Data Center monitoring: Cloud Service Level protocol backbone

Maintaining a robust cloud service level agreement is much easier said than done. Cloud providers rely heavily on cloud data center monitoring technology to reduce the risk of possible downtime to ensure their customers minimum downtime.

Capacity and performance monitoring and management can assist cloud providers to be proud of their cloud service level agreements (SLAs), regardless of whether the provider relies on cloud datacenter monitoring software from vendors or in-house developed technologies.

Cloud service level agreement starts at data center

VMware recently announced the acquisition of a real-time log analytics product log Insight to strengthen its data center management product portfolio from a provider pattern that provides data mining based technology Insight. This technology can help cloud provider Manager Data Center scalability and complexity, VMware technology expert Jon Herlocker wrote in his blog. "In order to remain competitive, companies will be forced to collect more data on processes and conduct more in-depth analysis." The data center will need more nodes to store the data, and more compute nodes to process. It also means they need more sophisticated analytical tools, "Herlocker said.

According to the pattern Insight, log Insight combines analytics and log management techniques, like Twitter subscriptions (feeds), to help managers quickly find the root cause of the problem.

Cloud providers are looking for traditional server and physical infrastructure monitoring tools to find faults and manage their cloud environments to support cloud computing service level agreements, but not all vendors have developed well enough to meet the unique needs of the cloud infrastructure.

Terremark, a Verizon Cloud services subsidiary, has developed its own data center monitoring technology after looking for data center infrastructure management Vendors (DCIM) to meet the cloud provider's business model. Terremark monitors the power and cooling levels of its data center, but also needs to prepare and capacity-planning technology, in order to determine where best to deploy customer service, Ben Stewart points out that he is a senior VP of Terremark Equipment Engineering.

"When we deploy a new customer on the ground, they're all connected to the same shared infrastructure, and we have a balanced infrastructure all the time, so one customer doesn't affect another," he said. This self-developed data center monitoring technology tracks power circuits and infrastructure activity and connects to an alarm management system, Stewart notes.

The management system, after the alarm set off, automatically issued a ticket, the alarm triggered by a circuit breaker or excessive level of power such as the problem, the employee can then make a corresponding ticket. Another employee tracks the progress of the ticket at the same time. "This system provides another level of protection for our customers," he says, noting that Terremark's cloud service level agreement does not support its own DCIM.

Data center and network monitoring are backed by cloud service level protocols

While data center monitoring can help cloud providers comply with their commitment to customers, there are also a number of other elements in the cloud, from servers to data center environments to networks, which require careful monitoring, said Amy DeCarlo, who is current The chief analyst for analysis Security and data center services. "Not just data centers need to be monitored by cloud providers, they also need to monitor the network," DeCarlo said.

Some vendors, like Verizon or at&t, use their own networks lavishly, and rackspace use them as a third-party network. Regardless of the model they use, all cloud providers should be visible to their networks, paying close attention to network performance in order to support cloud service level agreements, she notes.

Data center monitoring provides a key mechanism for cloud providers to understand whether they meet their service level agreements, and Sam Barnett agrees with this, Infonetics Research data center and cloud guidance analyst. Cloud providers can take different approaches to monitoring, depending on their customer base and the services they provide. "Providers may choose to deploy application monitoring, network State monitoring and energy efficiency or computational monitoring on virtual machines," he said, noting that providers must seriously address their cloud service level agreements based on their effective monitoring.

While monitoring technology can help cloud providers prove their service level agreements to their customers, this is still a big area for many providers. It is still too early for most providers to provide a 100% cloud service level agreement.