn about how the hottest trend in IT can help them reduce their operating expenses and improve the quality of service. (Follow us at the show on Twitter #hpvmw)

In the main keynote, Paul Maritz, President and CEO of VMware reiterated the statistic we often hear in our conversations with customers and analysts. “70% of IT budgets are spent on keeping the lights on.” He reminded the crowd that IT needs to focus on delivering more business value. In this economy that is more important than ever.

In the next keynote, Ann Livermore, Executive Vice President, Technology Solutions Group, mentioned the new virtualization SPI (Smart Plug-In). Readers of this blog will know that SPIs supplement our agents in collecting data, performing some autonomous management based on policies, and sending alerts to the Operations Manager console. The virtualization SPI supplements the agent on collecting virtualization-specific metrics on both host and guest systems. This provides a single management console, freeing the virtualization administrator to work on more strategic matters than managing a separate event console for the virtual environment.

Concurrently with Ann Livermore’s address, HP issued a press release on our new virtualization offerings. My colleague, Michael Procopio summarized it on the Business Service Management Blog.

The theme of “convergence” is pervasive at the show. Just as virtualization spans servers, storage, and networks, the management software must also span these domains on both physical and virtual devices. Deploying Operations Manager allows organizations to have a single event console, saving money on licensing, training and maintenance costs. Even more important, it improves service quality by providing a single location for all events, speeding time to problem resolution and eliminating confusion about which events are symptoms and which is the true causal event.

Stop by and let’s chat in HP’s booth #2023 .

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

Using SiteScope to monitor VMware Infrastructures (free webinar)

pspielvogel — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:46:00 GMT

Virtualization is a hot topic for all our customers. In every customer meeting, we discuss their virtualization plans and how to make sure they are monitoring the virtual infrastructure using the same tools they use to monitor the physical infrastructure. In this blog, I have discussed how to use Operations Manager to monitor virtual environments, (or search on the tags on the right navigation for more on virtualization). This post, written by Amy Feldman, promotes an upcoming webinar on how to use SiteScope to monitor virtual environments.
- Peter

One common question that many of HP SiteScope user's has is around best practices for VMware monitoring with SiteScope. HP and Genilogix will be delivering a joint webinar that will address topics such as:

-        Challenges of monitoring applications in a virtual environment
-        How to monitor host and guest virtual machines with SiteScope 10.1
-        Tips and tricks for capturing the right monitoring data (e.g. what to look for and where)
-        Correlating metrics to identify performance issues on host ESX and guest VMs
-        Turning monitoring data into actionable results with performance tuning
-        Creating and deploying VMware templates in SiteScope 10.1

Join us for the "Using HP SiteScope to Monitor VMware Infrastructures" webinar

Date: Thursday August 27, 2009

Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific / 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM Eastern

Register now: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/828601288

For HP Business Availability Center, Amy Feldman.

We Live and Die by Operations Manager (customer visit summary)

pspielvogel — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:43:00 GMT

The absence of posts over the past two weeks was a result of traveling to meet customers as well as some of our partners. This is the first of several meeting summaries. Look for more examples of how customers use Operations Manager in upcoming posts.
- Peter

I was recently part of a team that spent half a day with one of our financial services customers. The agenda was focused around their current Operations Manager implementation and future plans, which include a new data center.

We also reviewed their feedback on the Operations Manager on Linux beta. Migrating to Linux will help them retire several aging Solaris servers. In addition, once they are comfortable with OML, they will migrate some OMW servers to OML.

They presented many charts and graphs about the types of events they manage and how they use Operations Manager along with several other HP and open source products. The volume of events they receive directly correlates with the trading volume in the market. Because of the number of events, they only keep history in Operations Manager for two days. They use a product called Splunk to search their historical log files.

Their architecture includes the usual high availability fail over systems distributed across multiple geographically separated data centers. They also gave us a demo that highlighted several use cases so we could see how they used our products in action.

One highlight of the day was a tour of their Operations Bridge. Dozens of screens showed events, system health, and performance. Operators each had about six monitors at their station. In addition, several large monitors at the front of the room called out the key screens, giving visibility to critical systems (as measured by business impact). [I would have liked to show you a photo, but you can understand why this is not possible.]

Of course, virtualization came up during our discussions. As with other financial service customers I have met, most of their virtualization is used for development and test systems. Production systems cannot afford even the small overhead that virtual hosts impose.

