Control View

To help you detect and address changing demand for resources, the platform's control features include monitoring alerts with notifications, action plans for automation, and autoscaling.

Basic control and scaling concepts

Concept	Description
Metric	A built-in metric that is provided by a hypervisor or provider (e.g. CPU usage) or a custom metric that the user creates and populates using API calls
Alarm	An alarm activates when a metric passes a certain threshold. If you imagine a dashboard for your metrics, alarms are like red lights that light up when conditions change, for example, when there is a problem. See Manage cloud alarms and Infrastructure Alarms
Alert	An alert enables you to configure notifications or actions from alarms. Alerts are like a worker monitoring a group of alarms; when all the lights for the group are lit up, the alert is activated. Alerts can trigger action plans. See Control View
Action plans	A sequence of actions to perform on entities on the platform, such as VMs or scaling groups. An action plan is run by a trigger.
Trigger	A trigger is an alert or a schedule that will run the action plan, for example, during times of increased demand.
Scaling group	For horizontal autoscaling, create a scaling group for a VM with rules to define how the platform should scale it out. You can then include scaling operations in an action plan.
Vertical scaling	Vertical scaling means scaling up, adding more resources to an existing VM, for example, boosting your CPU and or RAM capacity.
Horizontal scaling	Horizontal scaling means scaling out, deploying more VMs when you need more resources.

Alerts to notify users and trigger automation

The platform's alerts feature enables you to track and act upon changes in your cloud environment. To configure Alerts do these steps:

Go to Virtual datacenters
Go to Virtual Appliances → Virtual machines. Create and configure your VMs. See Manage Virtual Machines
1. Remember to enable metrics. See VM monitoring and metrics.
  - You can also create custom metrics using the API. See Custom Metrics Resources.
Go to Virtual appliance → Monitoring and check that the platform is retrieving metrics. You may have to wait a few minutes
Go to Alarms. Create alarms for built-in metrics, scaling group metrics, and custom metrics as required
1. To create alarms, go to an Alarms tab in either the Virtual datacenters view (see Manage cloud alarms) or the Infrastructure view (see Infrastructure Alarms).
2. Select an entity, a metric, and a metric statistic and enter a threshold, then save the alarm
Create alerts to notify users. See Manage Alerts.
- You can also use these alerts to trigger scaling, see Cloud bursting.

Cloud bursting

You can perform cloud bursting with the platform's Control features. Cloud bursting is automatically deploying new resources in any part of your hybrid cloud environment to meet a peak in demand for resources. Here is a brief outline of how to configure cloud bursting with VM automation.

In your Virtual datacenters, create and configure networks
1. To optionally use VPNs between VDCs (see Connect virtual networks with VPNaaS), use networks with different addresses, e.g. the default network and a custom network set as the default, see Manage Networks
Create and configure your VMs. See Manage Virtual Machines
1. Remember to enable metrics. See VM monitoring and metrics.
Define scaling groups for VMs. The base VM can be deployed or undeployed. See Manage Scaling Groups
Deploy VMs
Go to Virtual appliance → Monitoring and check that the platform is retrieving metrics. You may have to wait a few minutes
Create alarms for built-in metrics, scaling group metrics, or custom metrics. See Custom Metrics Resources. To work with auto-scaling, we recommend that you create alarms for both the high threshold, when you will require more resources, and the low threshold, when these resources can be retired
1. To create alarms, go to the Alarms tab in either the Virtual datacenters view (see Manage cloud alarms) or the Infrastructure view (see Infrastructure Alarms).
2. Select an entity, a metric, and a metric statistic and enter a threshold, then save the alarm
Create alerts to notify users and to trigger scaling. See Manage Alerts.
Create action plans for cloud bursting and other automation. See Manage Action Plans. For example, use scaling actions to add more VMs for your application or to retire VMs that are no longer needed. Save the action plan, and then add an alert to trigger the plan or create a schedule to run it.

Pages related to control of VMs

Main VM configuration page: Configure Virtual Machines
- VM monitoring and metrics
- Manage cloud alarms
Configure VM Monitoring and Metrics