[Info-vax] HPE buys Cray

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Grant Taylor
> via Info-vax
> Sent: May 18, 2019 2:49 PM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: Grant Taylor <gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] HPE buys Cray
> 
> On 5/18/19 12:30 PM, Kerry Main wrote:
> > Interesting product offering at HPE - using AI and "machine learning"
> > methods to proactively manage Systems/Applications i.e. identify
> > issues before they impact the business.
> I feel like much of the AI / ML is noise if not hype of said noise.
> 
> $LastJob tried adding IBM Watson to system administration.  They ran into
a
> number of problems doing so.  First, the amount of noise made the quality
of
> the signal so low that it wasn't worth wasting time on.
> Second, the systems weren't nearly as consistent (cattle) as people
thought
> they were.  In fact, they were quite unique (pets) on many different
levels.
> This made it quit difficult to get anything of value out of the AI / ML.
> 
> What they did get out of the AI / ML was largely already known.  Watch all
> your logs.
> 
> 10  Look for anything that's unknown.
>         If you're starting at zero, everything is unknown, and this is
okay.
> 20  Simply pick the most common thing and decide if it's acceptable or
not.
> 30  Then filter /that/ thing out of the stream of data to process.
> 40  GOTO 10
> 
> As you iterate through the above process you will learn more about your
> environment, what is normal, what is abnormal, and what warrants
> immediate action.
> 
> The thing that AI / ML did do was to find some things that were many Many
> MANY iterations deep.  Some of which did have a cross interaction with
each
> other.  In hindsight, they made obvious sense.  But they were of
relatively
> low value, especially compared to the other more significant things that
the
> humans saw using traditional methods.
> 
> > I do know one large site I was at was looking at adapting Splunk to do
> > big data style analysis of all the infrastructure (servers, storage,
> > network) / application / appliance log files in their IT environment.
> 
> I think that taking raw data streams and hiding known good signals to the
> point that only unknown and / or bad signals show up is a decent idea.
But I
> don't think that AI or ML is necessary.  Especially when what is
functionally a
> filter can do much of what is needed.
> 

The proactive tools approach has been around for decades - remember OpenView
(HP), Tivoli (IBM), CA, PolyCenter (DEC), SolarWinds etc.?

The big issues are not the use of predictive M&M (mgmt. and monitoring)
tools, but rather:

1. As you mentioned, recovering from non-standard technologies, processes
and tools left over the wild west of distributed servers where every BU did
their own thing,

2. The large amount of customization required to make effective use of the
predictive tools. As an example, if a HA router pair has 1 router fail, then
trigger yellow event on M&M console. If that same router is not part of HA
pair, then trigger red event to M&M console and/or send "smart" ticket to
appropriate Service Desk ticket queue. Same applies to all the major CI's
(devices) in an IT environment. You need to know the IT environment to make
this work - its down and dirty and not "out of the box".

3. The large costs associated to implement 2. A former colleague who used to
work at CA stated they used to say to their Customers that for every $1
spent on proactive M&M products, $5 should be spent on custom integration
services to make it all work as expected.  I am sure many here have
experienced the frustration of their companies buying big ticket M&M systems
with little or no custom integration services. End result - 18months later,
the solution is still not doing what Mgmt. expected it to do.

Other vendors have similar offerings, but here is a video HPE created a few
years ago - it talks about the above and the importance of an Enterprise
Operations Bridge to tie all of the above together.  Using todays hype, one
could rename this to "Federated AI management of your IT environment."

< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLwfNtBu1sg>
(btw, this product was sold as part of the HPE software sell-off a few years
ago)

It's a good training video to get ones head around proactive IT management.

Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com