Application connection between app server and database server - any advice?

Hello all. I'm shifting to using SAM more in my environment and I've been asked about integrating the application connection (Application Dependency?) feature to highlight performance data about the comms between our app servers and the DBs. I'm hoping for some general advice and feedback to help me better understand.

So far, I have either assigned out of the box monitors for IIS or Tomcat, or looked for specific applications/services related to the hosted app running on each app server to create custom monitor templates.

First question, is this the correct way to go about it? I had assumed that I would've been able to use more of the out of the box monitors but a majority of the included monitors just don't fit our apps (some were built in house so that's understandable).

Since application connection is such a big deal for customers, I have shifted my focus to getting the database servers into SAM. I am using AppInsight for SQL for MS SQL Server hosts. Second question, will this monitor allow for application connection information?

I see that I may need to install an agent for the application connection - is this mandatory? I have customers who don't like the idea of adding "yet another agent" to their servers. Thanks for your time.

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adam.beedell

Agent's mandatory for the application connections feature I'm afraid.

You can set up some equivalent stuff manually for diagrams and that, but ultimately it's doing packet inspection and that's not easily replaceable.

SAM's pretty powerful for this sort of thing mind, building new application monitors is valuable time spent usually

k_bolt

Thank you for the valuable feedback, Adam! I'll work on selling the holdouts on the idea of the additional agent. Can you say whether or not we would be able to see the application connection information if we deployed the "AppInsight for SQL for MS SQL Server" monitor on a DB server, and an IIS monitor on a web app server?

adam.beedell

I expect so, depends on the app a bit and the permissions you give it. Lets say you have:

SQL DB : 1433

IISServer: 443 + some weird thing on 6767

I'd say you probably want to run an additional config in the IIS application package, and potentially put some extra monitor on the 6767 thing so the application connectivity map can say what is it