Recently we got an email on how a customer uses ManageEngine Applications Manager for Capacity planning. The various reports that are provided in ManageEngine Applications Manager for Oracle Performance Management came handy when the Oracle Database Administrator wanted to plan capacity. They could look at tablespace usage, Oracle datafiles and even number of sessions which makes it a valuable Capacity planning Tool.
ManageEngine Applications Manager also supports monitoring various Oracle Applications, IBM Applications, packaged applications like Exchange Server and is a Server monitoring tool. The server monitoring capabilities also helped the administrator know the utilization and performance of various resources in their network.
Below are some highlights of monitoring Java Applications using ManageEngine Applications Manager.
Monitor JVM Performance and Gain Visibility with JVM Performance ReportingThe need to monitor JVM performance is as important as building and designing a Java Application. This is because complex enterprise applications use various APIs and coding practices to scale the application. To ensure the smooth running of a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) the application team should ensure the command line parameters set are appropriate and need to tweak it regularly to ensure peak JVM performance. They need to monitor JVM usage and have a powerful Java Performance monitoring Tool.............................
We have published a new white paper titled "Application Performance Management for Enterprise Applications".
Read the full content of the white paper Application Performance Management for Enterprise Applications.
Some excerpts and Table of content of the white paper is quoted below.
Application Performance Management for Enterprise Applications
Introduction
Enterprise applications need high scalability to cater to a large end user base. The top issues faced by IT Teams in these organizations are monitoring uptime and ensuring good performance for their business applications. To resolve these problems, enterprises need to make strategic investments in end to end application performance management tools that can empower the IT Operations Team to deliver business applications that meet customer expectation.
Types of applications used by enterprises...............
Typical Application: Enterprise Expense Management Application :...........
Typical Problems Faced by an End User......
Typical Operations Team Response.........
Traditional Network Monitoring Tools are Not Good Enough........
Why are these applications typically Complex ?......
Identify the Problem Patterns.......
What is the meaning of Application Performance Management?........
Going back to 1970s, typewriter was used for some form of office automation. This was followed by other technologies, and later the PC era helped improve communication between users to a great extent. Some of these software improvements were also called groupware as they helped collaboration and quicker decision making, which in turn helped improve the bottomline. These collaborative capabilities were achieved, not only because Enterprise Applications matured in its capability, but also because Enterprise IT was able to deliver it, when needed. This hence elevated the contribution of IT to the business.
Over the last decade or so, IT Management too has evolved. From merely monitoring the network and servers to application monitoring, to end user experience monitoring and fault management to performance management to Business Services Management.
[caption id="attachment_2151" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Current approach to IT Management"]
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There are lots of point products that can help manage the Network, Servers or Applications etc. Each of these market segments too have matured to a level where the IT Team finds real value.
Now how can you improve your existing investments ? Invest in products and solutions that have a vision to provide an integrated management solution which help different groups in IT organizations to collaborate towards a common end goal - Delivering better Business Applications. Empower your IT Management capabilities by investing in products and technologies that integrate.
ManageEngine today can help you gain more value with mature tools that also integrate to provide greater value.
One of the recent announcements from ManageEngine is the integration of the various Network Monitoring capabilities by ManageEngine OpManager that spans across Fault and Performance Management of Core network equipment to monitoring VOIP and Network Change and Configuration Management.
[caption id="attachment_2161" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Network Monitoring Integration"]
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Similarly early this year, the integration of ManageEngine Applications Manager and ManageEngine OpManager via the Network Monitoring connector would help IT Teams to have a better perspective of the servers, databases, application servers and the Network.
With this integrated Integrated Server, Application and Network Monitoring ManageEngine Applications Manager will provide availability and performance monitoring for applications and databases, while ManageEngine OpManager provides the same for the network. This information is then provided in a single dashboard for the IT Administrators and Managers to make better informed decisions.
Well, is It not time to do to IT what IT did to Your business ?
Checkout the new AddOns released, to ensure your business gets more value for the buck, especially in the times of a slowing economy.
Gibu
Twitter : @Gibu_
In the ManageEngine Euro Roadshow we had the opportunity to meet many customers and prospects. We came across some interesting usage scenarios among our customers. Monitoring KPIs was one of them.
Wikipedia defines KPI as indicators that help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals. Also the day to day monitoring of these Key Performance Indicators is called Business Activity Monitoring.
Our script monitoring capability was used by many to monitor KPIs that gave them the visibility about how their business was performing. This along with the infrastructure monitoring capability helped them really understand how IT was impacting their business.
