Virtual Instruments’ NetWisdom 3.0 plugs VMware I-O performance monitoring gap

Network performance
measurement start-up Virtual Instruments (VI) has built some neat new
functionality to extract extra VMware virtual machine (VM) input-output (I-O) performance
metrics into release 3.0 of its flagship NetWisdom product.

ProbeVMW
has been added to its network probes and analysers collection; this gathers information
every 20 seconds on VM switches and APIs utilisation—and covers CPU, memory,
and both LAN and SAN I-O traffic.

NetWisdom can then pass any information to
VMware’s vCenter, for instance to enable a VMotion trigger to move a VM
application as a result of a SAN I-O performance threshold being breached. This
can be used, for instance, to assist in ensuring SLAs are maintained.

“Only NetWisdom
provides insight into the data traffic and flows inside the network,” VI’s VP
of marketing Len Rosenthal told me. “VMware is blind to I-O performance.”

The sorts of challenges organisations are
being confronted with include sustaining compliance and SLAs which demand consistently
high performance, and control of costs in storage management despite data
growing up to 50% annually.

Network problems that increase costs and hinder
performance can manifest in many ways. For instance, there may be FC scaling problems
or lack of routing, SAN over- or under-provisioning and more general difficulties
in SAN troubleshooting. Overlaying VMware can exacerbate these because it has
very limited visibility into the SAN infrastructure.

Yet companies want to deploy virtualisation more widely as a way to reduce
capital expense and operating costs—reducing power, cooling, floor space and
(ideally) their maintenance bills.

For its part, VMware is very conscious that mission-critical
applications are not yet being widely deployed on VMs and would very much like
to change that. At the same time, enterprises, in particular, want to move away
from direct attached to SAN-attached storage but are concerned about I-O (including for VLUNs)
and lack visibility into I-O loading and characteristics.

I-O performance
may have a major impact on a VM’s overall throughput. Users need real
confidence that they will always be able to maintain optimum performance, so
this could be a key plank in VMware getting where it wants to be. As Rosenthal said:
“You can’t optimise what you can’t measure” and pointed out that some enterprise
SANs nowadays contain a large number (even thousands) of ports to SANs with
edge, core and director switches.

So increasing SAN I-O visibility should ease
broad VMware deployments and improve virtual to physical server ratios. Much
work has been done on improving ease-of-use so that NetWisdom can more easily audit
and report on traffic in real time and capture trends.

The NetWisdom
Portal Server collects the key metrics, aggregating and correlating traffic
data every minute. Users can, optionally, define and monitor all components—including switches, LUNs and HBAs—that make up the I-O path for a specific
application. Using user-defined correlations, NetWisdom can test and report on,
for instance, new VM to ESX server mappings including historical data.

NetWisdom Views provides
customisable GUI dashboards enabling reports, graphs and charts, and which
integrates with the VMware dashboard. A GUI can, for instance, monitor I-O for
a specific VM and application.

The company is also launching a virtual
infrastructure healthcheck service. NetWisdom consultants will install and use
the capabilities of NetWisdom and its monitoring devices as a service to
quickly identify performance problems and what it calls “behaviour anomalies.”

According to VI the service will be able to
point out potential as well as actual problems, for instance where performance
thresholds are nearly exceeded, potential SAN infrastructure cost savings and
future recommendations. Obviously, using this service this will also be a way
for an organisation to evaluate the likely ongoing worth of installing
NetWisdom.

Other network
information gathering involves installing, where needed on the physical
network, VI’s existing range of devices. These include: ProbeV, a software probe that monitors SAN switch metrics via SNMP and
runs on a Windows server, Xgig Analyzer which collects detailed FC traces,
ProbeFCX, which extracts header information (taking measurements once a
second), and Traffic Analysis Points (TAPs) devices which provide non-obtrusive
FC access.

Sadly, you cannot virtualise network performance measurement but VI’s
devices are at least network component vendor independent.

Meanwhile, VMware may not be able to be VI-independent in its quest to bring mission-critical systems under
the VM umbrella. Tools designed for a virtualised infrastructure which still
maintain deep visibility into the SAN—helping to optimise SAN utilisation and
speed problem resolution—are a must for a mission-critical application, not a
nice to have.

VI is a brand new
company (although NetWisdom has a longer pedigree); it was officially launched
only in June last year having been spun off by Finisar (which retains almost a
fifth share and remains a technology supplier and partner). It now has some 40
employees and, Rosenthal said: “The company is growing like crazy; it has doubled
in the last three months.”

In good economic
times—let alone the credit crunch—that would be very impressive. As well as
many major company users, of which about 50% are in Europe,
it has an impressive list of vendor partnerships including the likes of EMC,
HP, IBM, HDS and, especially, VMware, with whom it has a new source code and
API partnership. Yet VI’s first two European sales offices only opened last
week (in London and Munich).

In preparing for
this release, VI had a mission to enhance its tools to offer a solution for
organisations to full realise the potential economic benefits of a virtualised
IT infrastructure. It has now plugged a measurement gap which virtualisation
created. VMware should also be happy.