APM 1.0 has been out a few months, and we're hard at work on APM 2.0. One of the things we'd like to know is what you're using the product for. * What do you monitor now? * What do you not monitor now, but want to monitor when we ship APM 2.0?* APM 2.0 will include a generic WMI Performance Monitor * APM 2.0 will include script monitors * What "user experience monitors" (aka synthetic transactions) do you want to have? Cheers, Denny

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APM: What do you monitor, and what do you want to monitor?

APM 1.0 has been out a few months, and we're hard at work on APM 2.0. One of the things we'd like to know is what you're using the product for.

What do you monitor now?
What do you not monitor now, but want to monitor when we ship APM 2.0?
- APM 2.0 will include a generic WMI Performance Monitor
- APM 2.0 will include script monitors
What "user experience monitors" (aka synthetic transactions) do you want to have?

Cheers,
Denny

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aLTeReGo

What "user experience monitors" (aka synthetic transactions) do you want to have?

              MSSQL
              MSExchange/MAPI
              RADIUS
              TACACS+
              LDAP
              MySQL
              FTP
              SMTP
              TIME/SNTP/NNTP
              POP3 / SPOP3
              IMAP4 / SIMAP4
              MMS
              RTSP
              DHCP

What do you not monitor now, but want to monitor when we ship APM 2.0?

              Database Performance (see above)
              FTP (log in and verify that a file can be uploaded to, or downloaded from, an FTP server)
              File System/Share (verifiy the existence of a specified file and search for content within the file)
              Email - IMAP4, POP3, and SMTP (send email via SMTP and retreive using POP3 or IMAP4) Should support secure connections

What do you monitor now?

Altiris Service Desk
AppSense Management Suite
Avaya Conference Bridge
Avaya Message Application Server
Avaya Message Strorage Server
Avaya Unified Communications Server
Avocent DSView
Backup Exec System Recovery
Blackboard
Canto Cumulus
Check Point Connectra SSL VPN
Check Point SmartCenter
Cisco Secure Access Control Server
Cisco Wireless Control System
CiscoWorks
Citrix Access Gateway
Citrix Presentation Server
Datatel
Internet Authentication Service
Internet Information Services
InterScan Messaging Security Suite
Lotus Domino
Lucent VitalQIP
Maximo
Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft SQL Server
PasswordManager Pro
Pointsec WebRH
ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange
Serv-U FTP Server
Solarwinds Orion
SQLsafe Backup
Symantec Backup Exec
System Management Server
Trend Micro Control Manager
Trend Micro OfficeScan
Veramark eCAS Call Accounting System
Veritas NetBackup
Viewcast Niagara SCX
VMWare Server
Web Wizard
WebAdvisor
WebCheckout
Windows Internet Name Service
Windows Media Services
Windows Print Services

FormerMember

Dude! Great list! Thank you.

rcahill

Only a sub-set of aLTeReGo

Interested in monitoring Active Directory

HTTP sites without the penalty of ICMP failures.

FormerMember

HTTP sites without the penalty of ICMP failures.

Can you elaborate?

Habakkuk3_17-19

i'm just getting started with APM - but - is the sky the limit?

i'm already monitoring Processes/Services - building a few profiles for unique servers, which is going well...but

i'd like to monitor:

1. files - their changes in size and date/time stamps

2. directories - their changes in size and date/time stamps

3. be able to scan inside a file to capture or see text changed

4. monitor registry changes

5. i'd like to be able to do a SNMP SET inside the MIB/OID (i realize i can do this outside APM, but it would be nice to have better structure than scripting it)

6. with WMI being so vast - there needs to be some APM WMI selection fields to interface into the WMI tree

7. Provide some sort of SNAPSHOT into a server's running Services and save this as a profile to be monitored

9. Need an intense profile to cover Active Directory - watchers - timers - state changes PLUS something similar for SQL

10. Need something to link APM to a sole business process view like linking a single APM View put together with specific servers - circuits - services - tcp ports - performance...all of these together would be my 'business process'

11. finally - build in some alarm severities by rank and use these for alerts - critical - major - minor - informational - and use with Adv Alerts to Page on Critical - Email on Minor - etc.

