by Greg Shields

Finally, comes the recognition that completely comprehensive monitoring at the highest of levels is fundamentally important to enterprise data centers. This level of monitoring, often categorized under the label of service-centric monitoring, tends to sit above each of the components in your data center. In its position at the top, solutions in this space can monitor and report on the overall health of services in your infrastructure.

Using a service-centric monitoring solution, you can create goals for performance and availability that your systems must meet. This quantitative monitoring of service levels helps to provide real numbers that validate when your systems are behaving to your expectations and when you need to apply money or effort to get them there. Service-centric monitoring solutions often use a logical service model into which technology components are mapped. Within that service model, expected and unexpected behaviors are identified. That identification provides the basis whereby the model can alert an administrator when a negative condition exists.

The most valuable part of these systems comes as a function of their extensibility. Most service-centric monitoring solutions are designed to be augmented with management “packs” from other vendors. Included in those packs are pre-packaged device- and server-specific behaviors along with monitoring integrations that extend the functionality of the system to new hardware and applications.

My book, The Shortcut Guide to Virtualization and Service Automation, discusses this extensibility in greater detail. The explanation here focuses on how such a system can be easily extended to support both physical and virtual environments, all within the same monitoring solution:

…the Service-Centric Approach is coined to identify a management mindset that layers atop existing platforms, regardless of whether they are physical or virtual. Service-centric management solutions in this space provide a comprehensive and cohesive management interface to all services in the environment. [Here] a potential service-centric management solution can layer atop an interface with virtual and physical resources to integrate their data collection, centralize their management functionality, and provide a unified interface for teams to interact with them.

[Such] a service-centric management platform would include integrations into multiple layers of individual business systems, at times directly connecting into the physical hardware or individual service interfaces. At other times, the platform may integrate with product-specific virtual or physical management platforms for management of the resources beneath that platform. A service-centric management solution is designed to include this widespread reach in order to get its arms around services from multiple layers. The end result of adding this management layer atop others in the environment is a unification of administration capabilities as well as enhancements to the monitoring of key metrics.

Your options for service-centric monitoring are growing in number, with many of the mature solutions being sold by the biggest names in the IT industry. Consider solutions such as Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, HP Operations Manager, Dell OpenManage, and BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management, among others, as starting points for your search.

About the Author

Greg Shields is an independent author, speaker, and IT consultant, as well as a Partner and Principal Technologist with Concentrated Technology. With 15 years in information technology, Greg has developed extensive experience in systems administration, engineering, and architecture specializing in Microsoft OS, remote application, systems management, and virtualization technologies. He is a Contributing Editor and columnist for TechNet Magazine and Redmond Magazine, and serves as the Series Editor for Realtime Publishers, the world’s leading provider of high-quality content for the IT market. Greg is a highly sought-after and top-ranked speaker for both live and recorded events, and is seen regularly at conferences like TechMentor Events, Microsoft Tech Ed, VMworld, and more. He is a multiple recipient of Microsoft “Most Valuable Professional” award.