CloudPhysics Service Warns of VMware Operational Problems

CloudPhysics, provider of IT operations management for virtualized environments, has released a Big Data analytics, subscription-based, warning service that identifies problems impeding VMware (VMW) workloads.

The CloudPhysics’ Knowledge Base Advisor is an enterprise-class early warning service that matches vendor- and user-discovered operational issues to a subscriber’s infrastructure configuration. In that sense, the service is powered by the collective intelligence of its users, according to the company.

Indeed, CloudPhysics said it uses Big Data analytics—what it calls collective intelligence—based on a daily flow of some 80 billion samples of configuration, performance, failure and event data from its global user data base—to compile knowledge and insights. The service delivers personalized and prioritized alerts to levels as granular as individual virtual machines, servers, network and storage components, which CloudPhysics said results in improved visibility to risks in the user’s environment and more accurate and effective responses.

“Knowledge Base Advisor demonstrates the power of our platform to bring users and vendors together as a community connected through shared content made personal, precise and effective,” said John Blumenthal, CloudPhysics co-founder and chief executive.

The thinking behind the service is that because the vSphere operations stack typically houses equipment from multiple hardware and software vendors, internal IT teams can easily fall behind the pace of bugs and issues reported in knowledge base articles. Add that to a constantly changing user environment—new applications and hardware and software modifications—it’s easy to see how human error becomes the major factor in operational downtime, responsible for as much as 70 percent of data center problems.

Which is where the CloudPhysics Knowledge Base Advisor comes in. Accordingly, the vendor lined up a number of Vmware vExperts to sing the services’ praises.

“Throughout my career issues in my environment have often required a quick search through KB for solutions,” said Josh Atwell, a VMware vExpert. “CloudPhysics Knowledge Base Advisor now provides concise visibility of known issues with various severity, multiple vendors, and most importantly how those issues relate to my environment.”

CloudPhysics is staffed by engineering and product leaders from VMware, Google (GOOG) and Cadence (CDNS), backed by $2.5 million in Series A venture money it landed about a year ago from the Mayfield Fund and angel investors, including Diane Greene, the former VMware co-founder who currently is heading a virtualized storage startup.

Blumenthal is a former VMware ESX storage director, while Irfan Ahmad, CloudPhysics’ co-founder and engineering vice president, is a former VMware R&D lead for storage products.