Frequently Asked Questions

Transcription

1 Table of contents 1. Agent Technology Has the Knoa agent been tested with standard set of services on the PC? Do users need to do anything to activate the Agent? Does the Knoa agent work with Citrix? Who initiates the communication between the Knoa agent and the Knoa server? Where does the Knoa agent store the collected data? Does Knoa agent do screen scraping? Monitoring Capabilities What SAP interfaces can Knoa monitor? What metrics does Knoa provide? Can Knoa monitor offline application usage? Can Knoa monitor multiple instances of an application? Can Knoa monitor custom SAP transactions, or Z-codes? Can Knoa monitor the SAP's BEX Analyzer in BW? Can Knoa monitor SAP's GUIXT? Server Technology How does Knoa identify and report application users? Can I segment my user population for reporting? What kind of user storage and administration do you support? Is Knoa reporting real-time? What database platforms does Knoa support? What reporting platforms does Knoa support? Technical Implementation...7

2 4.1. Do I need to do any scripting to enable monitoring? Do I need to change any of my SAP GUI configuration to enable monitoring? How is the Knoa agent deployed? Does the Knoa solution require integration with my application landscape? What factors affect the duration of the Knoa implementation? How is Knoa monitoring impacted by changes in the application?... 8 Page 2

3 1. Agent Technology 1.1. Has the Knoa agent been tested with standard set of services on the PC? Yes, the Knoa agent undergoes a rigorous Knoa and SAP certification process, including testing of performance impact, environment compatibility, compatibility with anti-virus software, and security controls. The agent is also certified by all of our clients according to their corporate desktop policies and standards Do users need to do anything to activate the Agent? No, the agent activates automatically when users log in to Windows. The Knoa agent runs in the background, for the entire duration of a user session, and it does not require any user action during its operation Does the Knoa agent work with Citrix? Yes, the Knoa solution can be used to monitor applications delivered through Citrix, Terminal Server, or similar technologies. In this case, the Knoa agent is deployed on the Citrix servers where the monitored application is executed. For each Citrix client session connected to the Citrix server on which the Knoa agent resides, the Knoa agent will initiate a separate monitoring instance, for that session. Users are identified according to their Windows ID (in case of authenticated sessions) or Application IDs (in case of anonymous sessions). The Knoa agent will only monitor the runtime UI of the application, as executed on the server - the agent will not monitor the Citrix frames delivered to the client Who initiates the communication between the Knoa agent and the Knoa server? All communication between the Knoa agent and the Knoa server, such as for sending track data, downloading updates, or checking licensing, is initiated by the Knoa agent. The agent itself does not listen to any ports Where does the Knoa agent store the collected data? The data collected by the agent is stored locally, on the client machine, in a temporary file queue, before it's sent to the Knoa server. In a typical scenario, the data is sent to the server very close to real-time. If there is no connectivity to the server, the data will be stored locally until a connection can be established. The agent is configured with a maximum queue size for storing track data, after which this data will be discarded. Page 3

4 1.6. Does Knoa agent do screen scraping? No. Knoa's agent sensing technology is fundamentally different than other tools that look purely at the user interface and "scrape" information using screen capture, OCR and other techniques. These techniques can be brittle when applications and environments change. The Knoa Agent's visibility into the inner-workings of the desktop and applications provides access to information presented to the end-user, without resorting to "scrape" mechanisms. The source data for Knoa's performance metrics is available to the Knoa Agent from within the runtime application itself. 2. Monitoring Capabilities 2.1. What SAP interfaces can Knoa monitor? Knoa provides monitoring solutions for the following SAP interfaces: For additional information, please consult Knoa Monitoring Solutions for SAP What metrics does Knoa provide? Knoa solutions provide three types of metrics: 1. user and application performance metrics based on deep monitoring of a target application, e.g. SAP, Siebel, etc. 2. global application usage metrics, across all local and web applications 3. metrics regarding the user and computer environment, monitored by the Knoa agent Page 4

5 For additional information, please consult Knoa Application Model and Metrics Can Knoa monitor offline application usage? Yes, the Knoa Agent has the ability to perform monitoring in the absence of network connectivity from the client to the Knoa server. The Knoa Agent stores monitored activity (as encrypted track messages) to the local disk. This information will be transmitted to the server once connectivity is restored. The Agent can be configured to control the rate of transmission. When connectivity exists, data transmission may be throttled to a specific rate of KB/sec, as to avoid a sudden surge in network load Can Knoa monitor multiple instances of an application? Yes, each application instance is monitored independently from the rest, and all metrics collected by Knoa are reported within the context of the originating application instance and session Can Knoa monitor custom SAP transactions, or Z-codes? Yes. As part of its design, the Knoa monitoring solution for SAP GUI monitors user activity across all standard T-codes, as well as custom T-codes. No additional customization or instrumentation is needed to monitor custom transactions. Page 5

