Comments on: Will Network Management Be the First Causality of the Cloud? http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/ JOHNMWILLIS BLOG Wed, 02 Jun 2010 23:53:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: John http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3360 John Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:06:33 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3360 David, Some good points. This is what I was looking for is a starting dialog on this topic. BTW, I was hoping Tarus would have come over here screaming and yelling at me - Wasup :) John David,

Some good points. This is what I was looking for is a starting dialog on this topic.

BTW, I was hoping Tarus would have come over here screaming and yelling at me – Wasup :)

John

]]> By: David http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3359 David Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:00:39 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3359 You may have agreements in place for service levels where round-trip transaction monitors should still apply. OpenNMS has began developing monitors, such as the MailTransportMonitor, that monitor the "end-to-end" availability and the performance of a service... in this case the of sending messages through the network (cloud). This particular service monitor tests the availability and performance without actually attempting to monitor/measure the details of the underlying network technology. A job best served by element managers that the cloud provider will certainly have in place. Continuing to collect metrics from local resources on each side of the cloud makes sense as well as receiving messages from the cloud provider's monitoring systems for use in correlating the end-to-end service outages is something to be considered. You may have agreements in place for service levels where round-trip transaction monitors should still apply. OpenNMS has began developing monitors, such as the MailTransportMonitor, that monitor the “end-to-end” availability and the performance of a service… in this case the of sending messages through the network (cloud). This particular service monitor tests the availability and performance without actually attempting to monitor/measure the details of the underlying network technology. A job best served by element managers that the cloud provider will certainly have in place. Continuing to collect metrics from local resources on each side of the cloud makes sense as well as receiving messages from the cloud provider’s monitoring systems for use in correlating the end-to-end service outages is something to be considered.

]]> By: John http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3357 John Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:59:42 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3357 Jack, Great feedback. That was basically my thoughts as well. However, it looks like Matthew has found some useful metrics for their RigthScale product. Monitoring in the cloud is going to be a very interesting topic in the upcoming years. Thanks John Jack,

Great feedback. That was basically my thoughts as well. However, it looks like Matthew has found some useful metrics for their RigthScale product. Monitoring in the cloud is going to be a very interesting topic in the upcoming years.

Thanks
John

]]> By: Jack @ Tech Teapot http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3356 Jack @ Tech Teapot Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:44:19 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3356 @John - the bits and bytes network metrics will become a bit irrelevant simply because you won't have a network upon which your services are running -- the cloud provider has that. So one would hope that they will do the network metrics but of course they are aggregating their infrastructure over a large number of customers so I suspect that the net effect will be a reduction in demand for low level network metrics. But service level monitoring will still be very important. Service monitoring will clearly be seperated from the low level network metrics. @John – the bits and bytes network metrics will become a bit irrelevant simply because you won’t have a network upon which your services are running — the cloud provider has that. So one would hope that they will do the network metrics but of course they are aggregating their infrastructure over a large number of customers so I suspect that the net effect will be a reduction in demand for low level network metrics. But service level monitoring will still be very important. Service monitoring will clearly be seperated from the low level network metrics.

]]> By: Matthew Small http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3336 Matthew Small Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:49:22 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3336 I think that it depends on your application. Some indicators may work well for some applications, where others don't. I think it also entirely depends on the user. Some users are going to just want to know what's going on. Urchins for data. Here is a sample alert template from RS. high network tx activity if interface/if_octets-eth0.tx > '50000000' for 30 min then escalate to 'critical'. Escalations are the actions that are defined to be taken. I think that it depends on your application. Some indicators may work well for some applications, where others don’t. I think it also entirely depends on the user. Some users are going to just want to know what’s going on. Urchins for data.

Here is a sample alert template from RS.

high network tx activity
if interface/if_octets-eth0.tx > ’50000000′ for 30 min then escalate to ‘critical’.

Escalations are the actions that are defined to be taken.

