The company’s new agentless software-as-a-service offering is designed to remove monitoring bottlenecks in the LAN and to lift the need for monitoring by second- and third-shift staffers.
Companies without staff available on weekends, holidays or overnight, listen up: A new hosted monitoring tool from CommVault features live help from the vendor on top of single-agent data monitoring software for uninterrupted backups and data protection, and best of all, it can remove the need for second- or third-party staffers in the monitoring realm.
CommVault’s new hosted monitoring tool integrates with the company’s support in real time, through a single agent.
ROMS (Remote Operations Management Service), offered on a subscription basis, is a Web-based real-time reporting tool that allows users to integrate their data management oversight operations in real time with the vendor. ROMS allows users to maintain control of their data while offloading the ongoing oversight of data protection operations to CommVault, explained Robert Brower, CommVault’s director of worldwide professional services.
The goals, Brower said, are to increase operational reliability and data protection activities, enhance management and reporting, expedite issue resolution, deliver after-hours operations help, lower operational costs, and meet and exceed service-level targets.
ROMS is a combination of software and service that creates a managed services offering. ROMS consists of the ROMS Listener, the ROMS Web service, and the ROMS database. The ROMS Listener, installed on the CommServe, is an agent that monitors the CommServe database for alert conditions associated with errors or delays in data management. The ROMS Web service communicates between the user and CommVault via SSL encryption. The ROMS database maintains all customer information regarding monitored systems and their specific SLAs (service-level agreements).
To make it work, customers opt in to the subscription service and install an agent on the CommVault CommServe to monitor, and CommVault's support team takes it from there. CommVault can help manage CommVault’s Simpana data protection and replication software, acting on issues that arise, capturing information to open trouble tickets, and alerting the customer of problematic issues.
In a sense, the service competes with on-premises staff that might be monitoring jobs from a CommVault interface or another management application receiving alerts from CommVault. The difference, said Lauren Whitehouse, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, is that the customer doesn't have to staff a second or third shift to watch backups, making it more cost-effective to do the same tasks.
Unlike most other monitoring systems, ROMS does not require agents on every system. Instead, a single agent is installed on CommVault’s Master Server and integrated with the Common Technology Engine.
“No burdensome updates to make on customer systems, no distribution of agents required, no LAN bottlenecks created due to monitoring,” Brower said.
The system also allows for real-time SLA modification. The service allows users to reach a service level through the software that they cannot themselves address. From the ROMS user interface, users can assign and reassign, monitoring between systems and service levels and creating on-demand monitoring rules that fit their changing business needs.
SMBs (small and midsize businesses) without 24/7 staffs or those without devoted IT staffs are well-suited to this offering, Whitehouse said, as are remote and branch offices of larger companies.
“[Companies] without staff available on weekends, holidays or overnight will appreciate that their backups run uninterrupted, and that they are protected,” she said.
Pricing for ROMS is 25 percent of the cost of the media agent per CommServe; both CommServe and the media agent are required for the system to work. In a typical scenario where a customer may spend $2,000 on a CommServe, the cost for ROMS for the year would be $500, Brower said. The system also offers gold, platinum and diamond licenses at $6, $8 or $10 per month per monitored server, respectively.
