A screenshot, provided by Paglo, of a dashboard demonstrating the company's application for using IT infrastructure data.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — IT management SaaS company Paglo (www.paglo.com) announced on Tuesday that it has made a major addition to its product line with the launch of Paglo Logs, providing automatic cloud storage and instant search for log files.
The WHIR’s introduction to Paglo in general came through a discussion with CEO Brian de Haaff shortly in advance of the Paglo Logs solution – a milestone release that de Haaff says makes Paglo the first solution to bring together log analysis and infrastructure device data in a searchable, usable combination of two key data sets.
Paglo’s previous offering – the foundation to which the logs function adds – is a SaaS application for gathering, searching and visualizing IT infrastructure and network data.
One of the basic building blocks of the service is the Paglo crawler, which, once installed on a piece of network hardware and granted the appropriate permissions and credentials, begins communicating with the network, gathering data on configuration, performance and various other aspects of the infrastructure, and sending that data securely to the index.
The larger part of the Paglo package is the user interface, a browser-based application based around the company’s search technology. Users can search their data with terms ranging from simple keywords to complex queries using the application’s powerful syntax, which de Haaff says is nearly identical to standard SQL syntax.
“I can search for anything,” he says. “I can search for an IP address, a virtual machine, a username – but I also can search for machines, which is critical if I’m running applications on those machines or key processes.”
The search results contain links – as in the case of a search for a specific machine – to sub-sets of that data, such as more information about that machine. But they can also be mashed up, and used to create charts and other similar visualizations, which can then be assembled into dashboards that bear a distinct resemblance to the sort of complex assembly of information you’d see in a data center’s NOC.
One of the more compelling aspects of Paglo is the range of possibilities conjured up by its visual presentation. While there is a screenshot in this story, the company has a page full of interesting screenshots posted on its website.
While the product wasn’t necessarily created exclusively for data center applications, de Haaff says Paglo has lots of data center users.
“It’s designed to cover everything in the network,” he says. “So everything from inventory, to the network’s health, to server health, to VMware that’s running in the data center.”
Another important piece of the product is the community of users, which is able to share popular panels and dashboards, and useful queries, either within an organization, or with the entire base of Paglo users. The product is also extensible, and includes an open API, so while Paglo itself is constantly adding new functions – recent additions include compatibility with VMware virtualized environments and infrastructure incorporating Amazon’s EC2, using that product’s CloudWatch API – users can build their own add-ons. So, it would not be difficult for a hosting provider to make certain panels and dashboards accessible to its customers via its own management console.
The product is available starting at $100 per month for a network that includes up to 100 machines, on a sliding scale that sticks roughly to that $1 per machine per month rate. Additional fees can be paid to extend the lenth of time data is stored.
The new Paglo Logs function is another paid-for add-on, with a small amount (up to 10MB per day) included for free in the standard Paglo service, and more available for a monthly fee.
More detailed information about the pricing for both services is available at the company’s website.
Combined, says de Haaff, the products provide a revolutionary level of searchable access to network information.
“Logs are phenomenally useful,” says Chris Waters, the company’s CTO, “but what Paglo has is unique in that we have all of the log information, but we also have all of the device information, the software information, the configuration information from machines, the network information and information about users. So we have a combination of data that no other solution has, whether it’s software based, or an appliance or on demand.”
The possible uses of the combined data set are manifold, says Waters, particularly in the security arena – where events like failed logins or possible attacks can be examined via logs and checked simultaneously against machine configurations.
A key usage case, he says, and one that should be particularly resonant in the hosting community, is in meeting and demonstrating PCI compliance, a key consideration for anyone operating infrastructure that is handling credit card transactions.
The company’s excitement about the Logs offering is clear. And with Tuesday’s release, the company will have the opportunity to measure the excitement among customers about the service. De Haaff is optimistic about the potential for traction.
“These are two data sets that nobody has been able to bring together in one application,” he says. “We’re bringing them together. And on top of that we’re providing this real-time search, so you can find information extremely quickly.”
