Upgrade Planning & Simulation
Planning and simulation of resource upgrades with automated dependency detection
PHASES
see Our Methodology
PHASE 1: Planning
One time effort:
- Introduction / explanation of concept,
- preparation of required systems,
- installation and configuration of data collection software DC360Octopus.
PHASE 2: Data Collection
The data collection software DC360Octopus is able to collect HW/SW configuration data, log data and monitoring/performance data from several resources like servers, operating systems, network devices (SAN and IP), storage systems, virtualization layers, databases and applications (see Supported Resource List).
The data collection task can be manually triggered or it can be scheduled.
The output is a ZIP package with several unstructured files.
This package is processed afterwards by the analyzing software DC360Dolphin.
PHASE 3: Analysis
The data package - collected by DC360Octopus - is first of all transformed to structured data by the analysis software DC360Dolphin.
Afterwards hundreds of checks are performed to detect the issue causing the incident.
As a last step the software is preparing the report.
DC360Dolphin is available as Saas (Software as a Service) or as integrated part of the DC360Manatee VM.
PHASE 4: Result / Decision
The Root Cause Analytics service results in a prioritized and detailed report:
- Root cause description with change instructions,
- additional recommendations with change instructions,
- references.
Typically, this report is explained by and discussed with our experts.
A demo report can be found here > link (login required).
The report is the basis to decide what has to be implemented.
The recommendations can as well be automatically transferred to available Management Systems (Incident Management, Problem & Change Management, DCIM, ...).
Optionally DC360Manatee is visualizing the information. Based on the license level it comes with integrated DC360Octopus (data collector), DC360Dolphin (analyzer) and several additional Monitoring & Management Systems.
PHASE 5: Implementation
The implementation can be performed by KnowledgeRiver or the operation team... or a combination of both.
Key objective is to know dependencies in advance, so the overall interoperability is still given after upgrading resource microcodes or software. This avoids so called 'unsupported configurations'.
The Upgrade Planning/Simulation service is fully automating the phases Data Collection, Analysis and Result (additional information see above).
Our Software Products are replacing manual efforts what makes the entire process time-saving and cost-efficient.
The result - a detailed upgrade plan - is discussed with our experts.
The collected actual state - HW/SW configuration data - is put into a causal relationship to the target configuration. Dependencies are simulated, planned and checked against:
- Vendor interoperability matrices,
- release notes,
- documentations like white papers.
We recommend to perform the Upgrade Planning/Simulation service at least prior to any major release change.