Talking CloudIQ: Custom Reports with Custom Tags
Tue, 13 Jun 2023 16:29:55 -0000
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Introduction
Every organization must report on their IT infrastructure. Whether it be to provide an inventory of assets or determine resource utilization, CloudIQ custom reporting with custom tags helps automate this task, saving time and delivering these reports right to your inbox.
Custom tags
Custom tags are customer-specific metadata that you can enter into CloudIQ to identify resources with customer information, such as application name, service level, business unit, department, and so on. You can enter custom tags against the system or against components of a system. Examples of component tags include hosts, PowerMax storage groups, volumes, file systems, storage pools, and virtual machines. We can quickly see the benefit of applying an application name to a storage group, or a business unit to a virtual machine. By doing so, we can generate application-level reports or asset reports by department.
Figure 1. Custom tags in the Storage Inventory View
Custom reports
Custom reports in CloudIQ can contain tables, charts, or a combination of both. Charts can be either common line charts or anomaly charts. Anomaly charts allow users to see unexpected activities in performance by charting the metric along with the expected range of the metric – which has been determined by CloudIQ’s machine learning algorithms.
Tables
Tables are available to provide lists of assets, code versions, contract information, capacity metrics, and average performance metrics. You can also take advantage of custom tags to either be included in the report or to be used as a filter to capture only those assets that meet your business needs, based on the values of those custom tags. For example, you can create a list of PowerEdge servers in a certain business unit with their BIOS and firmware versions, contract expiration dates, average power consumption, and service tags.
Figure 2. Table showing a business unit’s custom tag
Line and anomaly charts
Perhaps you want to keep an eye on the performance profile of a critical storage system, tracking system bandwidth and IOPS looking for any unusual activity. With just a few clicks you can create the report to chart the metrics, along with the expected lower and upper bounds. A few additional clicks and you can schedule this report to be delivered to yourself or anyone else at the interval you choose. You can give this report a quick look to identify if there are any unusual spikes that could be from an unexpected workload or even from some type of malicious attack.
Figure 3. Examples of performance anomaly charts
Conclusion
An IT infrastructure monitoring tool must be flexible and have automated ways to extract and report on assets, capacity, and performance in a meaningful way for your organization. By applying customer-specific metadata in the form of custom tags to assets in CloudIQ, you have the power to generate and automate the delivery of insightful and information rich custom reports to IT infrastructure stakeholders. Extracting the powerful information and machine learning data from CloudIQ allows you to efficiently maintain existing infrastructure and plan for future resource needs.
Resources
For a quick demo on custom reports and other CloudIQ features, see the CloudIQ videos section on the Info Hub.
For other informative blogs, see: Overview of CloudIQ, Proactive Health Scores, Capacity Monitoring and Planning, and Cybersecurity.
How do you become more familiar with Dell Technologies and CloudIQ? The Dell Technologies Info Hub site provides expertise that helps to ensure customer success with Dell Technologies platforms. We also have CloudIQ demos, white papers, and videos available at the Dell Technologies CloudIQ page. And feel free to reference the CloudIQ Overview White Paper which provides in-depth summary of CloudIQ.
Author: Derek Barboza, Senior Principal Engineering Technologist
Related Blog Posts
Talking CloudIQ: PowerEdge
Wed, 08 Nov 2023 16:32:28 -0000
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Introduction
In my previous blogs, I have focused on a specific feature in CloudIQ. This blog talks about various CloudIQ features for Dell’s PowerEdge servers. Dell CloudIQ continues to expand its feature set for PowerEdge assets. CloudIQ integrates with Dell’s OpenManage Enterprise at each of your sites, to efficiently collect and aggregate telemetry data to give you a multisite, enterprise-wide view of all your PowerEdge servers and chassis. And with OpenManage Enterprise 4.0, onboarding your PowerEdge servers to CloudIQ is easier than ever!
Health, inventory, and performance
Since the introduction of PowerEdge support in CloudIQ, health, inventory, and performance monitoring for PowerEdge servers have all been available. CloudIQ provides an overall health score for each PowerEdge server and recommended remediation when an issue is identified. Inventory reporting provides numerous properties about each server, including contract status, component firmware versions, licensing information, and hardware listings to name a few. CloudIQ displays key performance metrics and not only shows historical trends but identifies performance anomalies and provides performance forecasting. This information allows you to see unexpected performance patterns, and plan future resource needs based on trending workloads.
