ERP Cloud Performance and Availability Metrics and Monitoring

Author: Eric Vasbinder

ERP Cloud Applicability: 

• Vista

• Spectrum

• ProContractor

This article applies to all ERPs listed above.

Overview

We at Trimble Viewpoint are highly motivated to ensure customer environments are performing to an optimal level, allowing our customers to fulfill their business needs in a timely and efficient manner.   We understand that as our customers move into our ERP clouds, they will often need to answer questions about the performance aspects of our ERP cloud solutions.

In particular, customers often find themselves needing to know that our Trimble Viewpoint Cloud Engineering teams have a proactive approach to environment performance.  This need applies to both awareness of performance and the ability to rapidly scale customer environments to allow for ongoing reliability for our customers.

To that end, this article will give you a high-level summary of the best practices that we follow with regard to performance metrics. 

The Approach - Proactivity and Automation

As the first step in delving into considering the performance of your cloud environment, we need to cover our overall approach.  In summary, our approach is to be as vigilant and aware of your environment's performance envelope at any given time as is possible.  To that end, we make use of automated monitoring tools to gain real time situational awareness as to your environment's current running state.  That awareness is then combined with our alerting systems to raise notifications and then finally with automated scripts to the fullest extent possible.  

At a high level, this methodology is designed to provide a closed loop awareness, powered by automation, to allow for environments to remain in good working order and to be scaled out rapidly when resource needs demand it.

Performance Telemetry Used

Our team uses a large number of industry best practice monitors and telemetry to determine the current health and performance of customer environments.  These include but are not limited to:

• CPU Utilization

• RAM Usage

• Disk Usage

• Network Usage

• SQL Server Telemetry

Please see below for an example of such a set of telemetry on one of our internal environments.

Please NOTE that the above metrics are metrics used for performance monitoring.  Environment availability monitoring metrics, although they may overlap with the above, include additional telemetry specific to availability.

Please see below for an example of a System Level Telemetry dashboard.

Addressing a Performance Issue

In the unlikely event of that a performance issue is uncovered, our cloud teams will perform a number of tasks, both in the near and longer terms to help ensure your environment remains as performant as possible.

Any of these resource changes or corrective actions are communicated to appropriate personnel in the customer organization wherever possible.

Immediate Term

In the most immediate term, if any runaway processes are detected or inappropriately behaving system services, our cloud and product engineering teams will collaborate when needed to ensure an immediate resolution of the near-term need.  Based on a thorough investigation of your current situation, this may include items such as a system restart, service restart, disabling an offending customization (e.g. stored procedure), etc.

Medium Term

If our telemetry uncovers a persistent pattern of resource exhaustion, not tied to a specific product or customization issue, we will partner with you to increase the resources assigned to your environment.  This most commonly takes the form of a server upgrade, performed overnight during scheduled downtime hours.  

The scheduling of any proscribed upgrade will be coordinated with the customer.

Longer Term

In the long term, not only will our team continue to monitor the performance telemetry from your environment to ensure optimal ongoing performance, but you may have the opportunity to partner with various organizations within Trimble Viewpoint to help optimize your consumption and use of our technology stack.  This includes, but is not limited to:

• Professional Services:  assistance with optimization of customizations and ERP environment usage

• Enterprise Solutions Performance Reviews:  to ensure your environment is appropriately provisioned on a proactive basis.  This is provided through our Vista (or Spectrum) Enterprise Infrastructure and Support (VEIS) Enterprise Solution Bundle (ESB) at the Silver Tier and higher. 

• Enterprise Solutions Architecture (ESA) Reviews:  to ensure your workflows match your long term strategic goals and that those workflows are supported by the right mix of technologies; using the right tools at the right time to fulfill your needs / best practice awareness and overall stack optimization.  ESA reviews are provided as part of our VEIS ESB program at the Gold Tier and higher.

* NOTE:  These above three services will come at an additional cost depending on the nature of your current cloud contract.

Requesting Environment Dashboards

Any customer who wishes to have CPU, RAM, Disk, Network Telemetry, or SQL Server Dashboards, similar to those shown above, to review their environment's performance is welcome to have those as long as they are part of our Vista (or Spectrum) Enterprise Infrastructure and Support (VEIS) Enterprise Solution Bundle (ESB) at any tier.

To receive those dashboards, please reach out to your account manager to determine if the Vista Enterprise Infrastructure and Support (VEIS) solution, part of the Enterprise Solution Bundle (ESB) is appropriate for you.