Red Hat adds to system monitoring service

Red Hat said this week it had spruced up its Red Hat Command Center server- and application-monitoring service, eliminating the need for users to maintain a Red Hat-prescribed hardware appliance to collect monitoring data.

The “scout” appliance has been replaced by software in the SaaS platform, which customers can now run on their own systems.

“The customer now picks their own hardware and the software is now provided for free,” said Andy Karandikar, Red Hat product manager for Command Center. Previously, users had to purchase a $900 x86-based white box for monitoring.

Command Center is positioned for managed service providers, who resell it to their customers, and for small- and medium-sized businesses.

Red Hat also added  the ability to export monitoring data in XML. This data is available for download, and offline archival and analysis. Prior to adding the XML capability, this type of offline archival could only be done in bits and pieces and in text form.

“[Now] you can do it in XML, which is a more structured way that you can slice and dice the data,” Karandikar said.

Red Hat also improved the interface of Command Center so that it is more consistent with other Red Hat services and products.

Red Hat Command Center monitors server components ranging from the operating system to applications. Red Enterprise Linux, JBoss software and a wide range of other IT infrastructure can be monitored including Windows. The Command Center service costs $192 per monitored server per year.

Red Hat announced its “North American Value2” seminar tour, which features half-day seminars on transforming an enterprise with an open source-based approach to virtualization and SOA. The tour kicks off on September 11 in Minneapolis.

“The Value2 tour is really a concerted push for Red Hat to get on the road and communicate our broader strategy as it relates to our open source architecture, how our solutions are being used in customer sites and the really get the message out there as to the value of the open source approach,” said Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management and Red Hat.

Technologies such as JBoss middleware are featured, as is the MetaMatrix data federation technology acquired by Red Hat.