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Quick. Define IT Resources. Then explain how you can use a software tool within virtualized environments such as VMware, IBM and Sun Solaris to analyze, generate reports and drill down into the virtual machine the same way you might with a physical machine. You might try IT Service Analyzer.

TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer is a rich web application used to detect, investigate and diagnose IT service performance issues. It can analyze and report on IT service performance, drill down from IT services to the infrastructure components that support them to investigate and diagnose service performance issues, and identify the root cause of performance issues. It is also useful in tracking service levels (SLAs) and in providing performance data within a business framework.

IT Service Analyzer offers both real-time and historical performance analysis. Used to automatically detect impending problems, for example, it allows you time to resolve them before they impact the business. All this is based upon TeamQuest's "IT Resource" concept.

IT Resources in Virtual Environments
IT Resources facilitate the combined performance analysis and reporting of multiple, related IT components. By merging performance data from components that implement a particular IT service, performance can be examined and optimized in business terms. IT Resources can be used to analyze performance in ways that make business sense, across whatever technology silos that may exist. It is also possible to drill down from higher-level IT Resources to the actual hardware or software components involved in providing a particular IT service, regardless of where they exist physically or virtually.

IT Resources can include the system, server, VM, application, domain, CPU, operating system, geography, workload and more. They can also be grouped for the purposes of analyzing the performance of all systems in a tier, for example. When a problem is detected in a tier, you can drill down to individual systems with symptoms that are contributing to the problem. Similarly, you can use IT Resources to group the performance from specific workloads on all of the systems.

Workloads, then, allow overall performance for a system to be subdivided in order to analyze and report on such things as how much of a shared server's resources are utilized by a particular business unit. Workloads used in combination with IT Resources make it possible to subdivide and/or combine performance data to allow true enterprise-class IT service analysis and reporting. These IT Resources can represent physical and/or logical components. Further, TeamQuest data collection services can automatically discover IT Resources.

TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer functions in many kinds of virtualized environments. It does automatic discovery with Solaris Zones, IBM Micro-Partitions and VMware ESX Server. With VMware, the host ESX Server and all its guests show up on the IT Service Analyzer IT Resource box automatically. Each VM is displayed and grouped with its host system as well as its physical server.

Report with Analyzer
IT Service Analyzer makes it easy to report on virtual platforms. At a time when virtual server sprawl is becoming an epidemic, TeamQuest facilitates the report-making process and puts all the data on virtual servers at his or her fingertips.

It is a simple matter, for example, to open a report that shows physical resource usage along with virtualization component break-down and process details for Solaris Zones, VMware Virtual Machines and IBM Micro-Partitions. Predefined report templates are harnessed to simplify the process. In essence, a report template is a pattern used to form a report. Such templates contain metric references and chart attributes which can be made available in hundreds of different reports.

While it is possible to make as many customized reports as you desire, a wide selection of predefined report templates are supplied with TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer. The interface makes it easy to set report schedules and create customized reports due to its drag and drop functionality.

When an IT Resource is applied to a report template, for example, the selected IT Resource and all the IT Resources linked to it are searched to see if they contain the metrics specified in the report template. Only those IT Resources that contain the metric references are included in the report. If you inadvertently select resources from Windows and Solaris platforms in the same report only the appropriate metrics will be displayed. Reports are not generated across such platforms due to the different metrics involved.

Selecting the predefined template for Solaris Zones, for instance, shows physical resource usage along with virtualization component break-down and process details for all Solaris Zones. Such a report provides resource usage for the entire physical system and every virtual component within it. The same holds true for the IBM Micro-Partition Template and the VMware ESX Server Report Template.

By installing TeamQuest Manager in each guest, IT Service Analyzer supplies great detail about all processes running in each VM. In addition, VMotion Guest Reports can be generated simply by dragging data onto the report template. This opens the door to a whole new world of performance stats, not generally viewed by capacity planners and performance analysts.

The reason TeamQuest can do this is that its Federated Database architecture doesn't care where the data is stored. Everything related to IT Resources is gathered into the Federated Database. And for the purposes of security, three levels of authentication are provided for the individual user, a group, and the administrator. Thus certain users can have their usage of IT Service Reporter restricted to generating certain sets of data and not others.

Create a New IT Resource for Reporting
Creating a new IT Resource itself is a simple matter. If it is a virtual resource, right-mouse to create a new IT Resource under Server Virtualization, provide a name for the new IT Resource, and select an IT Resource type. Such IT Resources can be created for each type of virtualization and for each physical system or IT component.

Reporting is made easy as IT Resources are just dragged and dropped into the appropriate report template and a new report is ready. Thus ad hoc reporting is rapid. In addition, IT Resources can be created for additional physical systems using the import facility. TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer allows XML import of such data. Information from a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) can be imported to the TeamQuest Federated Database via XML.

IT Resources can also be associated with report templates using IT Resource types. An IT Resource type defines common attributes shared across like IT Resources such as report templates, performance metrics and a specific graphical icon to identify that type of IT Resource.

To accomplish this, select the IT Resource Definer and an appropriate icon and associate it with a report template. Note that icons are available as part of TeamQuest or you can make/import your own.

Server virtualization comes in different forms and analysis of these diverse technologies can be confusing. TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer makes analyzing these environments simple and easy. It helps IT to:

• Identify and diagnose IT service performance issues
• Analyze problematic IT services or multi-tiered applications
• Detect anomalies automatically
• Uncover cause-effect relationships
• Identify cycles and patterns in system behavior