General

1. What can ManageEngine® Applications Manager do?
2. What is the difference between ManageEngine® OpManager and ManageEngine® Applications Manager? Can they be integrated?
3. Where is Applications Manager primarily used?
4. What flavours of Applications Manager is available?
5. What is a Monitor?
6. What are the different ways to monitor Custom Applications?
7. How does Applications Manager monitor machines with multi-CPUs?
8. Are Features / enhancements provided specific to a customer?
9. Enterprise Edition: How to identify when to switch over from Professional Edition to Enterprise Edition?
10. Enterprise Edition:What are the limitations of Enterprise Edition?

General

1. What can ManageEngine® Applications Manager do?

ManageEngine ManageEngine® Applications Manager helps to monitor the performance and availability of applications such as Web applications, application servers, Web servers, databases, network services, systems, etc. It helps you to identify and analyze faults and performance issues in your applications before it affects end users.

2. What is the difference between ManageEngine® OpManager and ManageEngine® Applications Manager? Can they be integrated?

OpManager focuses on availability and performance of networks (WAN, LAN, Routers, Switches, Firewalls) and Servers and gives a device centric view. However Applications Manager primarily focuses on performance and availability of applications (databases, application servers, business applications etc) and servers and gives an application centric view.

Server Management is a common functionality of the two products. This is because it is relevant for both Network and Application Management.

Yes, Applications Manager and OpManager can be integrated by using Network Monitoring Connector. You can monitor availability and performance of routers, switches and firewalls through a single console. You can also use ServiceDesk Plus for tracking trouble tickets.

You can also refer to our Online Help Documentation on Network Monitoring Connector.

3. Where is Applications Manager primarily used?

Applications Manager can be used in Data Centers and for managing Enterprise IT. The data centers can be hosted by an enterprise itself or by a service provider.

4. What flavours of Applications Manager is available?

ManageEngine® Applications Manager is available as Windows and Linux downloads. Right now, we dont support Solaris version. But you can monitor the performance of solaris host by running Applications Manager in a windows/linux host.

5. What is a Monitor?

A Monitor is a specific Application, Server, Service or Web URL. The performance of these Applications, Servers and Services are monitored on the basis of metrics like CPU Usage, Response Time etc.

Examples of monitors supported are Windows server monitor, WebLogic monitor, Oracle database monitor, service monitor, URL Sequence monitor, Apache monitor etc.

For eg., If you want to monitor 100 SQL Server installations in your network, the 100 SQL Servers will be considered as 100 monitors.

Consider the Apache web server that is used by www.appmanager.com. This monitor (Apache web server) may have 'N' number of performance metrics exposed. For info on what performance metrics you can see for an Apache Monitor, refer Apache Monitoring.

The total number of monitors, will include the monitors that we add by default. These default monitors will not be taken into account while calculating the number of monitors for Licensing. For licensing, the server or web server is considered as a Monitor. CPU Utilization, Response Time etc., are the Performance Metrics of a Server Monitor.

6. What are the different ways to monitor Custom Applications?

• If SNMP is enabled in that application, you can use SNMP monitor to monitor that particular application. Also if you have Mib for your application, you can upload that Mib to Applications Manager and add the required attributes to be monitored.
• If your applications use java and exposes data through JMX or it uses JDK 1.5 and exposes data through JMX, you can use JMX [MX4J / JDK1.5] monitor to monitor your application and also add required attributes for monitoring.
• If the custom application is running in a particular TCP port, you can use Service monitor to monitor the port and check for availability of that port. [Service Monitoring]
• If the application is web based application ( like IIS or Apache ), you can use HTTP-URLs and HTTP-URL Sequence monitoring to monitor the URLs for their availability. [Website Monitoring]
• If you have a script in Applications Manager machine which can monitor your application, Applications Manager server can execute this script periodically using Script monitor. It will also generate reports and escalate alarms according to the results obtained. [Script Monitoring]

• If you have a web application using JDK 1.5, you can use Web Transaction Monitor to monitor the end to end details about the application. [Web Transactions].

• Windows performance counter values can be added and monitored as attributes. Applications Manager uses WMI for monitoring Windows Performance Counters. [Windows Performance Counters]

7. How does Applications Manager monitor machines with multiple-CPUs?

ManageEngine® Applications Manager monitors the overall CPU usage of the server (not individual CPUs). Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Processor class is used to get the required CPU data in WMI mode of monitoring.

8. Are Features / enhancements provided specific to a customer?

We have a cumulative customer patch mechanism that ensures all customer patches get integrated into the immediate Service Pack of the product - which is normally in 1 or 2 months.

Enterprise Edition

9. How to identify when to switch over to Enterprise Edition?

Each installation of Applications Manager can normally support monitoring 250 monitors (servers and applications on a 1 CPU, 1.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM,  RH Linux). This could go higher based on the hardware configuration of the server on which Applications Manager is deployed and based on the load of the monitored server. The "Load Factor" should help you decide when its time to go for a distributed setup.

[The load factor follows the format x.y, where 'x' represents load on Applications Manager Server, while 'y' represents the load on the Database used by Applications Manager. A value of zero represents least loaded, while a value of nine represents most loaded.]

10. What are the limitations of Enterprise Edition?

You can view all reports and real time stats from a single console in the Admin Server. But to configure, you will have to login to the Managed Server Web Console. However it is made easy providing the ability to 'jump' from the Admin Console to the Managed Server console.

More Information on Enterprise Edition can be got from Enterprise Edition Product FAQ.