Alarm vm sales playbook
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AlarmVM is a simple and easy-to-use virtualization monitoring and alerting tool that addresses key pain points with VMware's built-in alarming capabilities. It allows administrators to centrally manage alarm contacts, set alarms for groups of VMs, and view alarm history and metrics. AlarmVM installs in minutes without overhead or complexity and eliminates a weak link in VMware management by providing a simpler path to success for VMware alarms.
Alarm vm sales playbook
- 2. Sales Basic Playbook ! Product Status ! Qualify ! Process ! Position ! Close ! Competition 2
- 3. AlarmVM Status ! AVM Available to sell now ! Lead Gen campaigns underway ! VM tools prominent on Confio website Feb 15 ! Need success before public announcement 3
- 4. Qualify your Target 4 DBA Director of IT • System Admin • Network Admin • System Architect • IT Specialist Referral
- 5. 4 Things to Look For 1. VMware in production Now 2. Critical systems on VMware 3. > 5 VMware Host servers 4. Commitment to vCenter for management ! Not qualified: • MS HyperV, OracleVM • VMware not yet production 5
- 6. Evaluation Process ! Download from AlarmVM.com • Feb 15 from Confio.com ! Regular Trial Key (14 days) ! Documentation included ! Technical Consultation with System Engineer (don’t call it a “Data Demo”) after installation ! Establish value & close 6
- 7. Key Talking Points ! AlarmVM is Simplest Path to Success for VMware Alarms • Eliminate weak link in VMware management • Use AlarmVM with vCenter – Installs in minutes – No overhead or complexity • If not using alarms, you should be, & here’s an easy solution 7
- 9. Message 2: Weak Link 9
- 10. Don’t Fight vCenter – Use it to your Benefit 10 vCenter Management, monitor vCenter Alarms - weak vCenter Management, monitor AlarmVM Simple and fast vCenter Management Heavy, complex monitor & alarm (Quest, Veeam, Xangati, vC Ops) Everyone starts here… Easiest path to improvement? A. B.
- 11. 3 Things We Do that vCenter Doesn’t vCenter 1. Reenter contacts for each alarm 2. Can’t set alarms for groups of entities (VMs) – either one or all 3. No alarm history. Is situation getting worse or better? AlarmVM 1. Set contacts across all alarms in one step 2. Set different alarms for production groups and dev/ test groups 3. Metric history and past resolution delivered with each alarm 11
- 12. I Feel Your Pain! ! VM Admin Pain points to listen for (ranked) ! It's not always clear what alarms mean and how to fix them ! It's hard to see the root cause during alarm storm ! I can’t see a history of vmware alarms ! Some alarms are not yet setup (and I never get around to it) ! I can’t tell if trend of critical alarms are increasing or decreasing ! I can’t see underlying metrics/supporting data for alarm after a day or so ! When alarm occurs, it takes many clicks to see pertinent data (entity, related entities, etc.) ! I wonder if an important alarm is not setup ! I can’t easily see alarms for related entities (other vm’s, host, storage) ! It's annoying that contacts have to be setup and maintained for every alarm ! I find it annoying that alarm settings like “repeat frequency” have to be setup and maintained for every alarm ! I find it tedious maintaining full alarming in VMware ! Lack of alarm baselining means turning off alarms or false alarms ! I'm forced to set thresholds which either over alarm on non-critical systems or under alarm on critical systems ! When vSphere alarms are received, do you find that they don’t provide enough information? ! I can’t easily take ownership of an alarm and automatically notify the others ! I must override/customize alarms in lots of different places (over and over again)? ! It's difficult to setup/maintain alarms across multiple vcenters ! I get too many alarms as they jumped between normal, warning and critical 12
- 13. Pricing ! AVM Starter Pack ! $2,995 includes 20 sockets ($150/socket) ! Minimum Starting Purchase ! Plus 20% 1st year maintenance ! AVM Socket licenses ! $199 each / +20% maint ! Must have Starter Pack first 13
- 14. Architecture alarmVM vCenter Servers and ESX Hosts Web Browser VMware Administrators IT Manager alarmVM Server Monitored Servers email SNMP trap smtp server SQL Express Repository
- 15. Competitors ($->$$$) AlarmVM is NOT a monitoring tool ($150/socket), but customers may compare to one. ! VMTurbo – Community Edition • Free, $399/socket for cap planning and recommendations ! Xangati – Management Dashboard • $149/socket, real-time and playback (Tivo), applications ! vKernel/Quest – Performance Analyzer • $299/socket, ! Veeam – Monitor • $399/socket ! Quest Software – vFoglight • $530/core ! SolarWinds – Performance Manager • $2995 / 50 VMs (cheapest license) • VM-centric, graph one metric (CPU usage) for all VMs ! VMware – vCenter Operations • $1500/25 VMs (cheapest license) ! IBM, CA, HP, BMC • >$10k, expensive legacy physical monitoring products ! Others: NetApp, Netuitive, Prelert, Reflex, Virtual Instruments, Zenoss For typical server (2 sockets, 4 cores per socket, 4 VMs per core) price feature level Xangati $298 low Confio $300 low vKernal $598 med Veeam $798 med Quest $1,060 high SolarWinds $1,917 high VMware $1,920 high
