by Greg Shields

At this point, you might think that system performance monitoring and event log analysis will give you exactly what you need to track down application behaviors. Indeed they will, but only to a certain point. As your applications grow more critical to your business, you will at the same time start needing better instrumentation that peers deep into those applications.

Consider the situation where a database is experiencing a problem. That problem has nothing to do with a lack of resources on the system. None of its processors are overloaded. There is plenty of memory to go around. Yet the database continues to have a problem.

This situation represents many that cannot be effectively resolved using system performance solutions and event log entries. Perhaps this problem relates to a poorly-written database transaction that is pausing as it completes. Perhaps a non-optimized transaction finds itself waiting on a piece of data until its wait times out.

Neither of these two problems will manifest into a system metric because they have no impact on system resources. A pause or a timeout are both situations where problems occur that need to be looked at directly in order to be visible. To actually “see” these situations as they occur, you need deep monitoring that links directly into your application. Perhaps that application is an Oracle database, a Tomcat Web server, or even a component of the Microsoft .NET platform. Digging into these applications requires specialized monitoring that speaks their language, while at the same time elevating situations to your view.
Don Jones talks a bit more about the challenges of monitoring complex systems in his recent Essentials Series: Improving Application Performance Troubleshooting:

The root cause of this troubleshooting inefficiency is that modern applications are really, really complicated. Even seemingly-simple applications can, in reality, be incredibly complex. Think about the average custom, in-house application:

• It’s built on some kind of framework—perhaps .NET, perhaps Java, perhaps something else—and that framework will have its own internal performance characteristics.
• It’s usually not a monolithic application but rather a collection of components. Some of those may be purchased and some may be developed in-house. Some may even be open source, downloaded from the Internet. Each component may have its own performance issues.
• Applications run on a computer, which may well have its own performance problems: lack of memory, slow disks, failing network card, and so forth.
• Applications rely on a network that consists of its own complex infrastructure: routers, switches, hubs, wiring (which is susceptible to electrical interference), and so on.
• The network provides services that applications rely on, including DNS, which applications may use as a precursor to communicating with network-based servers.
• Applications commonly communicate with one or more servers, which may have their own performance issues. Those servers run program code, too, which may feature any number of performance problems.
• Applications often utilize a database, which can have its own performance nightmares in addition to the performance problems of the server actually running the database software.

And aside from all these individual components, you’ve got the single complex entity called an application, which from a holistic viewpoint may exhibit what I call synergistic performance problems. In other words, sometimes a few well-oiled components can conspire to create poor overall performance. You can’t point to any one component as the cause of slow performance, but taken together, the various components do, in fact, run slowly. Many of these components may only run slowly some of the time, which makes troubleshooting even more difficult—problems that can’t be repeated consistently are much more difficult to solve.

Solutions like the ManageEngine Applications Manager, BlueStripe APM 2.0, NimSoft Monitoring Solution, and AviCode Intercept incorporate the necessary types of deep monitoring that characterizes metrics within these applications. If your environment leverages any applications like these—and whose doesn’t?—you may consider adding an application monitoring solution to your IT infrastructure.

About the Author

Greg Shields is an independent author, speaker, and IT consultant, as well as a Partner and Principal Technologist with Concentrated Technology. With 15 years in information technology, Greg has developed extensive experience in systems administration, engineering, and architecture specializing in Microsoft OS, remote application, systems management, and virtualization technologies. He is a Contributing Editor and columnist for TechNet Magazine and Redmond Magazine, and serves as the Series Editor for Realtime Publishers, the world’s leading provider of high-quality content for the IT market. Greg is a highly sought-after and top-ranked speaker for both live and recorded events, and is seen regularly at conferences like TechMentor Events, Microsoft Tech Ed, VMworld, and more. He is a multiple recipient of Microsoft “Most Valuable Professional” award.