The Ultimate Edition of the Micro Focus Operations Bridge 2021.05 release now includes a new version of Operations Bridge Analytics (OBA) that is optimized for the OPTIC Date Lake (DL). 

It offers the ability to perform anomaly detection and metric analytics (such as multi-metric correlation, metric forecasting and time-machine replay) on any metric data stored in the OPTIC DL. The anomaly detection feature helps you discover abnormal behavior across any metric data. With these AIOps capabilities, we have improved the total cost of ownership (TCO) by no longer requiring a separate OBA Vertica instance as you did in the past (the OPTIC DL Vertica cluster is used by OBA instead). This reduces administration, simplifies the installation and configuration process and increases Time to Value (TTV).

You can now view OBA as an application that runs on OPTIC and provides analytics on top of already collected metric data in the OPTIC DL. Note that OBA can work with all metric data provided it is properly tagged, including custom and third-party metrics.

The screenshot below shows an anomaly detected by OBA and explains which additional information you can gather to further investigate the problem. Note that you can easily cross-launch from the OBM anomaly event (sent by OBA to OBM) into this OBA UI:

Figure 1. An anomaly detected by OBA

As opposed to Performance Dashboards (PDs) that help you identify the root cause by visually analyzing metrics in the context of CI views and events (which makes them useful for known monitoring scenarios), OBA analytic dashboards are based on the metric data stored in the OPTIC Data Lake, enabling metric observability driven root cause analysis and problem solving in the following ways:

• Help you identify unknown scenarios that may occur unexpectedly and differ from the expected behavior of data
• Suggest where to look for problems by allowing you to drill down into the data collected on anomaly hosts
• Offer drilldowns to help you quickly resolve problems

Additionally, several out-of-the-box dashboards are now available for system metrics:

Figure 2. An out-of-the-box dashboard for system metrics inside the OPTIC DL

These dashboards show the Top 10 hosts with highest CPU, memory, disk or network utilization and all breaches that occurred in the selected time period and allow easy drilldown into any of these hosts for further analysis.

Note: The system learns to determine normal levels of your metric, or the baseline. For metrics, the baseline produces a range of normal values. A breach, or an anomaly, is any major deviation from a baseline that does not conform to an expected pattern calculated by the system.

The following example shows you the result of a drilldown on a host for which breaches have been detected and explains how this extra data visualization feature can further help you in gathering troubleshooting information.

Figure 3. A drilldown on a problematic host

Time-machine playback gives observability to what happened in the past that may have affected the problem you are investigating. It allows you to look at historic metrics while keeping an eye on significant messages and when they occurred. You can use tools to forecast metric behavior or detect correlations between metrics:

Figure 4. The Predict tool forecasting future trends

Figure 5. The Correlate tool showing coefficient score

Note: Log Analytics and plain language search let you quickly find problems expressed in log files that may not be seen elsewhere. Log Analytics and Search features on the log data are available in OBA 2021.05 for the OPTIC DL. However, these require OBA log collectors.

Figure 6. Supported analytics data sources

If you do not use OBA yet and you plan to start using OBA with the OPTIC DL, you need to use OBA 2021.05.

If you have earlier OBA versions, note that no upgrade path or data migration to OBA 2021.05 for the OPTIC DL is offered. You can still use your existing standalone OBA in parallel with OBA 2021.05 for historic data purposes or use the dashboards for data not yet supported by OBA for the OPTIC DL.

If you have feedback or suggestions, don’t hesitate to comment on this article. 

Explore the full capabilities of Operations Bridge by taking a look at these pages on our Practitioner Portal: Operations Bridge Manager, SiteScope, Operations Agent, Operations Connector (OpsCx), Operations Bridge Analytics, Application Performance Management (APM) and Operations Orchestration (OO). 

Events 

• Webinar replay: Operations Bridge 2021.05 Release Readiness Webinar 
• Webinar replay: Reduce the Drama of IT Operations – Introducing Micro Focus OPTIC 
• Webinar replay: Improve Cloud Observability beyond Native Cloud Provider Tools 

To get more information on this release and how customers are using Operations Bridge, we are happy to announce the following recent and upcoming events: 

• Cloud Monitoring Virtual Customer Forum 
• Using COSO Data Lake to Drive AIOps 
• Map Your Route to AIOps: A 5-Step Guide 

See all the Micro Focus events worldwide. 

Read all our news at the Operations Bridge blog. 

Related items: 

• New analyst report – Research In Action Names OpsBridge #1 in their AIPA report 
• Gartner: Rethink Cloud Monitoring across Tooling and Staffing 
• Operations Bridge – Automated discovery, monitoring and automation 
• Operations Bridge Technology Integrations eBook 
• What is AIOps 

Have technical questions about Operations Bridge? Visit the Ops Bridge User Discussion Forum. 

Keep up with the latest Tips & Info about Operations Bridge. 

Do you have an Idea or Product Enhancement Request about Operations Bridge? Submit it in the Ops Bridge Idea Exchange. 

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this blog. Comment below.