Figure 1. Example of a performance forecasting chart for PowerEdge
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is a feature in CloudIQ that allows you to compare your existing security configuration settings to a predefined set of desired security configuration settings. The configuration is continuously monitored, notifying you when a configuration does not meet its desired setting. Cybersecurity monitors up to 31 server configuration settings and 18 chassis configuration settings tied to NIST security standards. Without automated continuous checking, it's impractical to manually check all settings on all servers every day. Lab tests show that it takes six minutes on average to manually check just 15 settings on a single server.
Users can also see a list of applicable Dell Security Advisories (DSAs) for their PowerEdge systems. By intelligently matching attributes like models and code versions, users can quickly see which DSAs are applicable to their systems, allowing them to take immediate action to remediate these security vulnerabilities.
Figure 2. The Security Assessment page for a PowerEdge chassis
System Management
You can now initiate BIOS and firmware updates for PowerEdge servers and chassis from CloudIQ. Users with a Server Admin role in CloudIQ can initiate these upgrades across multiple systems with just a few clicks. This feature simplifies the process of keeping your fleet of servers consistent and secure.
Figure 3. Multisystem update for PowerEdge servers and chassis
Virtualization View
The integration of PowerEdge into the Virtualization View consolidates and simplifies resource information about PowerEdge servers running ESXi. Available details include the OS version, model, resource consumption per virtual machine, and health issues with recommendations for remediation. A hyperlink lets you quickly navigate to the system details page for the PowerEdge server for more troubleshooting. Another hyperlink directs you to vCenter to perform virtualized resource administration.
Figure 4. PowerEdge support in the Virtualization View
Carbon footprint monitoring
CloudIQ has introduced carbon footprint analysis support for PowerEdge servers and chassis. CloudIQ takes power and energy metrics and calculates carbon emissions based on international standards and conversion factors for location. CloudIQ Administrators can override and customize these values with their own unique location emission factors.
Figure 5. Energy, power, and carbon emissions for a PowerEdge server
Custom reports and IT integrations
You can generate custom reports using both tables and charts for PowerEdge servers:
- Tables are available to provide lists of assets, code versions, contract information, capacity metrics, and average performance metrics.
- Charts can be used to see historical performance trends and performance anomalies.
You can also take advantage of custom tags in your reports. For example, you can create a list of PowerEdge servers in a certain business unit with their BIOS and firmware versions, contract expiration dates, average power consumption, and service tags. And with Webhooks and REST API access, you can integrate data and events from CloudIQ with ServiceNow, Slack, and other IT tools to help you monitor your entire Dell IT infrastructure.
Figure 6. Custom reporting table for PowerEdge with custom tags
Conclusion
As IT resources become more remote and isolated, it has become increasingly time consuming to maintain, manage, and secure resources in the data center and at the edge. CloudIQ simplifies monitoring and management by providing a single portal to view all your PowerEdge servers across your entire environment. With cybersecurity monitoring of PowerEdge servers and chassis, you can quickly see where security configuration settings may be incorrectly set or accidentally changed, opening those systems to cyberattacks, and receive instructions to remediate. With the new maintenance and management features, CloudIQ simplifies the process of keeping your entire fleet at consistent, secure, and desired BIOS and firmware versions. The carbon footprint page in CloudIQ helps you meet sustainability goals. And with Webhook and REST API support, CloudIQ can be integrated with other IT tools to help you monitor not only your PowerEdge servers, but your entire Dell IT portfolio.
Resources
This Knowledge Base Article discusses how to onboard PowerEdge devices to CloudIQ.
For a quick demo about CloudIQ PowerEdge support, see the CloudIQ videos section on the Info Hub.
Direct from Development Tech Note: Dell CloudIQ Cybersecurity for PowerEdge: The Benefits of Automation
See other informative blogs: Overview of CloudIQ, Proactive Health Scores, Capacity Monitoring and Planning, Cybersecurity, and Custom Reports and Tags.
