SolarWinds recently announced a pair of product updates for its Storage Resource Monitor (SRM) and Server and Application Monitor (SAM) solutions, bringing them each to version 6.6. The updates offer broader and deeper
performance monitoring capabilities across physical and virtual
infrastructures, particularly in hybrid environments. To dig in deeper, I spoke with Brandon Shopp, Vice President of Product Strategy for Systems
Management at SolarWinds.
VMblog: What are the key updates included
in the recently announced SAM 6.6 and SRM 6.6 updates?
Brandon Shopp: The new updates to SolarWinds'
Storage
Resource Monitor (SRM) include extending support to a broader
range of leading all-flash arrays, including Dell EMC Unity, HPE Nimble
Storage, IBM AIX FlashSystem 9000, and INFINIDAT InfiniBox. With this, SRM 6.6
enables resource monitoring across more infrastructures in multi-vendor
environments for a wider set of customers. The extended support also gives
SolarWinds a broader set of options for deploying hyper-converged
infrastructure.
SolarWinds'
Server and
Application Monitor (SAM) 6.6 provides end-to-end visibility and
performance monitoring of server and applications across multiple data centers,
remote locations, or the cloud. The latest enhancements deliver application
dependency functionality that allows customers to automatically discover network-based
relationships, between applications and servers, by connecting communications
at the application process level.
VMblog: What additional capabilities do SAM
6.6. and SRM 6.6 offer users beyond the built-in functionality provided by
vendors?
Shopp: SRM 6.6
offers users a multi-vendor approach, normalizing data across many vendors, and
showcasing this data in one dashboard with a user-friendly web interface and
alerts. Unlike traditional storage resource management solutions, SRM is easy
to use and provides functional depth at a reasonable price. With SRM, users can
quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve storage performance problems and outages.
It's easy to use and maintain, so users can spend more time managing
infrastructure. The latest enhancements in SRM 6.6 extend these features to a
broader set of leading all-flash arrays.
SAM 6.6
offers a similar streamlined value, helping users monitor the performance of
server and application across a variety of data centers, remote locations, or
the cloud. IT professionals can typically download and deploy SAM in one hour,
and its ease of use eliminates the need to invest in personnel training and
management overhead. Organizations experience a return on investment typically
in a few months, including reduced cost and impact of downtime, faster time to
resolution, and time savings in diagnosing application issues through proactive
alerting.
VMblog: How can SAM's new application
dependency visualization capability impact the overall performance of business
applications?
Shopp: IT
professionals can leverage the new connection details function, a unique
capability to visualize server and network metrics of specific application
connections within an environment. This function gives users a fast way to
visualize data on metrics such as packet loss, latency, network status, and
more, helping to reduce time required to identify the root causes of
application issues.
For
example, a customer running a large implementation of SAP can view the
dependencies between the SAP instances (application layer) and associated
Oracle DB instances (database layer), to understand if performance issues are
associated with server resource utilization or application to database
connectivity.
VMblog: How do the upgrades to SRM and SAM
enhance SolarWinds' Orion platform overall?
Shopp: SolarWinds'
Orion Platform is
designed to be a modular enterprise software. Users can start with the product
they immediately need and add more as desired, all while maintaining
consolidated metrics and data in one view, with advanced alerts that enable
quicker root cause identification. Separately, the Orion Platform is also
scalable, allowing users to monitor hundreds of thousands of elements across
multiple locations.
SRM 6.6 and
SAM 6.6 are integrated with other SolarWinds products, including Virtualization
Manager, through the Orion Platform. This data integration enables end-to-end
relationship mapping from application and virtualization through storage.
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Brandon Shopp, Vice President of Product Strategy for Systems
Management, SolarWinds
Brandon Shopp has
been SolarWinds' Vice President of Product Strategy for Systems Management
since February 2018. He served as SolarWinds' Director of Product Management
since November 2011, assuming the title and responsibilities of Senior Director
of Product Management in July 2013. Previously, Shopp was the Vice President of
Product Management at AlienVault, from August 2016 until February 2018 and the
Senior Director of Products at Embarcadero Technologies, from July 2015 until
August 2016. Shopp has a proven success record in product delivery and revenue
growth, with a wide variety of software product, business model, M&A, and
go-to-market strategies experience. Shopp holds a B.B.A. from Texas A&M
University.