Awoogah, enterprise bods: Tintri recruits Echo Alexa speechbot Listen up. Storage array vendor Tintri has a video demonstrating that speech-recognizing Amazon Echo's Alexa can be used to trigger array system management ops. Is this a profound industry first, ushering in a whole new sysadmin landscape, or just eye candy-style gimmickry? Tintri has already demo’d a Slack chatbot management …
Many of you have seen, used, connected or know how to connect Alexa to other components, but the real value comes down to the actual tasks that can be performed.
For example, creating a storage LUN is not applicable to a cloud end user, and neither is understanding LUN statistics. Having deep insights at the VM, application, VDC or Cloud level is very powerful, but it requires complex management and self-service stack. Most importantly, the infrastructure has to support it.
In this demo, Alexa is used as a cool front-end to a Tintri based infrastructure that natively has the required granularity, abstraction layer and API. Adding Alexa, Slack or any other interface is simple and provides huge value, especially compared to “traditional” self-service portals that are heavy and complex.
Here is a copy of a Slack snippet I use multiple times a day:
tomer [12:16 PM]
get stats for vm build-server7
tbot [12:16 PM]
IOPS-> Read: 1424, Write: 1425, Total: 2849
Latency-> Host: 4.2ms, Network: 0.2ms, Storage: 0.2ms, Total: 4.6ms
Space Provisoned GiB: 2209.0
Normalized IOPS: 22797
Genuinely interested.
Why do you care about the stats for build-server7? Or, any build-server, for that matter.
Would it not be better for the system to monitor and alert you if something was unusual (job complete/whatever you're looking for), rather than you having to spend time constantly asking so that you can then do the smarts yourself?
Or is there something specific in the response that you couldn't teach the computer to look for and monitor on your behalf?
I don't disagree, just taking this a step further:
You received an alert/ someone reported an issue, then what? Would it be useful to use your phone (even if you're in a meeting, on the road etc.) and with a quick IM, or voice command check if a machine suffers from a host / network/ storage latency?
Even better, the user himself can do it (if you allow them) and it does not require you to build a complex management stack.
@Paul- I don't disagree, just taking this a step further:
You received an alert/ someone reported an issue, then what? It's very helpful to be able to use your phone (even if you're in a meeting, on the road etc.) and with a quick IM/ voice command, check if a machine suffers from a host / network/ storage latency, or perform other queries.
Even better, the user himself can do it (if you allow them) and it does not require you to build a complex management stack.
>nei sayers
Is this a pun that I don't get, or do you mean naysayers?
Voice recognition has its uses, and has its uses for accessibility or if you're just unable to use your hands and eyes, like when you're driving.
This is one of those "because we can" innovations, like 3D TVs. I used to work with XIV and you could get an app for tablets to monitor it, but nobody did because it was shite.
All an admin needs is a dead easy interface using a web browser as we all tend to carry one of those in our pockets. No apps, no flash, no java and no stupid voice recognition that won't understand your accent anyway (making it very human unfriendly, to paraphrase you). Maybe an API and a CLI for the fancy stuff.
Still, well done to Tintri for the marketing message. It got people looking.
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for a non english native speaker, i struggle on daily basis with my car's handsfree system to get the right names and actually get it to do what i want, to the extent that the system is all useless. so i dont see this happening in many regions of the world. besides, with the right level of automation, it would be faster than speaking to Alexa and waiting on her to give you options.
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