VIRTUALIZATION VS VIRTUAL MACHINES

Virtualization is the process or system that separates the physical hardware from its operating system to provide greater utilization of IT resources and a more flexible system.

Virtual machines are a software representation of a physical computer with its own set of virtual hardware within which an operating system and applications are loaded.

VIRTUALIZATION CHALLENGES

Developing a virtualized system can have its benefits, but the hidden cost associated with such a system is seldom considered.

• A company seeking to implement a virtualized system must be prepared to consider altering the current status quo, managing all performance activities, and take into account the scalability limitations.

1. How to Monitor Windows Log Files with PowerShell on Monitis
Lately, Monitis has been blogging a series of ‘how-to’ posts on everything from working with VBScripts to 101 tips to MySQL tuning and optimization. Continuing that tradition, here’s a short post on monitoring the content of log files with PowerShell on Monitis.
Using custom scripts, you can monitor not only numeric metrics but other kind of outcomes as well. This post goes over several examples.

2. More Innovation from Monitis: Smart Agent Perl Installer
We want to improve our monitoring tools constantly. That’s why we’re always posting about new ways to use Monitis or adding new features. This post is about the latest new feature we’ve added, the Monitis Agent Installer for Linux platforms — supported by Monitis Perl library v0.9.

1. LAMP Security: 21 Tips for Apache
Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP — together they stand for LAMP. And if you want to have a comprehensive and robust server, your IT infrastructure has to include all of these. Just as we’ve been offering tips and advice on other IT issues in a recent series of blogs (for example, 25 Linux Server Hardening Tips), Monitis has put together a checklist of 101 actions you can take to maximize security around LAMP.

2. Examples of Monitis API Perl Interface
In a recent blog post, we announced the Perl interface for Monitis API, a simple way to access our API through Perl, which is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. In this post, we discuss how to take care of some administrative IT tasks via the Perl library — including two sample scripts that allow you to create, list and delete subaccounts right from the following command line: create_subaccount.pl and delete_subaccount.pl.

1. How To Improve Server Performance by IO Tuning – Part 1
Many servers, especially databases like MySQL, are dealing with hard drive IO on every data insert, so in order to get much performance out of such databases with extensive amount of data inserts, it is critical to tune the IO writes. This is a tedious task which requires many iterations to see any results. This article is part 1 on a series of step by step procedures for tuning IO.

2. Monitis adds a monitoring node in Brazil
This week we added a monitoring location in Brazil. This brings the total number of monitoring nodes to 16. Users can now use the Brazil location for external, fullpage and transaction monitoring.

3. Monitoring OS X with AppleScript and Monitis
Here we take a look at how AppleScript can be used to invoke REST API calls, using a system load monitor as an example. Before reading this article, you should read some of the previous articles discussing monitoring Linux or OS X with bash scripts, where we discuss using the Monitis REST API.

4. How To Improve Server Performance by IO Tuning – Part 2
This is part 2 of the series on tuning IO. This article explains strategies like prefetching, choosing a proper RAID controller, and SSD’s.

5. Sysadmin Appreciation Day Special
This is for the 12th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. Thank you, sysadmins for all your hard work, long hours and sleepless nights spent on deploying and maintaining servers and other IT infrastructure. we are announcing a System Administrator Appreciation Day special, a 50% of all of our sysadmin tools. Use SYS50 coupon code at checkout. We will be offering this discount from Thursday at Midnight PST through the weekend.

Sign up now at http://portal.monitis.com/index.php/plans/plan-builder

Before reading this article, I highly suggest to get familiar with all the concepts of the previous article regarding IO tuning.

Your IO please, sir

How is your IO characterized? Yes, this question has to be asked yet again. It’s a big difference when tuning for random access reads vs. sequential reads.
How is your application doing in that matter? – You should know better than me.
My main approach when optimizing for read IO is to access the disks as little as possible. Disks are slow, really slow, comparing to CPU and RAM – if we can – we avoid them.

Many servers, especially databases like MySQL, are dealing with hard drive IO on every data insert, so in order to get much performance out of such databases with extensive amount of data inserts, it is critical to tune the IO writes.

Tuning IO is a tedious task which requires many iterations until you eventually reach your goals or see any results.

While tuning IO, I think that tuning for read performance is a different task from tuning for write performance. Combing them both can sometimes be one of the hardest tasks a SysAdmin can face.

I decided to focus on write performance in the first article.

1. Monitis–Where You Can Monitor Exchange 2010 with PowerShell
We’ve recently published a list of posts showing a variety of ways to monitor any application using the Monitis API. Microsoft Exchange is no exception. Here we go over how to use Management Shell or Management Console to speak to the Monitis API and feed data into a custom monitor. You can then generate charts and alert settings on this data.

2. Monitoring files and directories with Monitis
Things can go horribly wrong when files or directories on your systems grow beyond your expectations. In this article, we look at creating file and directory monitors, and using Monitis to track these monitors and alert you when the unexpected happens.

3. Too busy to go premium? Our New Upgrade Wizard will do it for you
This week we added an Upgrade Wizard in our free product that smoothens the transaction between free (Mon.itor.us) to premium (Monitis). It allows you to select the monitors you’d like to keep, the monitors you’d like to add to your new account, as well as added features like SMS alerts and sub-accounts. This will speed up the upgrade process, especially for users who monitor hundreds of sites in Mon.itor.us.

The MySQL database is a crucial part of a wide variety of products, particularly web applications. Naturally, it is very important to monitor the health status of MySQL.  However, there is constant disagreement on which of the many MySQL status variables provide the best overview on MySQL health status and indicate that something is not right with a server.

It certainly depends on what your application does – tuning read performance is different than optimizing write operations and everything changes when you have a cluster. The average user can use small subset of variables while advanced user want to get more detailed picture of the situation. So there cannot be one set of “magic variables” to quietly optimize every situation. However, it is possible to have a more-or-less optimal set of metrics that will allow to get a “good enough” notion about the general health status of MySQL Server.

The new white paper “Internal MySQL Database Monitoring Best Practices” discusses MySQL health, performance metrics and MySQL glitches. It can be downloaded free from the Monitis portal.

I hope everyone is enjoying summertime, at least in the northern hemisphere. I’m about to head out to the pool, but before I go, here is a summary of this week’s blog posts.

1. Introduction to Perl interface for Monitis API
Monitis announces a simple way to access its API through Perl, a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. This post demonstrates some examples for using the API with Perl and describes some of the benefits of the programming language. The source can be found on our Github page.

2. 101 Tips to MySQL Tuning and Optimization
With more and more applications being database driven, many MySQL instances are being pushed to their limits. This post covers 101 ways to improve MySQL performance. The tips are broken down into 5 groups: MySQL Server Hardware and OS Tuning, MySQL Configuration, MySQL Schema Optimization, Query Optimization, and MySQL Backup Procedures. And of course, remember the most useful tip of all: Use Monitis MySQL Monitoring.

3. How to Manage Monitis Monitors with VBScript
Using VBScript and the powerful Monitis API, you can not only create monitors and feed them with data, but you can also manage your monitors and retrieve information. This post demonstrates how to use some scripts to use Monitis without the Web Console. Examples show how to suspend and resume external monitors, and export internal and custom monitor results into a CSV file. The scripts are available in the Monitis Github page.

4. Linux: Secure as a brick
This post outlines some of the best ways to “harden” your Linux server’s security. You want to make your Linux servers as secure as possible without turning it into a brick. Maximize security without losing functionality. All of the ideas implemented in the post are available in shk.

People who are familiar with me know that there are two things I’m not forgiving about. The first is backups, the second is security.

If backups interest you, perhaps we can discuss it some other time. This time we’re going to discuss security.

I’m going to outline in the following article some of the best practices I’ve learned along the years and help you “almost brick up, but not just yet” or “harden” your Linux server.

While reading this article, however, I suggest also reading this article as well. As we both try to tackle the same issues. I believe both articles eventually represent the same views in a different guise.

All of the ideas I’m coming up with are already implemented in shk. I suggest downloading shk, reviewing the code and using it.