One great benefit of talking to power users such as this company is that they push the product (and product managers) to the limit. This is the sort of feedback that allows us to prioritize enhancements and make sure we are aligned with how our customers use the product.

During the close, our host stated “We live and die by Operations Manager”. This underscores the important role Operations Manager plays in customer environments. They use OM to ensure their systems meet the service level agreements to their customers by providing the optimal level of availability and performance.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

Enhancing SiteScope with Operations Manager - and Vice Versa

pspielvogel — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:22:00 GMT

Many SiteScope customers have been asking about the value of adding Operations Manager to their existing SiteScope implementation. Many Operations Manager customers have been asking about how the new SAM Admin helps them manage their SiteScope. The bottom line is that combining agent-based and agentless monitoring gives customers the ability to expand their monitoring coverage in a cost effective way.

I have listed a few excerpts from a new solution brief called “HP Operations Manager for HP SiteScope Customers”

Adding Operations Manager along with its agents extends SiteScope’s depth and breadth of coverage.

• Present an Operations Bridge or manager of managers that consolidates events from disparate consoles including multiple SiteScope servers, giving greater visibility into system health across the enterprise.
• Operate autonomously on managed nodes, ensuring continuous operation, even if the network connection between the management server and managed node fails.
• Allow monitoring of systems where administrators will not allow security credentials to be placed on the network but will allow an agent to be installed on the server.
• Collect data at very granular time intervals, allowing you to fine-tune the performance of mission-critical systems.
• Enrich events by providing context in the form of a service dependency map.

Operations Manager integrates out-of-the-box with SiteScope. It centralizes management of all SiteScope and other event consoles.

• Operations Manager automatically adds SiteScope targets to the Operations Manager Service Map.
• SiteScope alerts go directly to Operations Manager with full details.
• Operations Manager launches SiteScope tools directly from the Operations Manager console.
• Operations Manager manages multiple SiteScope servers and can transfer configuration information from one SiteScope instance to another and synchronize settings between multiple SiteScope servers.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

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Everything you wanted to know about OMi... (Q&A from Vivit technical webinar)

pspielvogel — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:08:00 GMT

Thank you to everyone who attended the Vivit webinar. The recording is now available for viewing on Vivit’s web site. You can also download or view the presentation slides in PDF format. There were many questions from the audience. Jon Haworth and Dave Trout's answers appear below. I have grouped questions by topic.

Product Structure

Are these 3 different modules to be purchased separately? (topology, event and service views)	Yes three different modules. OMi Event Management Foundation is the base product and is a requirement before either of the other two products can be installed. OMi Health Perspective Views and OMi Topology Based Event Correlation are optional modules.
How is the licensing done?	There are three separate OMi modules. OMi Event Management Foundation is the base product and is a requirement before either of the other two products can be installed. OMi Health Perspective Views and OMi Topology Based Event Correlation are optional modules. Each module is priced / licensed separately and the pricing model is 'flat' - you purchase the license(s) required and that is all (no CPU or tier or connection based pricing).
How does that scale to thousands of machines?	Since we have just introduced OMi, we don't yet have a lot of "real" scalability data to report. However our internal testing so far indicates that OMi can handle the typical event rates handled by OMW/OMU in terms of forwarding events. Like OM today, the scalability of the total solution is not so much limited by how many thousands of machines are being managed but on the total event rate being handled.

