NimBUS for Real-time Monitoring and Performance Reporting

Summary:

NimBUS provides broad capabilities for monitoring IT infrastructure components and application services in real-time, helping to ensure that key applications remain available and deliver peak performance. The NimBUS solution includes a broad set of easily-configured technology probes for monitoring a wide range of technology components across diverse platforms including Web servers, application servers, database servers, networks, and critical enterprise applications.

Real-time visibility into IT infrastructure performance is a critical requirement for organizations because it it enables IT professionals to do an improved job of meeting application service level targets. Instead of post-even root cause analysis and correction of actual system problems, IT staff are able to leverage a comprehensive, end-to-end view of the infrastructure to discern potential problems in the making, and implement corrective actions to avert system outages or performance degradation.

Primary Features

Comprehensive set of more than 100 real-time monitoring probes
Configurable threshold and alarm settings
Customizable alarm dashboards for operations, executives, customers
Performance and trend reporting to assess both historical and real-time quality-of-service (QoS)

Additional Features

Real-time alarm dashboards ensure immediate attention is devoted to the most pressing system issues and degrading conditions
Out-of-the-box monitoring probes are available for the following servers and applications:

Application
Web
Email
Directory
Databases
Networks

End-to-end response times may be monitored for the following end-user transaction types:

Client/server
Terminal server
Mainframe
Web-based

Real-time Alarm Dashboards

Monitoring metrics and information collected and aggregated by NimBUS can be displayed in multiple, configurable operations and business views. Operations dashboards display real-time information for technology components and application services – by geography, by operator, or by element.

Executive dashboards can be customized to display summary data for both historical and real-time application or business process availability and status. And for service providers, dashboards can be configured for performance information relevant to service consumers and customers.

Specific dashboard features include:

Multi-layer dashboards for business service and technology component drill-down, configurable by geography, operator, and business/application service
Dashboard design toolkit to build custom views
Filtered alarming to display infrastructure conditions/events by severity
Web services API for alarm integration into Web portals

Performance Reporting

NimBUS provides rich reporting capabilities for system performance, including HTML reports for short- and long-term trends. Users can define ad hoc quality-of-service data queries for any time period in minutes. Filters may be applied for any operating period and to mask unrequired data elements.

Specific reporting features include:

GUI wizard to create HTML reports in minutes
2- or 3-dimensional report views and graphs
Auto-schedule and publish reports to Web portals
Import/export capabilities to Microsoft Excel

Probe Coverage

NimBUS includes more than 100 real-time monitoring probes covering a diverse range of infrastructure components and elements across a multitude of technology platforms. The probes have been developed as lightweight agents, imposing neglible system resources upon the components they instrument. Areas of coverage include:

Network (routers, switches, firewalls)
Server (UNIX, Windows, Linux, Netware, AS/400)
Database (Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Sybase, Informix)
Application/Service (Citrix, SAP, IBM WebSphere, Lotus Domino/Notes)
End-user (transaction response)

NimBUS enables drag-and-drop deployment of probe from its administrator module, employing point-and-click functionality to set polling intervals, define thresholds, select QoS metrics, customize alarm messages, and set severity levels. In addition, the product includes a software development kit to develop custom probes for applications developed using Java, Perl, and Visual Basic.

Notifications and Alarms

NimBUS offers sophisticated notification and alarming protocols, providing basic notification by email, pager, sms as well as automated alarm escalation based on pre-defined selection criteria. In addition, the product provides rich alarm correlation to prevent duplicated notifications.

Specific features include:

Integration with 3rd party tools (service desk applications, management frameworks)
API for custom applications
SDK for custom monitors, custom integrations

Finally, NimBUS real-time performance monitoring has been developed upon an open and highly scalable system architecture that can be deployed to manage environments encompassing tens to thousands of networked devices and infrastructure components.

"At IBBS, we are responsible for monitoring hundreds of service level agreements for our broadband/cable customers, said Cedric Brown, Vice President of Operations at IBBS."

"In the past, we have struggled with traditional management tools and had to supplement them with hours and days of manual effort, pulling together Excel-based reports. Now with NimBUS, we can put in place new customer SLAs in minutes, reducing our SLA administration down to virtually zero"

Cedric Brown, Network Operations Director, IBBS.