Some of this is probably already inside Solarwinds someplace, I just haven't found all of it yet.

rcahill

Absolutely, Many corporations support or have internet based web sites that are important for monitoring. A normal ping response is something that typically will not respond. When attempting to monitor a http only site, orion will display the node as down because there are no ICMP responses.Thanks

rcahill

I would like the ability to set on/off timers for alerts that can correspond to normal maintenance cycles. This would eliminate a lot of false alerts.

FormerMember

In
our environment there is a lot of distance between the application and
networking groups. Because of this we don’t have any need to monitor the
individual services that are running on servers. What we need is expanded
capability in what you call the user experience monitoring. In many cases we
are monitoring the availability of services that we do not manage. (business
partner services / dhcp / dns)

Feature
Request#1

So
there are a couple of issues this presents us with. Currently when you want to
monitor an application it must be associated with a monitored node. Monitored
nodes must be available at least via icmp for Orion to determine the up/down
status of the node.. In order to have a “user experience monitor” ( here after
referred to as UEM =^) ) for a resource that resides outside your network (or
simply unavailable via icmp) you would need to create a node and it will
forever show up in Orion as a down node except in the application monitor view.
(unless of course I missed something in which case feel free to smack me around
old school style)

Feature
Request#2

There
should be a way to present critical monitored UEM objects (or specific
monitored services) in an organized fashion on the Orion main page without
having to go into the application monitor subpage. This would likely require
adding applications to the custom property editor so it would be possible to
create similar tree type layout. (Just a guess)

Feature
Request#3

Simply
adding more UEM functionality. While it was clearly not the original focus of
this application im sure we are not the only ones with a strong need for
monitoring services this way. It would be a great way to not just validate resources
are available but validate specific routes to resources.

FormerMember

Feature Request#1
So there are a couple of issues this presents us with. Currently when you want to monitor an application it must be associated with a monitored node. Monitored nodes must be available at least via icmp for Orion to determine the up/down status of the node.. In order to have a “user experience monitor” ( here after referred to as UEM =^) ) for a resource that resides outside your network (or simply unavailable via icmp) you would need to create a node and it will forever show up in Orion as a down node except in the application monitor view. (unless of course I missed something in which case feel free to smack me around old school style)

For an HTTP or HTTPS monitor, you can assign it to any node. If it's a resource outside your network, you can assign it to a node that you're already monitoring; you don't need to assign it to a new node. That said, we plan to make this more intuitive in the future.

Feature Request#2
There should be a way to present critical monitored UEM objects (or specific monitored services) in an organized fashion on the Orion main page without having to go into the application monitor subpage. This would likely require adding applications to the custom property editor so it would be possible to create similar tree type layout. (Just a guess)

If I understand what you want to do, it should be possible in v2.

Feature Request#3
Simply adding more UEM functionality. While it was clearly not the original focus of this application im sure we are not the only ones with a strong need for monitoring services this way. It would be a great way to not just validate resources are available but validate specific routes to resources.

We'll be adding more user experience monitors in v2, and more in every release.

FormerMember

While assigning an outside application resource to an internal resource removes the node down status with the Orion web interface, the information on the application page then becomes a convoluted mixture of information about the external application and the internal node.

In any case I can see your well aware of the issue and I am sure you guys are working on a resolution. I just wanted to give as much input as possible in case it might be helpful.

DavidHart

In addition to what aLTeReGo has mentioned:

Sendmail - queues, etc. Exchange/Sendmail health status page similar to the new standalone tool that was just released.

IBM AIX 5.x: native process monitoring support - The workaround advocated by SolarWinds is to compile and install NET-SNMP. However, we cannot do that in our environment.

Juniper SSG ScreenOS Firewall Devices - Site to Site VPN connection status for monitored VPNs. It would be nice to be able to add a number of devices to a table and have a matrix created showing up/down status between sites. I'm doing some of this polling with the custom node poller, but it would be nice if it was part of APM.

