Netuitive SI for VMware Helps IT Accurately Monitor its Virtualized Environments

Real-time analysis software analyzes performance, factors out virtualization complexity

• By James E. Powell
• 03/12/2007

Netuitive, Inc. today launched its strategic push into virtualization by releasing Netuitive SI for VMware, a self-learning, self-configuring management solution for virtualized environments. The product automatically tracks and analyzes complex interdependencies and dynamic nature in virtual environments to help IT identify anomalies, then factor out such variability as it monitors IT performance.

As George Hamilton, director of enterprise infrastructure research for Yankee Group, notes, “The elements in a virtual environment are highly interdependent. Trying to understand the meaning and impact of their relationships to one another is humanly impossible.”

Netuitive points to an industry survey in which IT administrators report they are already spread thin monitoring their physical environments, with 41 percent of respondents in large organizations saying they receive 100 to as many as 5,000 alerts per day, of which at least half (and usually more) are false-positives. This can lead IT professionals to turn off such alerts because they are time-consuming to address.

With monitoring of existing physical systems already problematic, IT faces additional complications when virtualization is added to the mix. Netuitive SI for VMware, the company’s first virtualization solution, optimizes IT’s understanding of its environment to eliminate false positives due to virtualization.

The company says that once its product is installed, it self-learns and cross-correlates the performance characteristics of the virtual infrastructure, analyzing each virtual machine, host server, and resource pool. This allows IT to optimally allocate its resources and set a new baseline. In addition, the program can forecast performance degradation up to two hours in advance

Netuitive isolates root causes and identifies the misbehaving virtual machines. It suggests (but does not take) corrective actions, Nicola Sanna, president and CEO of Netuitive, told Enterprise Systems.

Netuitive SI for VMware includes several features that provide performance management capabilities in a virtual environment, including:

The Netuitive SI for VMware costs is $5,000 per host server and $200 per virtual machine; it will be available April 2. Further information is available at http://www.netuitive.com.