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Recent arrival at labs.eweek.com is the latest version of Entuity’s “Eye of the Storm” 2010 edition. EYE started shipping at the end of last year and starts at $50,000. I haven’t yet used EYE, so if there is someone out there that would like to share your experience, please go to here for your opportunity.
Lately I’ve been wondering to what extent IT infrastructure management is changed by the emergence of virtualization. On the one hand, resource clusters (compute, storage and to a certain extent network) drastically reduce the importance of single machine failure–provided your HA implementation works correctly. Separating workloads from underlying physical resources goes a long way towards reducing the need for immediate troubleshooting. Dragging you tail in to the data center at 3 a.m. just got reserved for more important problems than a failed power supply.
I think network and system management tools will still stand guard as the first line of malfunction alert, but when the infrastructure is supporting virtual machines, the nature of the mission shifts to capacity planning and governance.
As of yet I haven’t had a chance to work with Eye of the Storm, but I’ve covered network and system tools since I started at eWEEK in 1997. Based on a cursory look at the product documentation, it appears that EYE is attempting to bridge the physical and virtual worlds. On the one had it has a firm grasp of the underlying physical infrastructure on which business systems operate. At the same time, it is looking at compliance and cost savings, along with virtual resource utilization.
This is why I’m curious to see what actual EYE users are seeing from their use of the product. Is it helping you introduce virtual machine technology? Does it understand enough of the underlying physical infrastructure to assist your organization in constraining IT costs while still helping you to keep the IT resources running? Is EYE playing a role in your organization’s move to virtual infrastructure?