SIOS Technology Corp. is doubling down on its new discipline of performance analytics with version 3.3 of its SIOS iQ machine learning analytics software and promises to deliver updates every four to six weeks. The company, which started as a maker of clustering software more than 15 years ago, is pushing ahead aggressively with a new suite of tools introduced in July that it says can help system administrators pinpoint the source of problems in VMware virtual machine environments.

Positioned as a companion to VMware vRealize Operations Manager (vROps), SIOS iQ spiders out through all the resources on virtual machines and consolidates them into a single repository for performance analysis and display through vROps or on its own dashboard. SIOS says it can see precisely how resources are being used and determine anomalous behavior through machine learning. The agentless software is installed into a single virtual machine. After collecting data for about a week, it learns enough about the VMware environment to begin identifying current and future performance problems. It also recommends steps to resolution.

SIOS differs from traditional performance analysis tools by taking a big data approach to the task, said Jerry Melnick (above) who was recently named CEO. “VROps is good for a high-level identification of issues,” he said, “But if you want deeper insight about how to remediate issues, you would jump to SIOS IQ.”

Version 3.2, which was released last month, collapsed the administrative dashboard onto one screen and improved event correlation to identify over-allocated network resources and predict bottlenecks. Version 3.3 uses best practices analysis to shorten the usual week-long process of “learning” about a virtual machine environment and start delivering results more quickly.

Improved integration with vROps 6.0 enables vROps to display high-availability cluster health; host-based caching configuration recommendations; undersized VMs; and idle resources including snapshot and VM sprawl through an “Environment Health” map and issue display. That helps with the identification of issues such as “noisy neighbors,” hardware degradation and slow application performance. The software can also now identify additional root causes of performance problem, including newly provisioned VMs and live migration of VMs.

Not content to let grass grow under its feet, SIOS is already previewing new features in version 3.4, which is due before the end of the year. They include a dynamic visual map of the VMware infrastructure that shows interrelated objects and permits drill-down analysis; the ability for IT staff to customize the software’s machine learning assumptions and reliability analysis for VMware High Availability.

List price for the standard edition of SIOS iQ is $150/month/host on a renewable subscription basis.

Melnick discussed the launch of SIOS IQ in a CUBEConversation with Wikibon Chief Analyst David Vellante in July (14:22).