Akorri's BalancePoint 3.5 Manages Virtual Work Loads

Akorri updated its BalancePoint 3.5, which models physical and virtual applications to better manage resources, now includes analytics for virtual machines running under Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor and VMware's ESX Server in a single system. In addition, BalancePoint is both a VMware-ready management tool able to work with vSphere 4, and one that plugs into and extracts information from Virtual Machine Manager in Microsoft's System Center.

The new version provides an intelligent early warning for stressed disks designed to alert organizations about dangerously increasing loads on a disk. It has expanded storage support, including support for NetApp V-series, HP SVSP, and HDS Dynamic Provisioning (it already supported storage systems from IBM, HP, Dell EqualLogic and EMC).

About six months ago, senior systems engineer Bryan Snyder went looking for an IT management solution that would help reduce the amount of time it takes him to troubleshoot and to perform day-to-day activities. Snyder, who works for Millennium Pharmacy Systems, says his search was motivated by self-interest. "I perform all the virtualization, SAN administration and server administration, so over time I am not able to spend as much time on the details as I would like throughout a given week."

It's probably a good thing Snyder was so selfish. Now, the pharmacy services provider to the long-term care industry has a management tool that's designed to monitor all the Chicago-based company's production servers, both virtual and physical--specifically those that are connected to its SAN--which is Millennium's central point of storage.

Snyder is using Akorri's BalancePoint to keep tabs on Millennium's mix of virtual and physical servers, which includes production SQL physical and virtual servers, plus a wide variety of other VMs that perform production tasks. "Before, I didn't have the necessary time to ensure that our storage was being used effectively or whether we were having storage issues... if someone came to me with performance issues it could take me days to find out the problem," Snyder says. "I had a lot of different tools, but not a single device that would tie all that information together. And it would consume a lot of time to find out the problem and fix the issue."With BalancePoint, Snyder says he spends 15-30 minutes a day to check on how memory is being used and look for any other issues that may come up. Earlier this week, Akorri announced a new version of BalancePoint that includes the Predictor for Storage feature designed to help organizations find and fix storage issues before they impact application workloads or lead to outages. Based on analytics and historical trending, Predictor can ID the bullies who are causing the problems as well as the victims--who or what is being affected--and then provide an alert and advise the administrator where and when to take action, according to the company.

Millenium's Snyder, who says he'll be putting the new version into production "shortly," says the Predictor capability will make his job even easier. "I now no longer have to look at three to four tools to get all this information. I log into one. With Predictor, the information is already there, but it will let me know before something becomes a problem. Nobody likes to be reactive," he says.

"The BalancePoint solution gives me confidence. I don't have a co-worker or a technical resource I can bounce ideas off of, so what really helps me is by spending a couple minutes each day I can go in there and I gain confidence that I'm on top of things."