Integration with Operations Manager, BAC, UCMDB

Is there any description about the interface between OM and OMi.	There are two interfaces used: 1) Message forwarding from OM to OMi, and 2) Web Services interface for message changes and Topology synchronization.
How is the integration with Operations Manager on Unix?	As mentioned during the webinar, OMi requires either OMU or OMW as the event consolidation point for forwarding events into OMi. The event forwarding is configured in OM exactly the same way as if forwarding to another OM server. For message updates and topology synchronization, a Web Services interface is used.
Since it was mentioned it works with both OMU 9.0 and OMW 8.10, does it work with the mentioned SPIs on both platforms ?	Yes. We are updating the SPIs to be "OMi ready". What this really means is that we're adding a little extra information to the event messages (via Custom Message Attributes) to make it 'easier' for OMi to associate a message with the correct CI in the UCMDB and to include specific indicators needed for the TBEC rules in OMi. For OMU 9 we will release some updated SPIs soon which include enhanced discovery - very similar levels of discovery to what OMW has. The discovery subsystem is an area that we enhanced in OMU 9 and we want to be able to use the SPI discovery data as the 'starting point' for populating and maintaining CI and relationship information in the UCMDB - which is what helps to drive the logic in OMi.
How flexible are the integration with BAC products? Are these factory built and need factory to modify due to target environment requirement	OMi and BAC use the same UCMDB instance so they are tightly integrated 'out of the box'. OMi is completely built on top of the BAC platform technology. It supports the same security mechanisms, the same HA configuration options, the same user/group definitions, etc. In short, OMi is just like any other BAC "application" that is leveraging the platform.
In the installation guide, it says that one of the requirements is to install the "BSM platform". What exactly do you understand on "BSM platform"?	BSM platform means "BAC". OMi 8.10 requires BAC 8.02 as the BSM platform.
Can you run OMi without BSM?	No, the BSM platform provides the user interface 'framework' and the runtime UCMDB. OMi plugs into the BSM foundation.
Which security model will take precedence - OMU responsibility matrix or the BAC security for views?	OMi security is entirely based on the BAC platform features. Access to OMi views, admin UIs, etc. is all controlled through the standard BAC security features (users/groups, roles, permissions, etc.)
Which security model will take precedence - OMU responsibility matrix or the BAC security for views?	OMi security is entirely based on the BAC platform features. Access to OMi views, admin UIs, etc. is all controlled through the standard BAC security features (users/groups, roles, permissions, etc.)
What is the price policy if you have / have not BAC already installed?	Having BAC installed makes no difference to the price. OMi includes all components needed (runtime UCMDB etc.) in the license. Pricing is based on a 'flat' price for each of the three modules (see earlier question). You need to contact your local HP sales representative to obtain local pricing.
CI treeview scale?	The CI Tree view is basically a UCMDB VIEW/TQL under the covers. TQLs in UCMDB are tuned for VERY efficient retrieval of CI information.

Integration with Ticketing Systems (Service Manager, Service Center)

How does OMi interact with any ticketing system like Service Manager or Service Center. Will the Ci's health be reflected based on ticket info?	In this first release of OMi, there is no direct interaction with a ticketing system. The interaction is driven through the existing OM (OMW or OMU) to Service Manager / Service Center interface. Because OMi synchronizes message changes back to the OM server that it is connected to, trouble tickets can be triggered from that OM server.
How does this interface to Service Manager 7?	The interface to SM 7 is driven through the existing OM (OMW or OMU) interface to Service Manager. Because OMi synchronizes message changes back to the OM server that it is connected to, trouble tickets can be triggered from that OM server.
The slides implied "assignment" which looked similar to NNMi. How do the new features of OMi integrate to Service Manager?	The concept of assignment is 'internal' to OMi. In many organizations the tier 1 support personnel will deal with non Business Service impacting issues without raising a trouble ticket. NOTE: this is purely dependent on the individual process and organization structure that is selected, we know that a lot of companies work this way to minimize the number of TTs. Some organizations insist that every actionable 'incident' becomes a TT. Where an event is dealt with in OMi then assignment makes sense, where events are forwarded to SM7 or another TT system then assignment will likely take place in the Incident / Helpdesk system.
Will OMi integrate with ITSM (change management app from Front Range)? Also, I'm assuming that we will need to purchase CMDB for event correlation regardless - is that true?	Cannot comment on the Front Range application. It is likely that an integration may be possible but it would be wise to verify with the vendor what external interfaces they provide for integrating event management systems with their product. No you do not need to purchase UCMDB - we provide a 'free' runtime with OMi.

UCMDB, Discovery and Smart Plug-Ins (SPIs)