How do you become more familiar with Dell Technologies and CloudIQ? The Dell Technologies Info Hub site provides expertise that helps to ensure customer success with Dell Technologies platforms. We have CloudIQ demos, white papers, and videos available at the Dell Technologies CloudIQ page. Also, feel free to reference the white paper CloudIQ: A Detailed Overview which provides an in-depth summary of CloudIQ.
Author: Derek Barboza, Senior Principal Engineering Technologist
CloudIQ - Carbon Footprint Analysis
Wed, 04 Oct 2023 16:03:26 -0000
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In this blog post, we’ll cover a topic that is top of mind for all organizations, small and large--Energy Efficiency. I’ll also highlight how Dell Technologies helps customers increase energy efficiency using our vast portfolio. First, let’s define what Energy Efficiency is.
“Simply put, energy efficiency means using less energy to get the same job done
– and in the process, cutting energy bills and reducing pollution.”
Reference: Energy Efficiency | ENERGY STAR
As organizations undergo digital transformation and modernization, there is a massive explosion in the amount of data that needs to be stored. This data expansion is driven by technologies like Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, and streaming services, just to name a few. This in turn impacts how much power organizations are now consuming in their data centers, which forces IT vendors to make their solutions more efficient and reduce emission and carbon footprint.
Dell Technologies has been helping customers harness the power of technology to drive human progress for several decades. Our latest Environmental, Social and Governance report focuses on the investments Dell has made to support these initiatives.
If you’re interested in delving deeper, check out Dell's FY23 Environmental, Social and Governance.
Energy concerns were of paramount importance for our customers in 2022, not only in response to rising energy costs but also as they worked toward reducing emissions. As a leader in sustainable technology, Dell partnered with customers to make the transition to more energy efficient data centers with advanced cooling and thermals, power management tools, and as-a-Service (aaS) solutions to “right size” data storage. With the cost of energy commodities expected to be on average 46% higher in 2023, we will continue to set the standard on data center infrastructure solutions to drive efficient operational and environmental outcomes for our customers.
Dell reinvests over $4B in R&D on an annual basis, continuing to lead the market with our innovation in storage and data reduction efficiencies to save energy and reduce our carbon and hardware footprint.
Dell’s commitment to reducing carbon footprint is exemplified by the introduction of innovative ideas to optimize our portfolio. Recognized as one of the winners of Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards, Dell’s Concept Luna was designed to showcase how the future of electronic devices can be one where they’re repaired instead of thrown out. Feel free review the full article, How Dell is infusing sustainability across its businesses, to learn more
Based on what we covered so far, we truly believe that informing our customers of critical data points that contribute to overall awareness of power, energy consumption, and carbon footprint is essential.
CloudIQ Carbon Footprint: integrating energy efficiency across systems
Several years ago, Dell Technologies developed a product called CloudIQ, the cloud-based AIOps proactive monitoring and predictive analytics application for Dell systems. CloudIQ leverages machine learning and other algorithms, notifications, and recommendations to help customers optimize compute, storage, data protection, and network health, performance, and capacity. CloudIQ supports a broad range of Dell Technologies products, including:
- Servers -- PowerEdge
- Storage -- PowerStore, PowerMax, PowerScale, PowerVault, Unity, Unity XT, XtremIO, and SC Series
- Data protection -- PowerProtect DD and PowerProtect Data Manager
- Converged and hyperconverged infrastructure -- VxBlock, VxRail, and PowerFlex
- Networking -- PowerSwitch and Connectrix, plus Dell Technologies APEX Data Storage Services
Over 90% of our customers actively use CloudIQ as their centralized dashboard to inform them proactively about KPIs across their Dell Technologies estate.
Introducing Carbon Footprint, an additional capability within CloudIQ designed to provide insights for power, energy consumption, and carbon footprint forecasting across all systems. At the time of the initial release, we are supporting the following products from our portfolio:
- PowerEdge
- VxRail
- Unity
- PowerScale
- Connectrix Systems
and focusing on the following KPIs:
- Total carbon emissions for this year (YTD)
- Energy consumption trends (monthly and YTD)
- 24H power consumption, 24H load on average
- Historical and forecast data for energy and carbon footprint
Later in 2023, we will also add support for PowerSwitch.
