What are the key metrics and indicators to monitor in a data center virtualization project?

Data center virtualization is the process of creating and managing virtual versions of physical resources, such as servers, storage, network, and applications. This can improve efficiency, scalability, availability, and security of data centers, but it also requires careful monitoring and management to ensure optimal performance and avoid potential issues. In this article, we will discuss some of the key metrics and indicators to monitor in a data center virtualization project, and how they can help you achieve your goals and overcome challenges.

1 Resource utilization

One of the main benefits of data center virtualization is that it allows you to consolidate and optimize the use of your physical resources, reducing costs and energy consumption. However, this also means that you need to monitor how your virtual resources are consuming the underlying hardware resources, such as CPU, memory, disk, and network. You need to track the resource utilization of each virtual machine (VM), host, cluster, and data store, and compare it with the allocated and available capacity. This can help you identify and prevent resource contention, overprovisioning, underutilization, and bottlenecks that can affect the performance and availability of your virtualized environment.

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Robert Safadi-P.h.D

Senior leader in IT, Program, project management, security, AI Smart Cities and Cloud
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This topic is excellent virtualization is great especially when these data centers become touchless data center with automation and supervision by senior data center engineers. Virtualization make life easier if you do it right. HW is cheap today vs 20 years ago, memory disk space even CPU's and rack mounted servers. I have built the first rouchless data center abroad no such data center exists in USA. Work orders and contract are monitored and tasks are executed in virtual workspace.

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2 Availability and uptime

Another key benefit of data center virtualization is that it can enhance the availability and uptime of your critical applications and services, by enabling features such as high availability (HA), fault tolerance (FT), live migration (vMotion), and disaster recovery (DR). However, these features also depend on the proper configuration and monitoring of your virtual infrastructure, such as the network connectivity, storage replication, backup and restore, and failover mechanisms. You need to monitor the availability and uptime of each VM, host, cluster, and data store, and check for any errors, failures, or interruptions that can compromise the reliability and continuity of your virtualized environment.

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Robert Safadi-P.h.D

Senior leader in IT, Program, project management, security, AI Smart Cities and Cloud
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If data centers have redundancy in every aspect of operations with HA and DR. Configured properly as Active Active or active passive with state of the art monitoring tools. Then you apply event driver counter measures using automation and enterprise agent to resolve error logs and service failures then operation will be optimize Disks are monitoring and replaced as needed by tech visits upon failure or error detect it's a mater of plug and play remove suspected drive plug a new and walk away.

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3 Performance and latency

Another key benefit of data center virtualization is that it can improve the performance and latency of your applications and services, by enabling features such as load balancing, resource pooling, scaling, and optimization. However, these features also require the careful monitoring and tuning of your virtual infrastructure, such as the CPU scheduling, memory management, disk I/O, and network traffic. You need to monitor the performance and latency of each VM, host, cluster, and data store, and measure the response time, throughput, and quality of service (QoS) of your virtualized environment. You also need to monitor the performance and latency of the applications and services running on your VMs, and check for any issues or anomalies that can affect the user experience and satisfaction.

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Chris Tresco

Enterprise Solutions Engineer @ SHI
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I disagree with this statement. Virtualization will not increase performance nor will it decrease latency in mission critical applications. While it can add resiliency and affect a better user experience through easier scale out, it adds overhead to each of the metrics listed.

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Robert Safadi-P.h.D

Senior leader in IT, Program, project management, security, AI Smart Cities and Cloud
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In this respect load balancing would have to be addressed by HA and DR while monitoring performance and managing alerts and errors. Once more important from my expoerience is learning first instance of alert and taking immedaite actions to remedy the alert before a failure happens.

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Robert Safadi-P.h.D

Senior leader in IT, Program, project management, security, AI Smart Cities and Cloud
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All of these concerns are dealt with during implementation of data center virtualization reading performance before failures. Having a touchless data center in virtualized settings make humans think of all possible scenaior of alerts and failures. Although, we may miss one or two but thats the learning curve of building a smart virtule data center.

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4 Security and compliance

Another key benefit of data center virtualization is that it can enhance the security and compliance of your data and applications, by enabling features such as encryption, isolation, segmentation, and auditing. However, these features also entail the proper monitoring and management of your virtual infrastructure, such as the access control, firewall, antivirus, patching, and logging. You need to monitor the security and compliance of each VM, host, cluster, and data store, and check for any threats, vulnerabilities, or breaches that can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your virtualized environment. You also need to monitor the security and compliance of the applications and services running on your VMs, and ensure that they meet the relevant standards and regulations.

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Robert Safadi-P.h.D

Senior leader in IT, Program, project management, security, AI Smart Cities and Cloud
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Security is one of the major concerns in virtualization. So to remedy this you apply best practice while inspecting ingress and ourgress packet into the data center using wire and wireless speed inspection tools. We know tcpip is just a network protocol but to address security hardware or MAC addresses is the key to networking. Tracking that with a sophisticated tools can identify threat before they do damage. Building rules around this engine enable touchless counter measures. This would also allow humans to enhance and improve these counter measures. Additionally building tools to stress test and benchmark network health is critical to ensure security compliance. I used to say anything man made can be unmade.

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Robert Safadi-P.h.D

Senior leader in IT, Program, project management, security, AI Smart Cities and Cloud
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All of these concerns are dealt with during implementation of data center virtualization reading performance before failures. Having a touchless data center in virtualized settings make humans think of all possible scenario of alerts and failures. Although, we may miss one or two but that’s the learning curve of building a smart virtual data center.

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5 Cost and ROI

Another key benefit of data center virtualization is that it can reduce the cost and increase the return on investment (ROI) of your data center operations, by enabling features such as automation, orchestration, provisioning, and reporting. However, these features also require the proper monitoring and management of your virtual infrastructure, such as the budgeting, billing, chargeback, and analytics. You need to monitor the cost and ROI of each VM, host, cluster, and data store, and compare it with the actual usage and value of your virtualized environment. You also need to monitor the cost and ROI of the applications and services running on your VMs, and evaluate their efficiency and effectiveness.

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Robert Safadi-P.h.D

Senior leader in IT, Program, project management, security, AI Smart Cities and Cloud
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ROI depends the magnitude of a companies foot print. Small companies may need much smaller foot print and may not make sense if data is sensative. Otherwise virtualization can be a saving but not a big savings. VM's are great for large organizations that have larger server farms and with VM's it become a sensabile path to good ROI. Why invest in HW when it become aboulete in 3-5 years and have to modernize your infrastructure

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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What are the key metrics and indicators to monitor in a data center virtualization project?

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1 Resource utilization

2 Availability and uptime

3 Performance and latency

4 Security and compliance

5 Cost and ROI

6 Here’s what else to consider

Data Center Virtualization

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