Bay Dynamics’ IT Analytics™ Server 2.1 includes a browser and device independent HTML Cube Browser that significantly enhances the ability to visualize and interact with data indexed via OLAP cubes. The biggest problem when working with big data is rapidly processing massive amounts of data, and then finding a compelling way to communicate relevant analytics to different roles throughout your organization.   This new and powerful visualization technique is now embedded in Bay Dynamics’ longstanding and highly acclaimed IT Analytics software.

Check out our introductory video to IT Analytics Cube Browser:

With the inclusion of the new Cube Browser, IT Analytics enhances your ability to conduct powerful analysis of your data, including pattern detection, trends, and KPI creation and performance, using dynamic chart and graph views that you can easily share with users. You can create a virtual work space for any role or department within your organization. Your work spaces can be composed of pivot tables, tabular grids, and charts – helping your viewers visualize the most relevant data and see clear action items. You can then share the work space with one person, or a group of people, so that everyone gets the view you want them to see. Users can view their particular work space anytime from any device.

For existing SQL Server Analysis Server OLAP Cube users, IT Analytics Server 2.1 provides you with a system for managing your cubes and is flexible enough to point at any existing  cubes to discover, analyze, and visualize your data.  IT Analytics Server 2.1 provides a data provisioning system with role-based security, and a platform to create, customize, and visualize Reporting Services reports in a consistent and convenient end user environment.

Bay Dynamics’ IT Analytics Server 2.1 allows you to scale beyond traditional limits with OLAP cubes, helping you visualize  very large data sets that have exceeded the limits of other cube browsing software.  Install IT Analytics Server 2.1, point towards your existing cubes, and go.  IT Analytics Server 2.1 is an extendable commercial product that adapts as your data structures evolve, giving you consistent access to flexible data visualization, and giving you intelligence you can act on.

System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2012 beta is here!  The goal of this post is to demonstrate how to configure .Net Application Performance Monitoring in SCOM 2012, and then analyze that data with IT Analytics.

AVIcode Configuration

After SCOM 2012 has been installed and SCOM agents deployed, we then configure Application Performance Monitoring (APM).  All of the necessary agent functionality is now integrated within the SCOM 2012 agent.  All we need to do is configure a monitor to get up and running!

First, APM is .NET exclusive in 2012, so we need to identify and create a monitor for a specific .Net Application.  We click on "Add Monitoring Wizard", as shown on the following screen:

On the first page, we select the type of monitor:

Next, we name the monitor, give a brief description and select and existing Management Pack (MP) or create a new MP. In our example we created a new MP named AVIcode. Please note that the Monitor name cannot be changed once created.

On the next page, we specify what sites we are going to monitor.  The SCOM 2012 agent is able to scan and return .NET compatible applications.  This discovered data populates the component list, making it easier to select which applications to monitor.

In SCOM 2012, AVIcode monitors are specific to the application, regardless of what server it is located on.  To track performance of an application on a specific server, you specify these servers by clicking on the "Search" button in the Monitored Servers section and select any default group or user created groups.

For Server Side Monitoring, we leave the default options and performance event threshold.  We click on the checkbox so we can gather data on the end user experience as well.

Here, we have enabled client side monitoring for the site we are interested in.  We have not excluded any pages at this time.

This next page allows us to refine the monitor even more.

Last page is a summary of the settings.

Now that our monitor is created the final sep is to restart IIS on any servers the monitor applies to in order to enable monitoring.

Out of the box Reporting

The SE Viewer has been brought back in SCOM 2012, see:

The raw performance data about the site can bee seen at the URL http://localhost/AppDiagnostics/ on the SCOM server.

Management Pack reporting is consistent as well:

AVIcode Data Analysis with IT Analytics

To view all the available AVIcode/APM performance data, we create a pivot view where we filter on the "Operations Manager APM Library" and break this down by the available counters.

We filter on the "Avg. Request Time" counter and add "Entity - Name" to see each site we are tracking.

Next, we will convert this in to a chart.

To investigate that API further, I switch back to a table, filter on that App and look at the daily trending.

The 11th of August has an unusual spike.  I'll filter on that date and add "Performance Evaluation Time - Hour" to my table to get more detail.

Looks like this spike was an anomaly.  To see the trending for the remainder of the day, I exclude the "0" hour, and change this table to a chart.

Summary

The tighter integration of .Net Performance Monitoring in to SCOM 2012 will prove very beneficial, and the setup is fairly straight forward.  Once that data has been collected, the OpsMgr cubes in IT Analytics enable you to analyze that APM/AVIcode data in a fast and flexible manner, giving you the insight you need when you need it! 

Bay Dynamics is interested in GreenIT and finding more effective ways to manage and track the power consumption of the Dell servers in our data center.  Using IT Analytics to analyze the power performance data collected by the Dell Management Pack, we can review power usage and find ways to reduce usage over time.

I downloaded the Dell Management Pack from here: http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/solutions/dcsm-openmanage-microsoft-scom-sce.aspx

We installed the Dell Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager to get additional insight in to our Dell infrastructure.  Once this data was reported to Operations Manager, we processed the SCOM data to our IT Analytics cubes to view the available data.

We can see that the the management pack has some great performance data around power consumption, which is the exact data I want to focus on. 

I am interested on how much energy the servers in my data center are using, so I've added the server name to my pivot table, along with the minimum, average and maximum values.  By slicing and dicing the data, I can get deep insight as to how many Watts each server is using. 

Let's visualize this data in a chart and compare these servers.

I can see that my averages are close to the bottom end of power consumption, which is a good thing.  However, I am curious about the spike on my one of my SQL servers.  When did that occur, and could it be a trend?

Rather than following up with my DBAs to build out a complex report that may take several hours to build, I modified my chart so I can filter on the SQL server I am interested in, along with adding dates to see what the daily power consumption. 

More good news!  The two spikes look to be an exception and only occurred across two specific dates.  Filtering on those two dates and adding the hour to the pivot table, I can see this server's hourly power consumption.

With our GreenIT initiative in place, my management was concerned about quantifying our efforts.  We had developed and implemented a plan that we felt was sound, but really needed to understand how these changes effected our data center environment.  The Dell Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager gave us invaluable power consumption data.  By using IT Analytics, I was able to easily navigate this power consumption data and quickly create a number of reports for my management team.  Also, since the report is as dynamic as the data, my management team can review the latest information, when they need it, without having to wait for a new report or additional processing time.