Machine Learning Analytics Tool Optimizes VMware
SIOS PERC Dashboard
To help enterprises understand and optimize their VMware environments, SIOS Technology created SIOS iQ standard edition, which uses applied advanced machine learning analytics to comprehend and explain complex behaviors and foresee the impact of changes in dynamic virtual environments.
The on-premise, analytics software was designed to find both subtle and complicated changes that can arise in an enterprise's VMware environment, changes that traditional approaches which typically focus on recording and reporting discrete events cannot address, said Jerry Melnick, chief operating officer, in an interview. Via deep learning, the system becomes educated on an enterprise's normal operations, soon getting up to speed on any major or minor changes that could be cause for concern, he said.
"These are really, really complex environments. You're no longer on a physical server. You're now sharing them, you're sharing them in a wide variety of ways, and there are complex relationships with all the different pieces," said Melnick. "These are the guys who get calls in the middle of the night and on weekends or when the New York Stock Exchange goes down."
Deafened by countless, often meaningless alarms, IT staff frequently end up viewing – and treating – all alerts in the same manner since they lack prioritization, guidance, or information into the root cause, he said. Thus simplicity and data became key in SIOS' development of iQ, said Melnick.
The developer took the many dashboards and user interfaces available to business users as its guides. SIOS iQ discerns abnormal behavioral patterns, identifies root causes behind this behavior, and then sends suggestions for solutions via its SIOS PERC Dashboard, the vendor said.
Enterprises download and install SIOS iQ, then give it access to the sources of data necessary to its job, Melnick said. From there, the solution uses machine learning to build an ever-growing body of knowledge tailored specifically to the business operating SIOS iQ, he said.
"As a provider of Infrastructure-as-a-Service and datacenter services, delivering consistently high levels of application performance, efficiency, and reliability is vital to our business," said Brad Alexander, senior director of managed services at Immedion, in a statement. "The SIOS iQ platform is exactly the approach companies need to ensure virtual environments deliver the levels of service that end users demand while reducing unnecessary cost and wasted resources."
The standard edition's features include:
- Performance root cause analysis, which learns the relationships of objects and their typical behavioral patterns in an enterprise's VMware infrastructure, including virtual machines, network, applications, and storage, and then proactively identifies anomalies and the cause, and recommends changes to address the issues.
- Enhanced SIOS PERC Dashboard designed to help IT departments optimize performance, efficiency, reliability, and capacity. Enhancements include expandable charts, color-coded status indicators to annotate the level of criticality, and performance impact analysis for all applications, VMs, hosts, and data stores associated with a performance problem.
- Specialized analytics for SQL Server delivers more insight into SQL Server deployments in VMware and correlates interactions between SQL and infrastructure resources to determine the cause of problems.
- Enhanced host-based caching was designed to help improve storage performance via server side storage and host-based caching. This approach analyzes the environment, identifies the read ratio and load profile, then locates the VMs and disks most appropriate to tap host-based caching. SIOS iQ shows, via chart, administrators about how recommendations will impact performance.
- SIOS iQ resource optimization features appear in an improved user interface, created to identify and eliminate idle VMs and snapshot sprawl. SIOS' newest solution notifies IT of potential savings if these unused resources are removed.
Available immediately, SIOS iQ costs $150 per month per host, if paid annually. Sold as a renewable subscription, SIOS iQ includes 24x5 support. In the future, SIOS Technology plans to extend into additional virtual machines and cloud environments, Melnick said.
