Context

Tool mentors explain how a tool can perform tasks, which are part of ITUP processes and activities. The tasks are listed as Related Elements in the Relationships section.

You can see the details of how processes and activities are supported by this tool mentor, by clicking the links next to the icons:

•   Service Execution
  •   Deliver Service

Details

Understanding the end-user experience enables you to monitor the applications better and therefore ensure service delivery. With transaction-based management in IBM® Tivoli® Composite Application Manager for Response Time Tracking , you can monitor the service delivered to the end user, and if there is a problem, quickly isolate its cause, so that you can restore excellent service to that end user.

IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Response Time Tracking uses two basic methods to capture the end-user view of transactions: active monitoring, in which pre-recorded user transactions are played back to monitor and measure performance (Playback policies) and passive monitoring, where the performance of actual end-user traffic is monitored (Discovery and Listening policies).

IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Response Time Tracking implements the Application Response Measurement (ARM) API for application instrumentation. Using correlator information, ARM can build the call tree of the entire transaction. This action allows for transaction correlation providing context, such as parent-child relationships and parent-based and policy-based aggregation, across different applications and host systems.

IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Response Time Tracking allows you to configure thresholds on your monitoring policies and provides different reports and event notifications on violation conditions. Event responses such as e-mail notification and script execution enable not only the communication of the information but also allow you to take automated actions in the case of an incident or a failure. You can also choose to create an event in the Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC).

We'll now take a look at each of these capabilities.

Synthetic Transaction Investigator (STI) runs typical end-user web transactions on e-business machines to record the service level that is delivered in terms of response time for both the overall business process, and each step of the transaction. STI can monitor HTTP response codes and search string content thereby monitoring availability of your transactions. The Page Analyzer Viewer report shows a breakdown of the response times of the different elements in the Web pages of your Web application. STI can correlate the transaction across the Web server (Quality of Service component), the Web application server (J2EE component), custom-ARM applications (Generic ARM component) tracking the entire transaction and providing a decomposition view.

The Quality of Service monitoring component measures total round-trip time, back-end processing time, and client-browser render time. It also supports statistical sampling on specific customer transactions. Features include filtering based on URIs and on IP addresses. The Quality of Service component can also generate alerts when thresholds are violated.

The Generic Windows GUI component allows you to monitor the playback of Microsoft® Windows applications, applets, and JavaScript®. Additionally, Generic Windows VU allows you to monitor at the protocol level. Generic Windows components simulate end-user experience and detect problems in a predictive manner. You can track the transaction from Generic Windows through a Web server and through a J2EE Web application server.

The Client Application Tracker (CAT) measures and monitors the response times experienced by real end users, on their client desktops. It can also be used to break down the response time into the contribution of the network and the server, in order to speed problem isolation.

The J2EE monitoring component allows you to track transactions through Servlets, Entity Beans, Session Beans, JDBC, JMS, J2C, RMI-IIOP and Web Services. If these components are running on different servers, and there is a slowdown in the network between them, the J2EE component will highlight that.

The Generic ARM component allows you to track transactions through applications that have been instrumented using either ARM 2.0 or ARM 4.0 API, for example, Siebel server Version 7.7 and later. If you use the Open Group standard ARM API to add instrumentation calls to your own transactions, you can also use IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Response Time Tracking to monitor them.

To set up and configure monitoring, you install a Management Agent on the machines that you want to monitor your applications on. Then, you deploy the monitoring component - Quality of Service, Synthetic Transaction Investigator, Generic Windows, J2EE, Web Services, or ARM - that caters to your monitoring requirement. Finally, you set up monitoring policies with thresholds and event responses to monitor the service.

As an example, consider the shopping cart application of an online store. You want to monitor the operation to ensure service delivery. The IT infrastructure consists of a browser-based Web client, and a WebSphere® Application Server, both of which you will monitor. Before you begin to configure monitoring, install a Management Agent and then deploy the J2EE monitoring component on the machine with the Web application server. Also install the STI recorder and monitoring component on a desktop client machine.

1. Record the transactions using the STI Recorder, and upload the recording to the Management Server.
2. Create a playback policy for the transaction.
3. Configure STI settings (thresholds - performance, HTTP response code, string content). To associate the thresholds with event actions, create the event responses first.
4. Configure QoS settings (thresholds).
5. Choose a Schedule and Agent Group.
6. Create a Policy Group, one that maps to your logical IT structure.
7. Assign Name/Description -> Click Finish.

After the policy is distributed to the agents, the transaction is played back at the associated schedule, and monitoring information is collected as the transaction passes through the application server. You can configure thresholds after you monitor your transactions to get an idea of the normal response times to determine violation levels.

For more details on how to configure monitoring using IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Response Time Tracking , refer to the Administrator's Guide .

IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Response Time Tracking provides the following key reports that help you monitor and understand service levels.

• Availability line graph shows the health of a monitored transaction over time.
• Overall Transaction Over Time line graph shows aggregate response times (performance) for a monitored transaction over a specified time period.
• STI bar chart is used to investigate the performance and availability of a transaction and its sub-transactions played back over a specified period of time.
• Page Analyzer Viewer Report displays details about timing, size, identity, and source of all elements on Web pages.
• Transaction with Sub-transactions graph shows the performance of a monitored transaction and of up to five of its sub-transactions with the highest response times over a specified period of time.
• Slowest Transaction table lists transactions whose aggregate response times have been the slowest over a specified time period.
• Topology shows a graphical breakdown of a transaction displayed in a hierarchical arrangement of software components and sub-transactions.

For detailed information on the reporting features of IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Response Time Tracking , please refer to the Operators Guide.

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