Is it necessary to have UCMDB to have OMi?	OMi ships with a "BAC 8.02" media kit. This actually provides the BSM PLatform - including UCMDB - and is licensed using your OMi license key. If you do not have an existing UCMDB then this will provide a runtime UCMDB as part of the OMi product package. If you have an existing BAC 8.02 installed (which includes UCMDB) then you can utilize that for OMi.
Is discovery best done in OMi or uCMDB?	All discovery data is maintained in the UCMDB. The 'base' discovery for OMi will be provided by the Smart PlugIns that have been deployed from the OMW or OMU instance that OMi is connected to. Additional discovery data can be added to the UCMDB - for example from NNMi or DDM - and OMi will make use of this discovery data if it exists. If using DDM for discovery, DDM-Advanced is recommended since it can discover not only hosts but also applications and their relationships.
Can you please tell me if DDMi can be used as a feed?	Yes. Servers discovered by DDMi are inserted into UCMDB. However be aware that DDMi does not discover applications and dependencies/relationships. DDM-Advanced is the recommended discovery approach if you plan to use OMi and leverage the TBEC rules in particular.
If uCMDB already has CIs populates by DDM, would the new sources like NNMi , SPIs conflict with them , in other words do we need a clean uCMDB ?	No. A clean UCMDB is not required. OMi is designed to work with CIs reqardless of how they are discovered and inserted into the UCMDB. In general, reconciliation of CIs discovered from multiple sources is handled automatically.
Can you clarify what you mean by "we are including these SPIs"? Does this mean it's part of the shrink wrap deliverable with OMi? What specifically will the virtualization SPI provide? We were considering another product for that space, but want to hear more about those capabilities.	We are not including SPIs with OMi. We are including pre-defined content (event type indicator mappings, health indicators, TBEC correlation rules) for the SPIs that we noted. If you have these SPIs deployed then the time to value when OMi is deployed will be very quick. HP released a SPI for Virtualized Infrastructure monitoring earlier this year. Initial focus is on VMware but we will be providing an update soon with more features. You can contact your HP Software Sales Representative to get more details of the specific functionality provided.
What is the virtualization SPI? Is it nWorks SPI ?	No. HP released the Smart PlugIn for Virtualized Infrastructure early in 2009. This is a HP developed and marketed product.
nWorks is the "SPI" we were considering	This is a different SPI and is based on a different architecture (agentless polling). It has no OMi content at present and it will be the responsibility of Nworks / Veeam to provide this.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

What is a KPI?	KPI - means Key Performance Indicators
where do you define the KPIs?	OMi provides four KPIs to the BAC platform: Operations Performance, Operations Availability, Unresolved Events, Unassigned Events. These are defined by OMi, not by users. What IS configurable is which Health Indicators (HIs) are assigned to impact either the Operations Performance or Operations Availability KPI for specific CI Types. This is done using the Indicator Manager in OMi.
If the difference is KPI, why data is not collected from PM. Instead I see that the data is collected from OVPA & OV agents.	OMi is focused around event processing. Events (alerts) are 'collected' from OVPA and OV agents to enable operations staff to understand what needs to be 'fixed'. PM (Performance Manager) is one tool that can be used to assist in the analysis / diagnosis of performance problems. PM is actually integrated into the OMi user interface.

Topology-Based Event Correlation (TBEC)

In the slide with "Carol" and "Bill", they applied their knowledge to (I guess) develop some rules? Is that work that still has to be done manually? What were they developing - KPIs?	No not KPIs. The example is there to show how TBEC rules are simple to create but that the correlation engine 'chains' them together to provide quite complex correlations logic which adapts based on the topology that has been discovered. We (HP) are providing content (Event Type Indicators, Health Indicators, TBEC rules as per "Carol and Bill") for a number of our existing Operations Manager Smart PlugIns with OMi and we will continue to add additional content moving forwards. The example in the slide is there to illustrate the process (simple process) of creating very powerful correlation rules which adapt to changes in the discovered infrastructure. You would only need to undertake this process where HP does not provide out of the box content with OMi.
I have some questions regarding the TBEC, is there any experience regarding the performance? How many events can be handled by the correlation engine per sec?	The engine is tuned for very high performance. It is basically the same engine that is used in NNMi for correlations.
With topology synchronization with NNMi do you have to have OMi licenses for every node in NNMi as well? ... I.E. if you are using Topology Synchronization with NNMi will it only show the nodes from NNMi that have OMi agents installed?	No. All CIs in the UCMDB are visible to OMi. No additional license costs are required for NNMi nodes which are added to the UCMDB.
Which language is used for the correlation rules? And where are the rules defined ? (UCMDB?)	TBEC is configured in the OMi Correlation Manager GUI, there is no programming language involved. The rules are based on topology (a View from the UCMDB) and on specific Health Indicators with specific HI values.
Does OMi support the execution of validation routines when closing an Alert/Event that also closes other related items?	Not currently out of the box. There are several configurable settings which affect TBEC behavior (e.g. correlation time window, automatic extension of time windows, etc.), but currently this is not one of them. We are considering additional options for the future.

