Page 279 - Cloud computing: From paradigm to operation

Framework and requirements for cloud computing 1

Appendix II

Considerations on resource monitoring
(This appendix does not form an integral part of this Recommendation.)

This appendix provides considerations on resource monitoring.

II.1 Health monitoring
Health monitoring of the cloud infrastructure includes monitoring the status of resources such as the physical
server hardware, hypervisor, virtual machine, physical and virtual network switches and routers and storage
systems.

A resource map displays all of the technology components, including transactions, applications, web servers,
network switches, virtualized components and third-party cloud services. Having such a map can play an
important role in effective business service management because when there is an application or transaction
problem, it can help pinpoint the infrastructure components that may be playing a role in service disruptions.
In addition, the resource map is important to provide run-time monitoring, because cloud infrastructure is
constantly changing. It is necessary to ensure the management of this resource map on a continuous basis.
Non-intrusive probes can be used to automatically detect infrastructure, application and transaction changes
in near real-time.

II.2 Performance monitoring
Basic performance monitoring looks at the CPU, memory, storage and network performance metrics from
the VM guest OS, as well as from the hypervisor. These metrics typically get monitored even in non-virtualized
environments. The virtualization-specific metrics could be for specific entities that are introduced by various
virtualization technologies. The behaviour of other virtualization features can also be measured as metrics,
such as how frequently VM migrations are occurring or when other availability features are engaged. Then
there are specialized applications built by virtualization, for example, desktop virtualization. Monitoring for
such solutions needs more parameters to be collected from the VM, as well as the hypervisor, for example,
how quickly VMs are provisioned to a requesting end user.

II.3 Capacity monitoring
Resource utilization is continuously evolving. Therefore, the continuous planning of various resources such
as servers, desktops, networks, storage and also many kinds of software is needed. This demands periodic
audits of physical and virtual resources. Capacity monitoring needs end-to-end continuous capacity
monitoring of the following key metrics:
• Server utilization: Peak and average server resource utilization, memory, CPU, resource, server
bottlenecks and correlation with a number of VMs.
• Memory usage: Memory utilization on each server, capacity bottlenecks and relationship with a
number of VMs and with different cloud services.
• Network usage: Peak and average network utilization, capacity/bandwidth bottlenecks and
relationship with a number of VMs and with different cloud services.
• Storage utilization: Overall storage capacity metrics, VM and virtual disk utilization, I/O
performance metrics, snapshot monitoring and correlation with a number of VMs and with different
cloud services.

II.4 Security and compliance monitoring
Virtualization introduces a new set of security risks due to VM sprawl and the introduction of new threat
targets such as the hypervisor layer, virtual infrastructure (VI) configurations and potential conflicts in the
way access control is managed and policies are applied. Security and compliance monitoring becomes critical

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