Introducing ControlUp 7.2: Virtual Expert Enhancements, Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor Management

If you’ve used ControlUp, you know its power to help monitor, troubleshoot and analyze your IT infrastructure. We just raised the bar again with ControlUp 7.2.

We will publish more details in the coming weeks, but here are some highlights of this release.

Virtual Expert Auto-Generated Views for Root Cause Analysis

Modern IT environment is a patchwork of virtual and physical systems from multiple vendors. ControlUp has always helped find root causes by connecting to each system, “normalizing” the monitored data, and presenting your complex environment in a clean, logical view. When a metric is in the “red status”, you can follow the issue by double-clicking across your entire infrastructure from screen to screen. During this investigation process, wouldn’t it be cool if each screen you’re jumping into automatically restructured itself to present data that’s most relevant to the specific “red status” you are investigating?

Well, that’s exactly what the Virtual Expert in 7.2 does! When you double-click on a stressed metric, the column list, column list order, column sorting, and row sorting of the new screen is auto-generated to best match the issue you are investigating. For example, you double-click on a cell with unusually high CPU usage, Virtual Expert will automatically configure the new screen to display the processes running inside that session, and sort it by CPU consumption in highest to lowest sort order. How cool is that?

View Updated in real time, 3-dot visual indicator where Virtual Expert guidance is available

Click on 3-dots for more information, then click on Virtual Expert suggested navigation link

New auto-generated, auto-sorted view with only the columns relevant to what you are investigating

Again, how cool is that?!

Virtual Expert Assessment of Your Environment

ControlUp Insights Environment Assessment presents aggregate data about your resource allocation and consumption, activity trends, and other findings for the previous month. Virtual Expert’s assessment report gives you insights into many different kinds of information, such as usage of application and OS, length of sessions, heavy users, abnormality in usage patterns, etc.

Accurate snapshot of your environment, with the least amount of effort

New Advanced Trigger Based on Single Metric

In previous versions, if you wanted to be notified of a systems event, you had to first define a stress level setting based on a column of interest. With 7.2 you have an “Advanced Trigger” option which supports trigger conditions that involve changes to a single cell. For example, you can define a trigger to notify you when only the disk space runs low on a server, without affecting the server’s overall Stress Level metric.

Taking this a bit further, you can now also be notified based on changes to metrics that are purely textual. For example, you can define a trigger that says “notify me if any server goes into maintenance mode, such as ‘Unregistered’.”

Manage Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor, ControlUp-Style

With most ControlUp releases we add support for a new system that can now be managed natively. ControlUp 7.2 added native support for Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)

By combining Nutanix Prism API data with information our agent collects inside each guest OS, Controlup gives you an end-user level view that’s simply not possible in other ways. You know exactly what a user is experience pre-, mid-, and post-migration. Secondly, your Nutanix environment is managed in context of non-Nutanix elements. If there is a need to improve performance or troubleshoot an issue, you can navigate up/down/sideways throughout the Nutanix environment of hosts, VMs, data stores and virtual disks. ControlUp is the single-pane-of-glass for all your monitoring, troubleshooting, and analytics needs.

Fully integrated Nutanix AHV support within the powerful single pane of glass

And The Rest…

There were many “under the hood” upgrades that makes 7.2 an even more amazing release:

  • Improved NetScaler monitoring.
    • Easier identification of resources while monitoring NetScalers in real time and while configuring incident triggers. This is done by adding NetScaler appliance IP address to child windows.
    • Additional metrics for High Availability, such as node state, heartbeat rates, sync failure notification, propagation status, etc.
    • LB Service Group State status for a quick assessment of the effective state of all the bound services in that group.
    • Additional NetScaler management actions, such as enable/disable Service Groups and SBA on all child entities.
  • Better audit trail to identify the user who performed actions via third-party APIs for hypervisors, AWS, NetScalers, etc. Through the Shared Credentials feature, multiple ControlUp users can leverage a shared service account for read-only activities. But when the admin performs a management action, ControlUp will prompt the user for their privileged personal account login, and the audit trail will be created to track the person and their actions.
  • Lastly, a new color theme selection capability. Jedi? Dark Side? Either way, you gain The Force with ControlUp!

Can’t wait? Ping us and get on the beta program now!