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 alarms 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 $945.
Isn't it time to EASE IT?