]]> By: John http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3328 John Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:29:48 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3328 Matt, Totally agree. we will definitly needs to look at all the traditional OS monitoring metrics (processes, CPU, memory, file/io, disk space (maybe). Also transactional and application monitoring IMHO, is hear to stay. Like I said above , I am just thinking the pure network metrics are more likely not needed anymore. I love you gus feedback and keep it coming if you dis-agree with me. Thanks Matt,

Totally agree. we will definitly needs to look at all the traditional OS monitoring metrics (processes, CPU, memory, file/io, disk space (maybe). Also transactional and application monitoring IMHO, is hear to stay. Like I said above , I am just thinking the pure network metrics are more likely not needed anymore. I love you gus feedback and keep it coming if you dis-agree with me.

Thanks

]]> By: John http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3327 John Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:26:43 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3327 Jack, No... trust me I don't trust the cloud. I should have been more specific. What I mean by NMS is the purely Network management metrics. The secret sauce metrics that you find in products like HPOV, Netview, and OpenNMS. I totally believe you will still need OS monitoring metrics and also transaction, and application monitoring. Although HPOV, Netview, OpenNMS, ... all have overlap with the pure play OS monitors when I say NMS I really truly mean network metrics in the context of this question. Things like interface/switch router, packets, ... kind of stuff, are those kind of things necessary. Maybe a better question is will you need products like Netview HPOV,or OpenNMS ins the cloud and my guess is no. Jack,

No… trust me I don’t trust the cloud. I should have been more specific. What I mean by NMS is the purely Network management metrics. The secret sauce metrics that you find in products like HPOV, Netview, and OpenNMS. I totally believe you will still need OS monitoring metrics and also transaction, and application monitoring. Although HPOV, Netview, OpenNMS, … all have overlap with the pure play OS monitors when I say NMS I really truly mean network metrics in the context of this question. Things like interface/switch router, packets, … kind of stuff, are those kind of things necessary.
Maybe a better question is will you need products like Netview HPOV,or OpenNMS ins the cloud and my guess is no.

]]> By: Matthew Small http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3325 Matthew Small Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:35:23 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3325 We use monitoring daemons to collect process and hardware specific metrics from EC2 instances. How else are you going to make decisions to scale? "I see that my application servers are loaded down, let's launch a new one." "I see that my MySQL threads are steadily increasing over time, time to scale up to a larger DB instance." Of course you can automate various tasks based on those monitoring results, such as scaling, running scripts, or relaunching instances...so maybe network managers are on the way out, but you will always need network management. We use monitoring daemons to collect process and hardware specific metrics from EC2 instances. How else are you going to make decisions to scale? “I see that my application servers are loaded down, let’s launch a new one.” “I see that my MySQL threads are steadily increasing over time, time to scale up to a larger DB instance.” Of course you can automate various tasks based on those monitoring results, such as scaling, running scripts, or relaunching instances…so maybe network managers are on the way out, but you will always need network management.

]]> By: The Cult of Gary » Blog Archive » Cloud Based Network Monitoring Systems http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3323 The Cult of Gary » Blog Archive » Cloud Based Network Monitoring Systems Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:50:29 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3323 [...] Willis has a blog post asking how to handle NMS in the [...] [...] Willis has a blog post asking how to handle NMS in the [...]

]]> By: Jack @ Tech Teapot http://www.johnmwillis.com/amazon/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-3319 Jack @ Tech Teapot Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:09:53 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/aws/will-network-management-be-the-first-causality-of-the-cloud/#comment-3319 Personally I don't think so. Networks provide services, NMS test the services to make sure they're working. However I choose to deliver the services I still need to ensure that the service is being delivered. Unless you're of the opinion that the cloud will be so reliable as to make service oriented monitoring to be irrelevant? Personally I don’t think so. Networks provide services, NMS test the services to make sure they’re working. However I choose to deliver the services I still need to ensure that the service is being delivered. Unless you’re of the opinion that the cloud will be so reliable as to make service oriented monitoring to be irrelevant?

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