Review: Cross-Domain Monitoring

The BalancePoint resource map is a treasure trove. By traversing a connection map, managers can trace physical and virtual environments and the links between them. The links are derived from application connections into virtualized environments, data resources and physical devices. Without the visibility BalancePoint provides in these maps, test results can quickly turn into a guessing game.

Akorri sells BalancePoint as a network appliance. The software is agentless, so it works by collecting server data from remote protocols such as WMI and SSH. The agentless connection makes the implementation process quite easy. Solution providers only need to identify devices and systems running on a network and allow BalancePoint to reach them over standard network protocols. BalancePoint can collect data from SMI-S, which is a protocol for storage arrays. Through SMI-S, the software can collect complete storage schemas and configurations of SANs. Since application performance is the information of most value, BalancePoint is also able to connect to application protocols and collect information on internal resources used by components.

Once connected, BalancePoint's database starts to collect information and grow. Akorri has trademarked the phrase "application fingerprint" to mean measuring of application workload over virtual environments. The data collected is part of a baseline that is then used by its analytical processes to run performance projections and make recommendations.

Rather than compete with VirtualCenter or other tools, BalancePoint complements them. By providing consolidated views of applications running on VMware, the visibility of these other tools is increased.

The BalancePoint resource map is a treasure trove. By traversing a connection map, managers can trace physical and virtual environments and the links between them. The links are derived from application connections into virtualized environments, data resources and physical devices. Without the visibility BalancePoint provides in these maps, test results can quickly turn into a guessing game.