Juniper SSL VPN

Cisco VOIP Telephone System - Simulate phone registration and config download.

APM Mapping - Add APM poller status to Maps.

David

FormerMember

Great suggestions.

Sendmail - queues, etc. Exchange/Sendmail health status page similar to the new standalone tool that was just released.

This is planned for v2.0.

IBM AIX 5.x: native process monitoring support - The workaround advocated by SolarWinds is to compile and install NET-SNMP. However, we cannot do that in our environment.

In v2.0, you should be able to launch Perl or TQL scripts from APM via SSH to monitor what you want to monitor in AIX.

Site to Site VPN connection status for monitored VPNs. It would be nice to be able to add a number of devices to a table and have a matrix created showing up/down status between sites. I'm doing some of this polling with the custom node poller, but it would be nice if it was part of APM.

I would think of monitoring VPN connectons to be more of an NPM thing, not an APM thing. Why do think of it as APM? I'm open to being convinced I'm wrong. It's a fairly common occurrence.

Cisco VOIP Telephone System - Simulate phone registration and config download.

This functionality is already present in our VoIP Monitor module. We consider VoIP a specialization that requires its own focus. We do not plan to put this into APM.

APM Mapping - Add APM poller status to Maps.

High priority for the next version of Orion, which is where that sort of change needs to be made.

DavidHart

IBM AIX 5.x: native process monitoring support - The workaround advocated by SolarWinds is to compile and install NET-SNMP. However, we cannot do that in our environment.

In v2.0, you should be able to launch Perl or TQL scripts from APM via SSH to monitor what you want to monitor in AIX.

That's cool. As long as the results can be use for alerting purposes this should do the trick.

Site to Site VPN connection status for monitored VPNs. It would be nice to be able to add a number of devices to a table and have a matrix created showing up/down status between sites. I'm doing some of this polling with the custom node poller, but it would be nice if it was part of APM.

I would think of monitoring VPN connectons to be more of an NPM thing, not an APM thing. Why do think of it as APM? I'm open to being convinced I'm wrong. It's a fairly common occurrence.

That's a good question. Does NPM currently have the capability of monitoring VPN connections for any firewall (i.e. listed as interfaces)? If not, do you know if this is planned? I agree that this should be an NPM feature.

Cisco VOIP Telephone System - Simulate phone registration and config download.

This functionality is already present in our VoIP Monitor module. We consider VoIP a specialization that requires its own focus. We do not plan to put this into APM.

Cool. I'll have to look at the VoIP module.

Thanks,

David

FormerMember

That's cool. As long as the results can be use for alerting purposes this should do the trick.

Yes, every script will be able to bring back a single statistic, which you can use in alerts and reports.

That's a good question. Does NPM currently have the capability of monitoring VPN connections for any firewall (i.e. listed as interfaces)? If not, do you know if this is planned? I agree that this should be an NPM feature.

This should be possible with the new custom poller coming out in v9.0 of NPM.

rob.borias

This would be our TOP 3 if they were possible.

Another would be Com+ services but I was told APM2.0 would do it which is great.

jesseklug

Can the summary web console resources be a little more flexible? as in, I can currently add an "All Applications Tree" but it will only show all of the applications defined, it does not have a filter option on it. This seems to be the case for a lot of the APM resources. At our company we would like to have views of just the servers, network devices, and applications that make up one "Application" so that you can quickly see most everything involved in serving any one appliation up. I can get close now, but I still end up with too much info on the other applications.

FormerMember

Can the summary web console resources be a little more flexible? as in, I can currently add an "All Applications Tree" but it will only show all of the applications defined, it does not have a filter option on it. This seems to be the case for a lot of the APM resources. At our company we would like to have views of just the servers, network devices, and applications that make up one "Application" so that you can quickly see most everything involved in serving any one appliation up. I can get close now, but I still end up with too much info on the other applications.

Good suggestion. It's on the roadmap.

FormerMember

DHCP

Need to be able to make a defined DHCP request at a defined interval to confirm the correct response.

FormerMember

So if I understand you correctly, you'd like to be able to monitor DHCP....