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Best Open Source AIOps Platforms

Dr. Jagreet Kaur Gill | 23 June 2023

Best Open-source AIOps Platforms

What is an AIOps Platform?

AIOps platforms are tools that employ AI and ML technologies to automate, optimize and monitor IT operations. These platforms can collect and analyze vast amounts of data from various IT systems and tools and use algorithms to detect anomalies, identify patterns, and make predictions.

An AIOps platform can assist IT operations teams in the following ways:

  1. With better efficiency and accuracy, monitor and manage complex IT settings.
  2. Detect and diagnose problems automatically before they affect end users.
  3. Improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of IT workflows and processes.
  4. Provide thoughts and suggestions for continual improvement.
  5. Simplify incident management and cut the mean time to repair (MTTR).

An AIOps platform's key features may include

  1. Data gathering and correlation
  2. Anomaly detection with machine learning
  3. Diagnostics and root cause analysis
  4. Remediation automation
  5. Forecasting and predictive analytics
  6. Connection to other IT tools and systems

An AIOps platform may assist IT operations teams in shifting their approach to managing IT systems and applications from reactive to proactive and manual to automated.

AIOps makes the use of machine learning, data science and other algorithms for analyzing the data and automate things. Taken From Article, AIOps: Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations

What are some of the open-source AIOps platforms in the market?

Many open-source AIOps platforms can help organizations drive data-driven automation, intelligent analytics, and anomaly detection without investing in expensive enterprise solutions. Some of the popular open-source AIOps platforms include:

Prometheus

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting program that can be used as an AIOps platform. It is intended to capture and preserve time-series data and assist users in monitoring and troubleshooting complex IT settings with excellent efficiency and accuracy. These are some features that make Prometheus an excellent AIOps tool:

  • Data Collection and Storage: Prometheus can gather and store data from various sources, including applications, services, and systems. It scrapes metrics from targets using a pull-based methodology and saves the data in a time-series database. Prometheus may additionally save information and labels related to metrics for querying and display.
  • Querying and Visualization: Prometheus has a robust query language called PromQL that allows users to obtain and edit time-series data. Aggregation, filtering, and mathematical expressions are all supported by PromQL. Prometheus has various visualization options, such as built-in graphs, dashboards, and connections with third-party tools such as Grafana. 
  • Notifications and Alerts: Prometheus may notify users when measurements surpass specified thresholds or when anomalies are found. It offers a versatile alerting system that can be tailored using PromQL expressions and notification channels. Email, Slack, PagerDuty, or other channels can send alerts.
  • Integration with other Tools: Prometheus can interface with various technologies and platforms, including Kubernetes, Docker, and Amazon. It may also be expanded using third-party exporters offering metrics from many systems and applications.
  • Time-series Analysis: Prometheus has several built-in time-series analysis functions and features, such as trend discovery, anomaly detection, and forecasting. These tools can assist users in identifying patterns and abnormalities in data and predicting future trends.

Grafana

Grafana is an open-source visualization and analytics platform designed to help users visualize and analyze time-series data from various sources, including Prometheus and other monitoring tools. Some of the critical features of Grafana are

  • Data Visualization: Grafana supports custom visualizations and a variety of built-in visualization choices, such as graphs, gauges, and heat maps. It has interactive capabilities like zooming, panning, and time-range selection, allowing users to explore and evaluate data in real-time.
  • Data Exploration: Grafana enables users to explore and analyze time-series data using various tools and techniques such as filtering, grouping, and aggregation. Grafana Query Language (GQL) is a universal query language that can retrieve and alter data from many sources.
  • Alerts and Notifications: Grafana has a versatile alerting system that can be modified with GQL expressions and notification channels. It may deliver notifications by email, Slack, PagerDuty, or other channels and is compatible with other monitoring systems such as Prometheus.
  • Dashboarding: Grafana allows users to construct customizable dashboards that may be used to view and analyze data from many sources. It supports custom theming and branding, as well as a variety of dashboard designs and plugins.
Apply computation and algorithms efficiently and appropriately to expertise the machine and get desired outcomes. Taken From Article, AI for IT Infrastructure Management and Automation

OpenNMS

It is an open-source network management platform that can be used as an AIOps tool. It is designed to help users monitor and troubleshoot complex IT environments, including networks, applications, and systems. Here are some features of OpenNMS that make it a good AIOps tool:

  • Network Discovery and Mapping: OpenNMS can automatically find and map network devices and services. It can also detect linkages and dependencies among various devices and services, which may be helpful in troubleshooting and root cause investigation.
  • Performance Monitoring: OpenNMS can gather and store performance data from various sources, including SNMP, JMX, and HTTP. It includes a variety of performance graphs and statistics, as well as support for custom performance indicators.
  • Event Management: OpenNMS can detect and identify events from various sources, including syslog messages, SNMP traps, and log files. It offers a versatile event correlation and suppression mechanism that may be used to decrease noise and concentrate on key events.
  • Alarm Management: OpenNMS can produce and handle alarms using established rules and thresholds. It supports custom alarm procedures as well as a variety of alarm alerts and escalations.

Shinken

Shinken is an open-source monitoring tool that can be used as an AIOps tool. It is designed to help users monitor and troubleshoot complex IT environments, including networks, applications, and systems. Here are some features of Shinken that make it a good AIOps tool:

  • Modular Architecture: Shinken offers a modular design allowing users to adapt and adjust the system to meet their needs. Users can enhance the system's capabilities by adding new plugins and modules.
  • High Scalability: Shinken is well-known for its scalability since it can manage large-scale monitoring settings with thousands of devices and services. It supports distributed monitoring, which allows customers to spread monitoring workloads over different servers.
  • Customizable Setup: Shinken employs configuration files that may be manually updated, giving users greater flexibility and control over monitoring settings. Users can also use templates and inheritance to ease the configuration process.
  • Event Correlation: Shinken offers a customizable event correlation system that allows users to correlate and organize events based on various parameters. This can assist in reducing noise and focusing on important events.

Comparison of AIOps Platforms

There is no "best" tool among OpenNMS, Grafana, Shinken, and Prometheus because each has its strengths and shortcomings, and the choice is based on the individual use case and needs.

  • OpenNMS is a robust network monitoring tool with extensive event management, performance monitoring, and fault management capabilities.
  • Grafana is a popular data visualization and dashboarding application that supports various data sources and connectors.
  • Shinken is a scalable and adaptable network monitoring tool supporting diverse data sources and protocols.
  • Prometheus is a widespread open-source metric monitoring and alerting application with a time-series database and a robust querying language.

The appropriate tool for each use case is determined by users' unique requirements, such as the kind and volume of data to be monitored, the level of customization and integration required, and the sorts of alerts and notifications required. Users must assess each tool based on their needs and compare their features and capabilities to make an educated selection.

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Conclusion

As IT operations teams strive to manage complex IT infrastructures while ensuring high availability and performance, AIOps platforms are becoming increasingly crucial. These platforms use machine learning, artificial intelligence, and automation to assist teams in swiftly identifying and resolving issues and optimizing their IT systems' efficiency. Prometheus, Grafana, OpenNMS, Shinken, Zabbix, Nagios, and Sensu are some of the open-source AIOps platforms on the market. Each platform has its own set of strengths and drawbacks, and the platform chosen will be based on the user's demands and requirements.

AIOps platforms can assist IT operations teams in streamlining workflows, reducing downtime risk, and optimizing the efficiency of their IT systems. They can also assist teams in anticipating possible challenges and proactively identifying possibilities for improvement. As the demand for high-performance, dependable IT systems grows, AIOps platforms will become increasingly vital in assisting IT operations teams.