Why talk about KPIs now ?
Well, in the release 8.5, Karthi talks about Database Query Monitoring. This is another powerful capability that can help you monitor business metrics and have custom views created for your Managers.
Let us take an example of a vendor that provides software services to public car parking facilities.
They make sure the automated ticket issuing machines perform well and issue tickets appropriately. In this particular scenario, the administrator can also do one additional thing :
Monitor Business Metrics. By monitoring these business metrics, the company can understand how many cars come in and go out of the parking lot, how long cars are parked on an average, how many short stays, long stays, avg time for free parking etc happen. This gives them more visibility so that they can improve their services.
Happy Diwali !
Gibu
Twitter : @Gibu_
ps : Diwali is the “festival of lights” in India.
Well today’s post is about ManageEngine PasswordManager Pro which is a related product from ManageEngine. This product helps manage application / server passwords. Below is a second person,- an IT admin’s account.
Well here is a graphic that tells it all 
Hi,
I am Patrick. Your typical IT administrator. I am responsible for managing mission-critical business applications like app servers, databases, web services etc. in my network. And I use ManageEngine Applications Manager to monitor and manage them and ensure quality of service. With the growth of our application infrastructure by the day, my call of duty has gone beyond just managing the status of these applications. Can you take a quick guess what else? Well…It is not just about performance and availability anymore, but about managing passwords for these applications and securing them as well!
Now here are some of the challenges I face day to day. And as fellow IT administrators, I am sure you do too in your respective organizations. Admin passwords of applications are usually stored in plain text in files and are rarely changed, leaving them unprotected and posing a security threat. Even passwords that you store in Applications Manager to connect to the monitors for collecting management data , though secure, are rarely changed. How do I ensure that these passwords are shared efficiently and managed periodically, such that these ‘keys to my kingdom’ never land or remain in unsafe hands?
Sounds like a familiar problem in hand? Indeed it does. You see, balancing application monitoring and application password security is tough. But what keeps me up at night is the thought that one security breach as a result, is bad news for the company. If only I had a software that could help me manage my passwords with ease and secure my application infrastructure.
And then there was good news! I discovered ManageEngine PasswordManager Pro (PMP), which made all I wished for in managing my administrative passwords, now possible. PMP is secure and robust application that offers:
- a centralized repository for all your administrative passwords
- ways to securely provide and revoke access to these passwords and more…
Ofcourse if ManageEngine Applications Manager could also easily know these password changes, there is nothing like it. For now I can live with that. And with PasswordManager Pro my headaches are now fewer as I have all my password management needs covered!
Patrick
As always for ManageEngine products, you can checkout the online demo of ManageEngine PasswordManager Pro and checkout the website for more info .
This page covers all resources that help users of ManageEngine Applications Manager trobuleshoot issues or identify ways using the product effectively.
Last blog highlighted our plans for SAP Support in our next major update. However a nice enhancement to our Release 7.4 was the support for hierarchical monitor groups. This should help our users to better group & monitor IT resources. Here is how.
The traditional approach to monitoring resources, follow a siloed approach to monitoring technology components. There, high level availability and health are known for individual components and it is hard to visualize what resources need more attention based on business priority. With support for sub-groups, this situation is changing and will improve visibility even for the Head of Operations. For example, now you would be able to see that the overall business application had a 99.985% availability and can then check the reports and interpret how the downtimes total up.
The accuracy of reports will be improved by the ability to group relevant resources and by defining proper "dependency rules". These dependency rules will also help handle clustered setups.
The hierarchical grouping along with the support for dependencies with rules like "Critical if any 'N' Monitors are critical" should enable managing business services better.
Hope the below graphic is self explanatory. Click it to enlarge it.
Cheers !
Gibu
Twitter : @Gibu_
ps :
A previous blog highlight, just in case you missed it :
[ <b>Mood:</b> Cool ]<br />[ <b>Currently:</b> Working ]<br />We have been getting requests on how to monitor Glassfish (Open Source Application Server) using ManageEngine Applications Manager . So I will cover the various aspects supported by Applications Manager so that you get more visibility.
Applications Manager in addition to supporting Server Monitoring and Database Monitoring has the capability to build dashboards for JMX MBeans. We will use this along with Java Runtime Monitoring and URL Sequence Monitoring to monitor Glassfish. Before going forward, I would like to thank Gregrluck for his post on Glassfish monitoring in our forums.