OMi Features

Scalability, High Availability Cluster Support? Estimated max seats before going distributed?	OMi supports the same cluster/HA features as supported by BAC. For example, you can have multiple gateway servers connected to a clustered Data Processing Server and a remote database server. In this case, OMi software is installed on each of these separate servers (gateways and DPS). In general, the "max seats before going distributed" (i.e. adding gateway servers) would be driven by the same considerations as documented for BAC itself. More information specific to OMi environments will be available over time as we have a chance to do further testing and characterization.
Does OMi have a reports generator showing things like daily TBEC, etc.?	Not currently. However the BAC reports (e.g. KPIs over Time) can be used to look at how the OMi KPIs are changing over time on CIs.
Comment: We feel that most of these features being discussed in OMi should have been as an upgrade to OMW. Too many modules to buy and try to integrate ourselves. For example we wanted a better version of the OVOWeb to come as an upgrade in OMW8.1. Too many products to buy just to manage our network.	OMi is providing discreet and incremental value above and beyond what is provided in OMW or OMU. We are continuing to enhance both OMW and OMU (for example the recent release of OMU 9.0) and customers who are happy with the capabilities of these platforms can continue to move forwards and take advantage of the enhancements that we are providing. There is no requirement to move to OMi.
We feel we are being charged for features that were supposed to be in products that we already purchased. We are not happy about the tactic of releasing new products to fix features that were advertised in prior software. As a consultant, even I get lost in the vast amount of monitoring tools being sold by HP.	OMi is providing discreet and incremental value above and beyond what is provided in OMW or OMU. This functionality was never offered as part of OMW or OMU - it is new and unique to OMi. The reality is that it would have been extremely difficult, and time consuming (slow to release) to provide the high value capabilities of OMi within OMW or OMU. The strategy we have choosen is to base these new capabilities on a 'clean' build based on contemporary technologies - but HP has specifically ensured that existing OM customers who wish to take advantage of these new capabilities can do so without having to disrupt their existing OM installation.
I had some issue when trying to setup and run the synchronization tool and event forwarding. Who can I contact?	You should contact your normal HP support channel for assistance.

Other

Is there an estimated time line for detailed technical training on OMi?	We have just run a series of virtual instructor led training sessions for our partners. HP Education Services will be releasing an OMi class in the near future.
Where can I get an evaluation version of OMi?	You can request a DVD from the trial software web site. A download will be available at http://www.hp.com/go/omi soon.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

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Innovation Week Part 6 - End-User Monitoring

pspielvogel — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:19:00 GMT

When I hear about innovation, I think about a breakthrough product or a significant update in functionality. In marketing parlance, this means a new version number 8.x to 9.x, or maybe a major “dot” release 9.0 to 9.1. So, when my colleague Amy Feldman in Business Availability Center told me about big innovations in Real User Monitoring (RUM) version 8.02, I was obviously skeptical.

First, how does RUM relate to managing IT infrastructure? The VP of Operations is tasked with providing users an optimal level of performance and availability for the business services they consume. So, assessing these metrics from the end-user standpoint is critical for maintaining service level objectives.

HP offers two ways to do this: real user monitoring and synthetic user monitoring. The former monitors actual user performance while the later simulates user sessions from different geographies. Pulling alerts from these tools into your event console gives you early warning of end-user experience issues. In an era of cost reduction, this shifts monitoring to relatively inexpensive automated systems from the most expensive monitoring tools known - your customers calling to report problems or “fixing” their negative experience by taking their business elsewhere.

So, what is new and exciting in RUM 8.02?

The HP RUM probe is now supported on Windows and Linux Redhat5 64-bit.
RUM now supports detailed transaction analysis for 7 different protocols including MsSQL, LDAP, MySQL, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, FTP and increased insights into non-web based applications.
Supports larger SiteScope deployments – increased monitor capacity per server (up to 16,000 monitors), simplified mass template deployment, easier way to manage SSL certificates, and other usability enhancements.
Expanded SiteScope monitor coverage – new platform support (NonStop, SolarisZones), added versions and new solutions templates allows you to expand SiteScope monitoring into new environments.
Expanded support for Business Process Monitor (BPM) – now supports VuGen 9.5 and Windows Vista.
BAC dashboard integrations
1. Netuitive integration: enables integrating Netuitive predictive alerts into the BAC dashboard
2. iPhone integration: enables viewing real-time status of applications and business services, via dashboard, directly on the iPhone

Not bad for a “minor” version.

For Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Innovation Week Part 5 - Managing IT: Mobile Edition

pspielvogel — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:54:00 GMT

In a meeting last week with our partner AlarmPoint, we were talking about how innovations in mobile computing are driving people to do more on their mobile devices, both professionally and personally. I asked Christel Mes, Director of Marketing at AlarmPoint, to share her thoughts about mobile management options for IT Operations Staff. Here is her post.
Peter Spielvogel, Product Marketing Manager, Operations Center

After a meeting I had with the HP Operations Center team today, I wanted to share some thoughts for customers looking to become more efficient through mobility. Especially in today's fast-paced dynamic enterprise, accelerating business initiatives and executing lean processes are a must to drive operational efficiency. HP Operations Manager users must leverage mobile staff, providing them with secure remote access to relevant systems required to manage complex and distributed IT environments. It is estimated that 41% of an IT organization is currently considered mobile or remote. Times have changed drastically since the days of watching a console or carrying a pager to be alerted of critical events.

With the latest version of HP Operation Manager on Unix, Version 9, which shipped in early June, AlarmPoint Systems Alert Management and Mobility software has been included in the bundled package. Recognizing the importance of mobility, AlarmPoint will allow HP OMU customers to view, edit, annotate, research, trouble shoot and take remote actions on all events coming from OMU, through one consistent, secure, authenticated and audited access point. Now IT is able to resolve events faster, away from their console on any web-enabled mobile device including, BlackBerry, iPhone, Android and others.

To learn more about how HP OM and AlarmPoint work together or to download the AlarmPoint Express product – visit https://express.alarmpoint.com/hp.

In addition, check out the AlarmPoint Blog: http://blogs.alarmpoint.com/tmcalpin/

Consolidated Event Management Podcast

pspielvogel — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:26:00 GMT

My colleague and consolidated event management guru Jon Haworth has recorded a podcast with Dennis Drogseth of EMA about the benefits of consolidated IT event management. During this 15 minute podcast, Dennis and Jon discuss:

Benefits of an integrated approach to IT Operations
Key groups, titles, organizations, roles, initiatives, etc. needed to drive an integrated approach to managing Operations
The key underlying technologies
Where event consolidation fits

Listen to the Consolidated Event Management podcast (registration required)

At Software Universe, many of my conversations with customers focused on how then can use Operations Manager to consolidate events from across their organization.

For Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel

Customer meeting summary - consolidated event console (Software Universe - Day 2)

pspielvogel — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:19:00 GMT

Today was a packed day of sessions, roundtables, and demos in the solution center.

The highlight of the day was a breakfast meeting that Dennis Corning and I had with a customer. He works for a large services company, employing over 100,000 people. Their IT infrastructure is pretty typical: several silos of servers, each of them managed by a different enterprise console. One set of about 100 servers runs SAP and Oracle. Another set of 600 servers runs other business-critical applications. They also use parts of the BAC suite, including SiteScope and Business Process Monitoring.

The quick summary is that he is very unhappy with the current arrangement. He lacks visibility across the silos. His Operations Bridge runs 24x7 in a single room with large monitors on the wall. The operators perform event correlation manually, by looking at the screens and making their best guess on who is the right person to escalate to. The front-line operators generally lack the skills to diagnose and correct problems on their own.

But, there is hope. He is following the Consolidated Event and Performance Management prescription. They will be adding an OM console to monitor events from all the different domain managers. Once this monitoring infrastructure is in place, they will begin to replace the non-HP monitoring with HP agents. Next step is to remove the competing consoles. Along the way, they will start using the uCMDB to track all the infrastructure items to help with correlating infrastructure events to key business services.

Overall, a very strong meeting and another example of how companies are using OM to consolidate and correlate events across their enterprise to reduce the cost of monitoring their IT infrastructure while improving the quality of service.

There are a variety of Twitter accounts you can follow as well as the hashtag #HPSU09

HPITOps – Covers BSM, Operations, ITSM, ITFM and Network Management

HPSU09 – show logistics and other information

HPSoftwareCTO

informationCTO

HPSoftware

BTOCMO – HP BTO Chief Marketing Officer

For Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel