Map what matters
Focus in on what matters: Data vs. information
Focus in on what matters: Data vs. information
The Orion® Platform is designed to consolidate monitoring into a single source of truth, taking massive amounts of data and making it easier to identify issues in complex environments. A key component of this is the organization of data. When users are presented with a typical dashboard, they’re commonly faced with a huge amount of metrics aggregated from multiple modules, such as:
- Network Performance Monitor
- Server & Application Monitor
- Virtualization Manager
- Storage Resource Monitor
However, while it can be beneficial to have a single-pane-of-glass view, this type of dashboard doesn’t always help you understand the problem or where to focus. Yes, all the data is in one place, but you need a way to interpret this data and zone in on what matters.
Orion Maps is about sifting through the raw data and presenting what matters as information.
Auto-generated Orion Maps
Auto-generated Orion Maps
Using maps to visually depict data and relationships is nothing new in IT. However, in many instances, this has traditionally meant moving data into a separate data visualization tool to create a point of reference. The trouble with this is things change too quickly and cause the map to go stale.
However, what we often hear from customers is that when users see any entities they know are outdated, they’ll likely ignore the whole thing as they won’t trust it. The beauty with Orion Maps is they automatically generate contextual maps designed to display critical relationships for monitored entities in the Orion Platform. When users click the Map subview on entity details pages, they can display a map of physical and logical relationships relevant for the entity. Entities are added or removed as changes occur in the environment. Nothing to configure. This is particularly important in scale environments.
The great thing is you can see not only the relationships, but lots of other key information, such as the status of related entities, health, and use information of the inter-entity links and more. This all leads to an accelerated troubleshooting timeline.
Custom maps let you do it your way.
Custom maps let you do it your way.
The idea of auto-generated maps is great and many users love it. However, there are times when it may be better to have the ability to start with a blank canvas and paint the exact picture you want to see. For example, what if you only want to see a map of entities associated with a particular environment—a specific application, for example, particular vendor equipment, or other naming conventions you may wish to search on.
With Orion custom maps, you have full power and flexibility to make precise filtered choices from the entity library of what appears on the map—after which, it’s a simple drag-and-drop operation. Now, Orion Maps displays physical and logical relationships between the entities. It’s also easy to tidy up the map to your visual preference. Again, simple drag-and-drop functionality. You can add the custom map on any Orion Web Console view using the Orion Maps widget.
There may even be instances where you need to fix the places where the topology engine isn’t seeing the connections you know should be there. You can manually do this on Orion Maps, which may be reflected across all other Orion Platform views if you choose. Let’s not forgot, there’s even dark mode for those who prefer it. So all in all, when you like to take control and do it your way, try custom Orion Maps.
What’s your interpretation?
What’s your interpretation?
One thing is certain – no two customers are the same. Their application sets, site setup, infrastructure, and so on are all unique. Not only this, many also have their own particular way of interpreting their setup, and you want ensure the style of your maps makes sense to you and your organization. We understand the need for tools designed to create this interpretation, like having more options than the standard iconography. The good news is the 2020.2 update to Orion Maps now gives you this power. If you’re not happy with the default entity icons, you have a larger range of options to choose from.
Not happy with any of our options? Import your own. You can even change the icon to reflect a particular status e.g., red vs. green traffic light. You may also decide to add specific variables against the icon or want to logically group the icons to match your preference. These are a few examples, but there’s much more our customers can play with to help make their maps unique to them.
Travel back in time
Travel back in time
Some product names can be a bit ambiguous and need a bit of an explanation. Orion Maps doesn’t fit in this category. Like a crime scene, we often see things for how they are AFTER the crime has occurred. There may be a lot of evidence making it easier to solve the crime, or there may be little to no evidence, making it difficult. Perhaps the evidence has been tampered with and so on. Most likely every investigator would love the ability to travel back in time and see exactly what happened at the scene, who was there, etc.
It’s not much different in IT. When there’s an outage or disruption to a service, we witness the unpleasant after effects. It leaves us wondering what the root cause is, so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again. Often, it can be several things.
By aggregating data within a map, you can gain meaningful context and clarity to ensure the totality of what it takes to deliver a service is easily understood. This can also make it easier to interpret where problems exist, often expediting mean time to repair. Up until now, there has been no way to look at maps and the status of the elements within it historically. However, Orion Maps now makes this possible.
Through Orion Maps, tracking history can allow users to review the state of the service/environment prior to the outage, providing additional evidence and details critical in aiding root cause analysis. This functionality can also be combined with the power of PerfStack™, built to provide users a one-click option to obtain contextually relevant performance data within a specific time frame.
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