System Monitoring: Seeing is Believing for IBM System i Managers

Capability breeds dependence. The more you can do, the more is asked of you. The more time you save, the more time you spend seeking out ways to save more time or money. Improved performance leads to higher expectations. If less really is more, how do you do more with less? Such are the challenges faced by many an IT Manager. If the odds are stacked against you despite your best efforts, perhaps it's time to redress the balance. Effective system monitoring could help you break free of the system shackles and use your System i (iSeries) network to save time and money...just like magic.

Money Trees and Time Machines - Myth Busting

?A powerful, robust network of servers - imagine all we could achieve with that. Think of the money we'll save; think of the time we'll save, think of that time as money and just imagine the savings...' The technologies that support businesses that dare to dream big are built on concepts such as this. The leap to seeing your servers as money trees and time machines isn't so large. This is the company's tool for modern day alchemy, isn't it?

The problem is not the server's ability to reach optimal performance so you can reap the rewards of increased productivity - it's making sure it maintains optimal performance on a 24/7 basis. Add to this the typical problems of a reduction in staff to manage the network and a growing user base that is calling in problems faster than you can identify or resolve them. It could feel as though the very technology that was designed to increase your business productivity takes more people (money) and time (money) to manage. How much is the added productivity really costing you and is increasing the size of your network only multiplying your existing, recurring and unresolved problems?

Calculating the Cost

An underperforming system or network is a wasteful extravagance. Most businesses simply can't afford to profitably operate at less than optimal levels. Problems occurring in the following areas typically take the most time and resource to investigate and resolve or, left unattended, are most likely to lead to extremely serious and costly problems such as a lack of availability on the system.

Case Study

Analysis of problems encountered in the network environment over a three month period at Company X, a large food manufacturer, shows the extent that their underperforming network is costing them. The environment supports 7,000 users with annual revenues of $1.4billion. The cost associated with each of these problems is only representative of the time it takes to investigate and resolve the problem, not the additional expenses of further impact such as a loss of availability or additional disk purchase etc.

Company X is planning on expanding their System i environment through the acquisition of a new food brand. The deal will see them inherit additional servers presently used by the brand. The benefit of additional processing power could be completely undermined by the problems they are experiencing if they are not addressed before the expansion. The central issue to all their problems is a lack of visibility. Without this, they struggle to deal with the evidence of problems without understanding how they occurred or why and stand little chance of increasing their productivity or profitable use of resources. If these problems sound familiar, ask yourself how long your organization could reasonably sustain such a reactive approach to systems management?

All Seeing; All Knowing; All Powerful; All the Time

If system expectations are set at a level that allows for a zero margin of error, IT Managers will have to look to their resources to achieve the seemingly impossible. No system is immune to problems so the solution must lie in the approach to dealing with those problems in the most effective way. Increased visibility will help identify problems but no organization can afford to assign the man power to watch every component at all times and even if they could, it's likely that a few would still slip through the net - we're only human after all.