Monitoring cloud applications presents unique challenges due to the scale and diversity of infrastructure resources and applications. A monitoring-as-a-service solution should scale dynamically, have minimal impact on monitored resources, and allow for customization of monitored metrics. Key benefits include end-to-end monitoring, ease of use, reliability, and cost effectiveness.

1. Monitoring Cloud
Applications
Amit Pathak
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2. Agenda
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ontext
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hallenges
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onitoring-as-a-Service
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ey Highlights
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enefits

3. Context
Are agreed service levels met?
Overall how many applications are healthy vs non-healthy?
Is the health getting worse over time?
Are the business functions being performed as expected?
Do you have capacity within applications?
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4. Context
Cloud Complexity
 Scale and diversity of the infrastructure
- Servers, network devices, storages, etc.
- Hundreds, even thousands of machines
 Massive number of user applications
- Catastrophic consequence of failure / security breach /
performance degradation
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5. Context
Resource utilization is tightly coupled with cost incurred by
customers
Monitoring is indispensable
 Availability, failure detection
 Performance, provisioning
 Security, anomaly detection
 Application-level monitoring
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6. Challenges - Overview
Inherits performance monitoring challenges of virtualized world
End user response time – a primary metric
Mechanism to collect data from various sources
Managing agents
Monitor, identify & heal bottlenecks
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7. Challenges - Overview
Detect performance degradation:
 Single malfunctioning application on a guest has a potential to
degrade performance of host and other resources
 Resource contention among applications executing on VMs may
hamper performance
 Virtual machines not configured with sufficient resource to
handle workload
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8. Challenges – A Closer Look
Source: Monitis
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9. Challenges – A Closer Look
System
Challenges
User Cloud
Challenges Monitoring
Network
Challenges
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10. Challenges – System Level
Efficient Scalability:
Monitor tasks – tens of thousands
Cost effective - minimize resource usage
 Facilitating service
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11. Challenges – System Level
Efficient Scalability:
Massive Scale
 Monitor inherent large scale tasks
 Large number of users
- Infrastructure monitoring
- Application monitoring
 Monitor tasks with high cost e.g. Resources with high consumption
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12. Challenges – System Level
Monitoring QoS Assurance:
SLA management
Application security
 Federated identity of cloud applications
 Secured integration of cloud apps with on-premise apps
Multi-tenant environment
 Authorization & access control
Monitor contention between monitoring tasks
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13. Challenges – User Level
Continuous violation detection
 Need of different detection model - Dynamically add/remove
servers based on performance
 Achieve efficiency at the same time
Short-term burst Persistent violation
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14. Challenges – Network Level
Resource-aware monitoring fabric
 Monitoring the functioning of both systems and applications running
on large-scale distributed systems
 Continuous collecting detailed attribute values
- A large number of nodes
- A large number of attributes
 Overhead increases quickly as the system, application and
monitoring tasks scales up
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15. Performance Monitoring
Understand performance of virtual infrastructure – outside in
approach
Troubleshoot bottlenecks
Plan future needs
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16. Key Parameters To Monitor
CPU
Memory
Network
Disk
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17. CPU
CPU saturated?
High Ready time
 Problematic if it is sustained for high periods
Possible contention for CPU resources among VMs
 Workload Variability?
 Resource limits on VMs?
 Actual over commitment?
High SwapWait time
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18. Memory
Swap in rate
Swap out rate
Swap used
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19. Disk
What should I look for to figure out if disk is an issue?
 IOPs?
 Bandwidth (read/write)?
 Latencies?
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20. Network
What should I look for to figure out if network is an issue?
 Packate rate?
 Bandwidth (read/write)?
 NIC status?
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21. Monitoring-as-a-Service
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22. Monitoring-as-a-Service
Similar to other cloud services
 Database service (e.g. SimpleDB, Datastore)
 Storage service (e.g. S3)
 Application service (e.g. AppEngine)
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23. High Level Solution
Applications, Events & Alerts
Server – CPU, Customization
memory, disk IO
Packate rate, Gather data from
bandwidth, NICs various resources
Trend analysis
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24. Monitoring-as-a-Service
External monitoring Web server, file server, mail server, VOIP
Server monitoring CPU, memory, processes, storage
Network monitoring Http, SSH, SNMP, discovery
Transaction Multi-step apps, workflows
monitoring
Cloud monitoring Track running instances, auto-deploy,
usage
Web Traffic monitor Visitor, page views
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25. Key Highlights
Scale dynamically
Have minimum (or no) impact on the monitored infrastructure
Should be portable and has to be light weight
Easy feature customization. Not all metrics will need to be
monitored in the cloud for everyone
Heavy network based monitoring tools may not be a good fit
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26. Key Highlights
Comprehensive monitoring of resource performance and
availability
 Applications, databases, middleware and web servers
Provide innovative ideas to fetch data as business need grows
 Dashboard, views, reports
Co-relate information from different sources
Trends analysis
Predict bottlenecks
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27. Benefits
End-to-end support
Easy to use & maintain
Reliable service
Feature customization
Cost effective
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28. Summary
 Cloud is complex; monitoring needs are indispensable
 End user response time is primary focus
 Cloud services must be treated differently to on-premise
software when it comes to systems monitoring
 Do not rely on vendors completely. If SLAs are serious,
maintain your own logs
 Existing tools are good but use programmatic APIs for specific
needs
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29. Thank You
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30. References
• http://developer.vmware.com
• http://www.cc.gatech.edu/
• http://portal.monitis.com/index.php/resources
• http://www.hyperic.com/
• http://mypublicstrangeworld.posterous.com/cloud-monitoring-services-a-resource-guide
• http://www.itpro.co.uk/630655/dont-leave-cloud-monitoring-to-vendors-expert-warns
• http://www.virtualizationpractice.com
• http://virtualization.sys-con.com/
• http://blog.newrelic.com/
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