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Bookmark, a books and music store, decides to
setup an online store for their business so that millions
of people around the country can buy their products.
They develop a website which is basically an online
application. This online store typically allows people
to browse through their books and music database, pick
items from it, add them to cart, make online payments,
and more.
Their online store is a complex application - the functioning
of the entire store depends on application server, databases,
web services, etc. It runs on WebLogic Server which
communicates with various back-end systems continually. The
WebLogic server is connected to an MS SQL Database Server
and a few custom applications. Additionally, the store connects
to a billing unit, which runs as a Web Service. Performance
hiccups can occur in any part of this complex architecture.
It is essential to have a visibility into the entire infrastructure.
Their online store was launched and instantly it became a
hit with its customers. More people started buying their product
online than making a personal visit to the store. This increased
their store traffic. Hit rates surged and number of visitors
in a day increased gradually.
 One
fine day, their store slowed down. Many customers encountered
slower web pages. Few were frustrated when their final
payment transaction ended abruptly. One problem led to another.
Interdependent services began to fail. Customers began
to report frequent downtime and slow response time
of the store. This problem had a mighty impact on Bookmark's
revenue and customer base. Bookmark did not know what caused
the error or how to troubleshoot it.
At this point of crisis, they decide to try Applications
Manager, software to monitor the performance and availability
of business infrastructure. On installing it, their IT administrator
Jean, creates a 'Monitor Group' called 'Bookmark Online
Application'. To this Monitor Group, he discovers and associates
'Monitors' such as WebLogic, MS SQL Server, Custom
Applications, Web Services, URLs, and more from their store
infrastructure. Now he gets a holistic view of his entire
online store; and in the Monitor Group, he drills down each
of the Monitors and views its details. On setting up, Applications
Manager is ready to monitor Bookmark's online store.
In case of WebLogic server Monitor, using Applications Manager,
the administrator detects when the response time is slow (as
stated in Bookmark's problem). Jean identifies that the slower
response time has caused after 100 hits per minute,
which was way higher, the threshold to support peak
usage.
In case of MS SQL database, Applications Manager helps in
monitoring database availability. Jean detects error by monitoring
the maximum users and maximum transaction rates. These
parameters can be used to set thresholds, violating which
generates alerts in Applications Manager.
At one point of time, Jean receives e-mail from Applications
Manager stating that the Memory usage of one of the
machines where an application server is running, shoots up.
He quickly looks for the root cause analysis and drills-down
components of the suspected applications. It could have occurred
because of additional processes running in his Linux machine.
He detects this using the Process Monitoring features.
On detecting the trouble, he quickly takes corrective actions.
This smart move is done even before the end user can notice
it.
 Beep
Beep. Jean receives an SMS "Billing Application Down".
He quickly takes a look at all the applications and services
in the Applications Manager. He detects that the Billing Application
health shows the status as critical. Instantly he finds
out that the JDBC connection pool is running low, causing
a general slowdown of all other related applications and services.
The database performance issue is fixed right away.
Jean is relaxed. He now has the time to plan for expanding
his IT infrastructure. He is looking forward to know how the
applications have performed over the month. He needs to show
the resource performance and utilization data to his
boss to take business-level decisions. This decision-making
depends on how well the existing resources have performed.
He generates reports for the overall Monitor Group
and also for each of the Monitors, for a week. He also takes
reports of performance data for over a month.
The online store has a good billing mechanism whereby the
user logs in, specifies details about his purchase in a page,
his personal details in the next page, his billing address
in the next page, and the likes. Jean wants to know if each
of these pages is available all the time. He uses the URL
Monitoring facility to monitor each of the pages in this
sequence.
All these and more are made possible with Applications Manager,
which has helped Jean and Bookmark Store to monitor the performance
and availability of their business-critical online store 24X7, for just $595.
Isn't it time to EASE IT?
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