Red Hat Command Center Frequently Asked Questions

Red Hat Command Center is easy to use, enterprise-class monitoring, available at a fraction of the cost of competing products. It is offered as an on-line service, hosted by Red Hat and delivered using a software as a service (SaaS) model.

Because of the costs and complexity involved, enterprise-level monitoring solutions have traditionally been available only to large corporations. Command Center enables smaller organizations to improve their business performance by proactively monitoring their IT infrastructure with a sophisticated monitoring solution that is highly cost-effective.

Command Center is easy to set up and use through a web-based interface and requires no specialized skills or additional monitoring infrastructure to maintain. Customers benefit from significantly reduced initial costs, flexible expandability, and a low, predictable total cost of ownership (TCO).

Part of the answer is found in what it doesn't have.

• No dedicated servers or databases
• No additional software, setup, or training
• No specialized staff or skills
• No hidden costs
• No vendor lock-in

Red Hat Command Center is enterprise monitoring delivered as a service that just works.

Red Hat Command Center, offered as a service, is quicker, easier, and far less expensive than traditional (on-premises) software implementations. It frees more of the typical IT budget from maintenance, so more can be spent on building real competitive advantage. Customers get significant benefits in rapid deployment, reduced costs, ease of use, and lower risks, with little loss of control and customizations.

1. Rapid deployment: With Command Center, customers can start monitoring a large percentage of their IT infrastructure typically within a day, without any specialized staff or professional service engagements.
2. Reduced costs: Initial costs are low. There are no hidden costs such as additional software, internal IT support, or maintenance. Command Center can be easily scaled with low predictable costs.
3. Ease of use: Command Center is simple to set up and use, with a straightforward point-and-click configuration and an intuitive web based interface that is accessible from anywhere via the Internet.
4. Lower risks: The Command Center software as a service model, with no infrastructure investment or specialized skill requirements, means there's no vendor lock-in. Command Center uses common protocols to collect monitoring data and imposes negligible load on the monitored systems. Upgrades are seamless and new features are released frequently.

• Monitoring as a Service: SaaS and IT Infrastructure Monitoring (pdf)

Systems management is critical to the success of any IT project. Software provisioning, configuration, management, and update tools give IT staff the agility to respond to changing business requirements. Meanwhile, proactive systems monitoring identifies problems before they become emergencies, enabling IT staff to focus on strategic projects instead of crisis management.

Some IT environments require the flexibility, control, and performance of locally deployed systems management infrastructure. Other environments are a better fit for the rapid deployment, low entry cost, and minimal administrative overhead of a hosted systems management service. Red Hat supports both on-premises and software as a service deployment models in order to offer maximum choice and value for a wide range of customer scenarios.

Red Hat Command Center backend is based on a multi-tenant, n-tier, farm-based architecture, allowing it to be highly scalable across customers, as well as multiple systems, networks, or locations.

This means that you have the flexibility to deploy this solution to monitor just a few servers or consolidate monitoring across multiple systems and networks as your needs change. The software as a service delivery model provides you this flexibility without requiring any traditional upfront, fixed cost investments.

In other words, Command Center is highly scalable, with predictable, incremental costs, which are mostly limited to deploying scouts for additional networks. Note that there is no cost to deploy a scout, other than the time spent and the hardware. The scout software appliance is offered at no cost.

The primary difference between the local url and remote url website monitors is that the local url checks are run from your local scout and on the local network. Remote url website monitors are run from multiple Command Center scouts which are located on the public internet backbone. Since the remote url checks are run over the internet, they represent the real end-user experience. Remote url checks are best used for your external, customer-facing websites.

It is not recommended to deploy the scout in a virtual machine to monitor your production environment. The scout is your most significant point of failure for your monitoring solution based on Command Center. Also, the scout is the only infrastructure investment that you need to make towards your Command Center solution. Usually, just one scout is sufficient to monitor a customer environment. Given that the hardware requirements for a scout are less than those for an average desktop PC today, saving costs on scout hardware is not recommended.

For evaluation purposes, the scout may be deployed as a fully-virtualized Xen guest, VMware guest, or fully virtualized Qemu guest. In the case of VMware, installing the VMware tools can help address issues with the clock skew and hardware optimization on the guest. Please note that none of the virtual machine technologies are supported as the deployment platform for the scout. This is different from probe support for monitoring target virtual systems using Command Center.

On a virtual server, each guest operating system is treated as a physical server for Command Center entitlement purposes. A physical server running four virtual instances would require up to five Command Center system packs for a complete monitoring solution. For example, one entitlement could be used to monitor the VM host server, and four entitlements could be used for each virtual guest instance.

Red Hat Command Center is supported by Red Hat Global Support Services (GSS) with a Standard Service Level Agreement (SLA). This provides allows unlimited incidents via web and phone during standard business hours. For response times and other support policy related details, see GSS support policy.

Data retention: Data collected via monitoring probes (checks, local URL, etc.) is available via the Red Hat Command Center portal for up to 90 days. All reporting and analysis capabilities within the product are available for this data. Data retention policy does not apply to configuration and scheduling data, which is stored as long as the customer account is active with a paid subscription.

Data export: Red Hat Command Center offers full access to historical monitoring data via data export for off line analysis. Customers can export last 90 days of monitoring data in XML, CSV, and PDF formats.

If you have special needs beyond the standard 90-day data retention policy, contact your Red Hat account manager to discuss further options.

Please contact your Red Hat account representative for additional information or questions. You may also submit your questions here under the comments field. We will respond as promptly as possible.