JMX Dashboard :
Basically any JMX enabled Application on JMX 1.2 / JDK 1.5 can be monitored with this approach. Glassfish has some useful management information already exposed and you could monitor the same with this option.
1) Download and Install Applications Manager
2) I downloaded Glassfish here and this doc was very useful to get started !
I used the default configuration for Glassfish : Details below
| Quote: |
| [exec] Using port 4848 for Admin.[exec] Using port 8080 for HTTP Instance.[exec] Using port 7676 for JMS.
[exec] Using port 3700 for IIOP. [exec] Using port 8181 for HTTP_SSL. [exec] Using default port 3820 for IIOP_SSL. [exec] Using default port 3920 for IIOP_MUTUALAUTH. [exec] Using default port 8686 for JMX_ADMIN. User Name : admin Password : adminadmin |
3) Now, in Glassfish make the following changes in domain.xml
Make "accept-all" property to "true" for the "jmx-connector" node.
<jmx-connector accept-all="true"
My config line looks like :
| Quote: |
| <jmx-connector accept-all="true" address="0.0.0.0" auth-realm-name="admin-realm" enabled="true" name="system" port="8686" protocol="rmi_jrmp" security-enabled="false"/> |
4) Now Login to Applications Manager Web Console (http://localhost:9090 admin/admin)
Click "New Monitor" > "JMX Applications" link :
| Quote: |
| Specify the following :Host Name : hostnameSubNet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Port : 8686 (assuming default, check jmx-connector xml node > port property in domain.xml) Polling Interval : 5 JNDI Name : /jmxrmi Authentication Enabled : selected User Name : admin Password : adminadmin (for me same as my Glassfish admin console password)Click "Add Monitor" |
5) Now in the Web Console, navigate to the "JMX Application" details page : "Monitors tab" > "JMX Applications". Click "Add Custom Attributes" > Select a MBean domain and add those attributes.
I had deployed hello.war", hence I went to the MBean domain "com.sun.appserv" > added the MBean " com.sun.appserv:j2eeType=Servlet,name=jsp,WebModule=//server/hello,..." attributes.
More details in help and website.
JVM Monitoring
This has similar capability of JConsole. Additionally there is the capability to configure thresholds, email alerts, mbean operations triggered based on a monitored metric, Reports etc.
Check out the help docs on how to configure.
| Quote: |
| The values I had given in Applications Manager while Adding a "New Monitor" for "Java Runtime" are :Host Name : localhostSubNet Mask : 255.255.255.0
Port : 8686 JNDI Name : /jmxrmi Authentication Enabled : selected Username : admin Password :adminadmin |
That's it and you have the JVM of Glassfish monitored.
I know this post is getting long, but its not complete without :-)
URL Sequence Monitoring for Web Applications
For web applications you could create a synthetic test (URL Sequence monitor) and ensure that your Web Application is up and also track response times at various steps in the transaction.
I created one for the hello web application and that's how i ensured I get a non zero "requestCount" for mbean attribute for my hello.war web app :-)
ok, more seriously, take for example a ticketing web application, you could record (using the recorder.exe tool) a flight status query to your web application and configure Applications Manager to check this every 10 minutes and let you know when there a slump in performance. You may also want to check out the multi-location capability.
If you are still reading, then get started and download the product and try the free edition atleast !
Cheers
Gibu
Last week in a call we had a customer who was impressed with our J2EE Web Transaction Monitoring capability (Java Method Level stats). Seeing that, he quizzed me on whether we have any software that has the capability to generate load for testing 1000 virtual Users.
Well, I was happy to say, Yes ! You can take a look at our Product : QEngine : Web Application Testing Product. It can help simulate over 1000 Virtual User Loads with lots of cool configurations that help you simulate real time user browsing behavior too.
Let me elaborate on what I mean by real time user browsing behavior. Take for example you want to simulate 1000 users in which 100 users are in the "New User Registration" form, 500 users viewing their customer statistics page, 400 users filing up some ticket generation Application Form. You could do that with QEngine and in the meantime also have Applications Manager monitoring your J2EE Servers & databases so that you can identify bottlenecks in the Application Servers etc.
The additional benefit this combo has for you is you could even monitor the Server for CPU / Memory utilization, databases and understand in depth stats like read / writes, I/O , bytes transferred etc. Putting it simply, it can also help you plan inventory.
You can get more information about the product from our website www.qengine.com
-- Gibu
Corp