SolarWinds, a provider of IT management software, has announced SolarWinds Virtualization Manager 7, a new release of the tool that helps virtualization administrators analyze and act on historical trends, respond to active issues, and prevent future problems through predictive analytics from a single console.
According to Gerardo Dada, vice president, product marketing, SolarWinds, there are three main key functions required to manage a virtual data environment: the ability to analyze historical usage trends and patterns to reclaim underutilized capacity, the ability to troubleshoot current problems to fix them quickly, and the ability to gain insight from past issues that have occurred to head them off before they emerge again.
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager 7 continuously evaluates environments and workload patterns, recommends possible actions to correct and prevent issues, and, after confirmation by an administrator, applies fixes immediately or allows them to be scheduled at a later time.
For example, by analyzing past usage of resources, an organization might choose to reallocate underutilized capacity, said Dada, noting that he has seen organizations reclaim up to 25% of their virtualization resources with the tool.
In addition, when dealing with a current issue, an administrator might receive an alert that a VM is at 98% capacity, allowing them time to reallocate CPU to the workload.
And, in terms of planning ahead, Dada noted, the software can analyze historical trends to determine patterns, such as an accounting workload that runs weekly getting slower, and needing an adjustment to work properly in the future.
These capabilities are not only educational for novices but can also help experts be more effective since it allows them to focus their attention on more difficult issues, said Dada. “It is a really powerful tool because it helps virtualization managers to take action as far as reclaiming resources, instead of being reactive, and it is done in a way that is simple and informative.”
In addition, Dada noted, because Virtualizaton Manager is integrated with the SolarWinds Orion Platform, virtual resource performance data is incorporated with data from SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor, SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer and SolarWinds Web Performance Monitor into the platform’s Application Stack Environment View for insights about workloads up and down the stack.
More information is available from SolarWinds about Virtualization Manager 7.