Clouds with Metrics

Clouds with metrics - random musing

Have you ever seen a cloud in the sky with a metric?  I bet you haven't thought through this, but questions like:

• How big is that cloud
• What type of cloud is it 
• How fast is it moving and in what direction
• Is it forming into a thunderstorm 
• Are we expecting rain 

These are all metrics, or also know as the cloud's characteristics.  It likely isn't as important to you unless you are a meteorologist or a farmer but everyone is effected by

When you setup your private cloud, hybrid cloud or use a public cloud these questions are still important other than the context has changed.

• How big is cloud (sizing and capacity within your design)
• What type of Cloud is it (Where is the application residing in the public, private)
• How fast is it moving and in what direction (performance, is the system doing what it needs to do)
• Is it forming into a thunderstorm (Realtime performance metrics, and capacity planning, trending)
• Are we expecting rain (positive or negative results based on your point of view)

Compute Clouds are there to serve, Physical clouds are also there to serve.

• Provide shade and relief from heat or cold (help alleviate a shortage of resources)
• Provide moisture (still help alleviating a shortage of resources)
• Show the direction of the wind (Provide a source of collection of performance and statistics to see growth or reduction in systems)
• Prove we still have an atmosphere :) (Prove we still need IT)

I have been working quite a bit lately with performance monitoring tools, namely VMware vRealize Operations Manager (vROps) and VMware Log Insight and have really thinking more and more about the science of Data. Whether it is in a closed system (Infrastructure or application monitoring) or you are looking at an open system (system or application automation) all things are important.   Monitoring and trending are huge and understanding how we got there is like studying history, trying hard not to make the same mistake twice.  

I wonder if the weather forecaster had a monitoring solution the same as we have, would they get the forecast wrong as many times as they do.  I guess we may never know. 

Newsletter is a little behind but should hopefully be caught up by May.

See you all soon.