Using Systems Capacity Data for Business Intelligence ( 4 of 9)

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

The advent of virtualization has added to the types of system metrics over the years, once upon a time we would never have had to worry about ballooning or dynamic memory balancing. Below are some of the ‘new’ metrics available:

CPU                                                          

·        Avg. CPU Usage in MHz

·        CPU Ready Time

·        Hypervisor Logical Processor %

·        Hypervisor Virtual Processor %

Memory

·        Avg. Memory Usage in KB

·        Balloon KB

·        Swap Used KB

·        Consumed

·        Active

·        Dynamic Memory Balancer

·        Dynamic Memory Pressure

·        VM Vid Partition

I/O

·        Queue Latency

·        Kernel Latency

·        Device Latency

·        Virtual Storage Device

·        Virtual Network Adapter

KPIs can be any time series data that provides valuable information and it is for you to determine which are the most valuable to your organization.

The metric chosen for the chart above is not a system related metric it is a business metric based on revenue, this could just as easily be based on something like transaction count. Bringing in business data gives you the advantage as you can then view business metrics in the context of your system data.

The integrator feature in athene allows you to integrate all sorts of time series data so when you choose your metrics you are not just restricted to basing your KPI’s on pure system data – this allows you to introduce metrics that are also important to your stakeholders.

I’ll be showing you some more example reports on Wednesday.

Dale Feiste

Consultant