- 16. Competitors (how to sell against) AlarmVM is NOT a monitoring tool ($199/socket), but customers may compare to one. ! VMTurbo – Community Edition • Counter: no free recommendations, focused on Cloud, complex, focused on small set of VMware metrics, ! Xangati – Management Dashboard • Counter: real-time is not that useful, only 80 customers in 6 years, does not auto fix problems, hard to see the big picture, network-centric tool (not where VM problems usually are) ! vKernel/Quest – Performance Analyzer • Counter: product and support may disappear (bought by Quest 10/2011), 4 products not integrated ! Veeam – Monitor • Counter: big in backups, but a very weak monitoring product with few customers. ! Quest Software – vFoglight • Counter: heavy footprint, cobbled together from acquisitions, very complicated to setup and learn, auto-baselining of metrics cannot be trusted ! SolarWinds – Performance Manager • Counter: Much more expensive, VM-centric, graph one metric (CPU usage) for all VMs ! VMware – vCenter Operations • Counter: not yet ready for primetime, very expensive, little data outside the VMware bubble (e.g. storage) ! IBM, CA, HP, BMC • Counter: Expensive, legacy physical management companies that are not focused on virtualization and cloud. Mistakenly try to infer performance based on workload. Expensive to buy, install (consulting required), and maintain. ! Others: NetApp, Netuitive, Prelert, Reflex, Virtual Instruments, Zenoss
- 17. Competitors: a big pond <20% of VMware vSphere customers use more than vCenter to manage their vSphere environment. • Total VMware Customers – 250,000 • Resource, Availability, and Infrastructure Monitoring – Quest vFoglight - 20,000 – Veeam Monitor & nworks - 10,000 – Next 10 Vendors ~100 Each - 1000 – Total Penetration - 31,000 (12.4%)
- 18. Appendix
- 19. Virtualization (vSphere) & Cloud (vCloud) Platform Cloud Management Resource & Avail. Mgmt Quest (vFoglight) Veeam Xangati AppDynamics New Relic BlueStripe vCloud Director Embotics Gale Technologies NetApp Balance Zenoss Platform Computing DynamicOps Infr. Perf. Mgmt App Perf. Mgmt vFabric APMvC Operations Virtual Instruments CA Virt Assurance AppFirst up.time Software SolarWinds Cicso/NewScale Netuitive Eucalyptus vS App Discovery Self-Learning Performance and Root Cause Analytics vC Ops Enterprise Reflex Systems VKernel Quest (Foglight) The Virtualization Management Ecosystems Nimbula Abiquo Citrix (Cloud.com) vFabric Hyperic dynaTrace VMTurbo Confio Software Prelert ExtraHop
- 20. Terms you might hear ! Alarm storm (notification storm): • e.g. alarm every time CPU usage crosses 95% (solution: specify a time frame) ! DRS: Distributed Resource Scheduler: • an optional vSphere module: load balances VMs across hosts (VMware) ! HA: High Availability: • an optional vSphere module: senses host failures (VMware) ! vMotion: • moves the VMs for DRS and HA (VMware) ! VM Sprawl: • idle, stale, zombie, orphaned, under & over-allocated VMs (Xangati term)
- 21. What is virtualization ! Lets you have two different computing environments (virtual machines) running on one physical machine (host) ! Why? More efficient use of HW, less downtime, easier upgrades.
- 23. …and reaching Mission-Critical Apps
- 24. What AlarmVM email looks like
- 25. Who you’re selling to (System Admins)
- 26. Competitors (Features) Source: The Virtualization Practice (Bernd Harzog, Sep 2011)
- 27. VMTurbo • Their pitch: find and fix problems automatically, automated workload service assurance • Counter: focused on Cloud, complex, focused on small set of VMware metrics, no free recommendations
- 28. Xangati • Their pitch: Real-time, moving dashboard, show how all the pieces fit together • Counter: real-time is not that useful, only 80 customers in 6 years, does not auto fix problems, busy interface makes it hard to see the big picture, say they support Citrix XenDesktop (but VMware only focus), network-centric tool (not where VM problems usually are)
- 29. vKernel • Their pitch: automated capacity management and capacity planning • Counter: product and support may disappear (bought by Quest 10/2011), 4 products not integrated, no baselining, must set alarms manually
- 30. Veeam • Their pitch: basic metric tracking • Counter: big in backups, but a very weak monitoring product with few customers.
- 31. Quest (formerly Vizioncore) • Their pitch: first monitoring tool n the market (Vizioncore), a platform of solutions • Counter: heavy footprint, cobbled together from acquisitions, very complicated to setup and learn, auto- baselining of metrics cannot be trusted
- 32. SolarWinds (formerly Hyper9) • Their pitch: TBD • Counter: Much more expensive, VM-centric, graph one metric (CPU usage) for all VMs
- 33. VMware (acquired Hyperic, Integrien ) • Their pitch: ‘from the makers of vSphere’, goal is automatic detection and remediation of problems • Counter: not yet ready for primetime, very expensive, monitoring tool is good but rest is not competitive, do you want all eggs in one VMware basket? Little data outside VMware bubble (e.g. storage)
- 34. IBM, CA, HP and BMC • Their pitch: build on your legacy physical monitoring systems • Counter: Expensive, legacy physical management companies that are not focused on virtualization and cloud. Mistakenly try to infer performance based on workload. Expensive to buy, install (consulting required), and maintain.