Although it's best known for virtualization technologies, VMware also provides several full-featured enterprise management products. On May 20th, VMware further expanded its system management capabilities with the new vCenter Log Insight 2.0 release. I met with Bill Roth, VMware Group Product Marketing Manager, who explained that Log Insight was designed to enable businesses to quickly troubleshoot operational problems.
Related: VMware Expands its Cloud Management Line-up
Centrally Collect & Analyze Log Data
Log Insight 2.0 collects streams of log data from Windows, Linux, UNIX, and even Android systems. The new release allows you to centrally collect and analyze the log data. Log Insight 2.0 uses machine learning and intelligent grouping to enable you to more quickly troubleshoot problems.
Some of the main improvements in the new vCenter Log Insight 2.0 release include:
- A new lightweight Windows agent
- Intelligent grouping of related data
- 6X faster query performance
- 8X faster data collection
- Built-in data visualization with charts and tables
Early Adopter
National Oil & Gas was an early adopter of Log Insight 2.0. The oil and gas company used vCenter Log Insight 2.0 to centralize the log collection for thousands of systems. Previously, National Oil & Gas was overwhelmed with raw data—their operations generated approximately 8.5 million log entries daily. Log Insight 2.0 enabled them to centrally collect and manage the log data from all these disparate systems and create a central management dashboard.
Upcoming Content Packs
vCenter Log Insight will be available in in Q2 2014. VMware plans to further expand the capabilities of vCenter Log Insight 2.0 with the addition of three Microsoft server-specific Content Packs that will also be released in Q2 2014. The upcoming Content Packs include:
- Microsoft Windows Content Pack
- Microsoft Active Directory Content Pack
- Microsoft Exchange Content Pack
- Brocade SAN Content Pack
VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 is priced $200 per operating system instance. There are no log data size limits. It's also available for $1,500 per CPU. For more information about vCenter Log Insight 2.0, or to download a trial copy, you can check out VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0.
