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Virtualisation and monitoring:
A new approach to SLAs
OGY
One of the most widely discussed topics in IT departments of all shapes
and sizes over the last few years has been around service level management –
much of this focusing on Service Level Agreements. By Chris Akerberg –
TECHNOL President and Chief Operating Officer, Vizioncore.
TION
As IT has made the transition available application if it finally giving IT departments
to being a central component runs at a snail’s pace? the tools to be confident in
of business strategies, In many cases IT SLAs have not their ability to guarantee
ALISA
organisations have been really led to any material certain levels of uptime and
TU
increasingly keen to find ways improvement in the level of performance.
VIR
of measuring the service service delivered by IT teams.
delivered by IT systems and to Often, the SLA has effectively In the physical computing
ensure that they are meeting been a target, agreed on by IT realm, downtime was always a
the needs of the business. and business leaders, that significant headache, not least
represents an acceptable because the unexpected could
SLAs have generally been very balance between what the strike at any time. Many
much focused on uptime – IT business leaders want and associate ‘disaster’ with
departments have been given what IT has felt it can something extraordinary, like a
targets to hit in terms of the realistically deliver. fire or flood, but for many IT
availability of certain professionals the term referred
applications to end-users. In IT teams would still face the to something as mundane as a
theory this seems fairly same old issues in terms of corrupted hard disk or CPU
straightforward in as much as having the resources and failure. If an organisation was
it should be fairly easy to technology available to deliver lucky they might have a
measure uptime. However, the the level of service it would clustering or high-availability
difficulty comes when these like to, and this problem would solution, but the price and
figures are given back to the be compounded by a maintenance associated with
business – if a department hits disconnect between what IT these approaches meant they
its targets does this really might term a good level of were out or reach of many
mean it has delivered what the service and what its customers customers, Faced with server
business requires? might experience. For this rebuilds and tape restores,
reason, many organisations many organisations could
If it fails to reach its targets, have chosen not to implement suddenly be looking at lengthy
does this mean the IT team is SLAs in the strictest sense. periods of downtime for
failing or are there wider issues completely mundane faults.
or perhaps extraneous Virtualisation is a technology
circumstances which can that will potentially herald With virtualisation,
explain the situation? And what significant changes in the applications are no longer tied
can be done to rectify these number of enterprises looking to the hardware supporting
issues – more investment? to introduce SLAs, and in the them, so all of a sudden, an
Newer hardware? More staff? way IT departments can deliver organisation’s response to
Also, while uptime is on these SLAs. In effect, by disaster recovery situations can
important, end users are making computing be far swifter – take the
equally concerned about environments more flexible original virtual machine, or a
performance – what good is an and fluid, virtualisation is backup copy of it, and start it
MAR/APR 09 WWW.SNSEUROPE.COM
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