Previously I touched on a product called OnCommand Insight, not a strict NetApp only monitoring tool but the ability to pool all the infrastructure stack and being able to provide insight into that, this could be based on chargeback, monitoring to make sure that the systems are functioning as they should be to avoid end user disruption and also being able to leverage the tool for capacity planning and management.

Moving on now to Cloud Insights, this new offering from NetApp is much more welcome because I believe this will open the door to similar capabilities mentioned above but at a much more affordable price.

“Innovate faster with insights across your application infrastructure stack”

Why Cloud Insights

We don’t just have a virtual environment anymore running in our shared or owned datacentre, we are leveraging public cloud, we are leveraging all types of new modern technologies such as containers. Generally speaking there would be one tool for on premises and others for public cloud and other areas of the businesses. There is nothing from top to bottom that can capture insight from these assets in one place.

Currently at a tech preview stage with general availability to happen later in the year.

In the same fashion as OnCommand Insight the three key goals and areas that this will help are:

Reduce MTTR

Reduce cloud infrastructure costs

Prevent issues

Cloud Insights is a SaaS based offering meaning that there is no requirement to build out a huge dedicated environment which is the case with OnCommand Insight.

Editions

The interesting part with the available editions is if you are an existing NetApp storage customer, not just ONTAP but all platforms available. You will be able to take advantage of that free edition and just look at some of the key features that are available in each of those editions. I think this now can really help with those customers that are priced out of the opportunity with OnCommand Insight.

Data Collectors for third parties

One of the things that I am really interested in is the third-party collectors and how this could be leveraged by the ecosystem to generate the ability to push data into this platform to gain insight on other areas of the environment. This is the latest set of collectors available within Cloud Insights today with more planned to be added in the future.

I encourage everyone to look back through the SFD16 sessions from NetApp, there are some great demos and further conversation around Cloud Insights as well as the previous product covered with OnCommand Insight.

I expect to see a lot more of this in the lead up and when we get to NetApp Insight in Las Vegas mid to end October.