Great to see author of larrd participating hobbit discussion. see below for my comments.
From: "Scott Walters" <scott at PacketPushers.com> Reply-To: hobbit at hswn.dk To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] Highlights of the 4.3.0 version Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:34:11 -0400
On 7/21/07, Henrik Stoerner <henrik at hswn.dk> wrote:
In another thread, someone asked about what new features are planned for version 4.3.0. I've summarized them below;
Great to see the summary, these features look great. I'd like to request more RRDs and reports about the monitoring system and the servers/services monitored. For example:
I think the following could be "gauge" metrics:
Number of devices monitored Number of services monitored Number of host.service in green state Number of host.service in yellow state Number of host.service in red state Number of host.service in XXX state
I am thinking these could be done by creating counters within hobbit (since boot):
Number of state changes Number of state changes per server Number of state changes per service Number of notifications sent
I think the above metrics could help create reports over time periods for review to help get to "management by facts" vs. "management by feeling." Most admins that pay attention to their install will "know", but its different when you can "prove." Plus, when improvements are made, it's nice to see it.
Providing OS type and version metrics also, this will give us a clear view of how many vendor unsupported OS version(ex. solaris 2.5.1,2.6,2.7, hpux 9,hpux 10.20 etc) are still in an IT system.
Henrik showed me the command on this list last time I asked but it will be good if this can be done from hobbit server.
I am also thinking we could try and apply some Six Sigma terminology and methodology to hobbit which may have value. Six Sigma keys on statistics and defects. Six Sigma refers to having production quality such that you only see 3.4 defects per million. Granted we are not "producing" a physical item, but I am thinking that a defect could be considered a purple/yellow/red state. With counters I suggested above, we could to apply various statistical measures (control charts, pareto charts, etc.) and see what makes sense or has value for monitoring.
In Six Sigma, the availability is formated with 5 Nines(99.999), There is some patches floating around to make HB's Availability report showing 5 Nines format This is a baby step but got asked by management why the bb/hb report is one digit short of nines.
Associate Hobbit more with Six Sigma is definitely a good thing. Connecting Hobbit with ITIL is even better.
tj
The goal is to improve consistency and reduce variance.
If you like, I could draft up some graphs and reports I'd like to see. My above description might be hard to visualize. I definitely think hobbit could benefit from internal counters, similarly to how on OS keeps tracks of context switches and the like.
Scott
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