Having Carbon Footprint enabled and KPIs exposed within CloudIQ is beneficial to internal stakeholders within an organization and allows you to make confident decisions when optimizing your environment.
Based on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and agile development methodology employed by CloudIQ, you’ll benefit from having access to new features as soon as they become available.
Most Dell Technologies products supported by CloudIQ leverage our call home functionality called SupportAssist / Secure Connect Gateway. Depending on the product, you will need to enable the CloudIQ feature, after which the CloudIQ dashboard will populate with data.
For the full overview of the CloudIQ product, please see the detailed review whitepaper here.
Accessing and using Carbon Footprint
To access the Carbon Footprint feature in the CloudIQ dashboard, select Monitor > Carbon Footprint on the left-hand side of the CloudIQ console, as shown in the following figure.
On this screen, CloudIQ users with the CloudIQ Admin role will be able to adjust and personalize their geographical location metrics, such as CO2E and PUE, as illustrated in the following figure. The location labels reflect the specific locations where the physical assets are installed.
Side note: What do these metrics mean?
- Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) refers to the number of metric tons of CO2 emissions with the same global warming potential as one metric ton of another greenhouse gas. Other greenhouse gases, like methane, have different global warming potentials--a measurement of the potential impact a greenhouse gas has on global warming over a given period--compared to carbon dioxide. By converting all greenhouse gas emissions into CO2e units, it becomes easier to compare the impact of different types of emissions and to create strategies for reducing GHG emissions.
- Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is used to determine the energy efficiency of a data center. The best PUE ratio is 1.0, indicating a perfectly efficient data center in which 100% of the facility's power is delivered to IT equipment. This means that no power is used for any other purpose in the facility such as cooling, lighting, or any other overhead that supports the equipment.
The Total Carbon Emissions CO2e section can be displayed using either a Bar Chart or a Line Chart. Simply select the gear wheel on the right-hand side and pick your preferred view.
The Total Carbon Emissions CO2e chart can increase or decrease based on how the system’s energy / emission factor / PUE changes over time. If new systems are added, the total will increase. Similarly, the total can decrease if power is capped (as is available for PowerEdge), workloads are reconciled, and/or some systems are shut down.
For larger environments with multiple assets, applying filters is a breeze. The following example shows the system filtered based on Unity arrays only.
This table displays several columns that represent the asset itself, its location, site name, etc. In addition, we show the following data points:
- YTD Energy (kWh) - YTD value is from when power consumption data collection started, which may not have been the start of the calendar year
- Energy Forecast (kWh) - Forecasted energy consumption at the end of the year (December 31st) in Kilowatts (kWh)
- YTD CO2e (kg) - YTD value of carbon emissions measured when data collection started, which may not have been the start of the calendar year.
- CO2e Forecast (kg) - Forecasted CO2 (carbon dioxide) equivalent produced at the end of the year (December 31st) in Kilograms (kg)
The entire table with all assets or a subset thereof can be exported into a CSV file.
To see more details for each of the assets and how they perform in comparison to historical data, select the details icon next to the asset itself. As displayed in the following figure, the two graphs will display data points over the last seven (7) days and forecasted data points for the next thirty (30) days. By toggling the radio button, you can switch from one view to another. The grey area shows a range based on historical data collected for the previous seven (7) days, and the blue line is charted based on the last seven (7) days. If the blue line is within the boundaries of the grey area, this means there have been no unforeseen changes in Energy Consumption or the CO2e in the past seven (7) days.
What we’ve shown here is just the beginning. We will continue improving and enhancing CloudIQ capabilities to ensure you enjoy the most relevant and accurate KPIs and can act upon them expeditiously.
Where do we go from here?
Dell has several other tools and assessments that you can benefit from. For example, we can run a tool called Live Optics that collects configuration and performance data from your Dell and third-party products and produces a report that can be analyzed to propose options like optimization, consolidation, or a refresh with a new technology. The other option is to request a #GetEfficient report, which will be directly focused on reduction in physical footprint and power consumption.
Resources
- Dell CloudIQ: A Detailed Review
- How Dell is infusing sustainability across its businesses
- Dell FY23 Environmental, Social and Governance - Executive Summary
Author: Michael Aharon & Derek Barboza