6 2.6. Can Knoa monitor the SAP's BEX Analyzer in BW? As part of its standard monitoring coverage for SAP GUI, Knoa does not monitor non-sap interfaces, such as MS Excel used in the BEX Analyzer. Knoa monitoring for SAP Portal however provides coverage for the BEX reports delivered through the standard NetWeaver Portal Can Knoa monitor SAP's GUIXT? GUI XT customizations are fully supported by Knoa's monitoring solution for SAP GUI. GUIXT is used to create and manipulate standard SAP GUI objects, in order to automate certain processes within the SAP application. GUIXT customizations rely on the same GUI Scripting API, which is leveraged by Knoa monitoring. 3. Server Technology 3.1. How does Knoa identify and report application users? Knoa monitoring solutions use two primary methods for identifying users: 1. based on their Windows Logons 2. based on their application IDs During monitoring, Knoa collects both IDs, and through a deployment-time configuration parameter, one of the two IDs is used as the unique user identifier in the Knoa analysis and reports Can I segment my user population for reporting? Yes, Knoa provides the ability to define up to 20 user attributes in the Knoa user repository, which are used to segment the user population by relevant dimensions, such as role, location, manager, etc. These attributes can be imported manually from an external repository, via the Knoa Management console import utility, or they can be synchronized automatically with the LDAP directory What kind of user storage and administration do you support? There are 3 types of "user" concepts in Knoa: 1. monitored users - Knoa stores its own user information and also supports integration with LDAP/AD for importing user attributes 2. administrator users - Knoa stores its own user information and does not support integration with other user management systems Page 6

7 3. report users - user storage and administration is handled externally, via the BI tool used for report delivery, i.e. SAP BusinessObjects or MicroStrategy 3.4. Is Knoa reporting real-time? The operational data collected by the Knoa server from the Knoa agents is available for real-time reporting. The Knoa analytical data, which consists of higher level aggregates for historical reporting and trend analysis, is generated in batch, through the Knoa ETL component, which runs at scheduled intervals (typically hourly or daily) What database platforms does Knoa support? In version 7.0, Knoa supports MS SQL Server 2008 and Oracle 11g What reporting platforms does Knoa support? To enable customers to create their own reports based on the Knoa data, version 7.0 provides integration with standard Business Intelligence (BI) tools. The ones supported in this version are: MicroStrategy and BusinessObjects. For these platforms, Knoa also provides a comprehensive set of reports and dashboards, which are available out of the box. Customers who wish to create reporting using other BI tools can do so by developing a connector from the Knoa data to the BI tool, based on the data model documentation provided by Knoa. 4. Technical Implementation 4.1. Do I need to do any scripting to enable monitoring? No, Knoa solutions provide monitoring functionality out of the box, without requiring any script definitions by customers. By design, the monitoring solutions are instrumented by Knoa to capture key performance metrics (i.e. user and system errors, application activity, and response time for user transactions) across the entire application universe and for any user roles, irrespective of their access level Do I need to change any of my SAP GUI configuration to enable monitoring? Yes, the Knoa monitoring solution for SAP GUI relies on the SAP GUI Scripting API, which needs to be enabled in the target environment. Knoa leverages the SAP GUI Scripting API in order to provide comprehensive context-rich coverage for all operations within all SAP transactions. Some of the benefits of using this methodology include: Ability to monitor text of messages within all SAP dialog boxes Page 7

8 Ability to monitor all operations (including buttons and tab press events) even if they do not result in an operation. Knoa add-on features, such as Field Level Monitoring (FLM), which provides ability to capture field values, requires the SAP GUI Scripting API integration. For additional information please consult SAP GUI Scripting Requirements How is the Knoa agent deployed? The Knoa agent is made available to customers as a standard MSI file, pre-configured and ready to be deployed to the target client machines. Customers may choose to use any standard software deployment method, such as SMS or Radia. After the initial install, customers can also use the Knoa Management Console to distribute Knoa agent updates to the field, if such a method is feasible within the customer environment. For additional information, please consult Agent Installation Does the Knoa solution require integration with my application landscape? No, the deployment of the Knoa solution does not require any integration with the existing application landscape. The solution requires deployment of the Knoa agent to the client machines, and the setup of standalone server components, which do not integrate with the back-end systems of the monitored application What factors affect the duration of the Knoa implementation? The duration of the Knoa implementation is affected by the following factors: 1. How fast customers can provide remote access - for the validation of the Knoa solution against the customer's live environment 2. How much customization is needed for the Knoa solution to be fully compatible with customizations in the monitored application 3. How fast customers can provision hardware for the Knoa server components 4. How fast customers can deploy the Knoa agent to the target client machines 4.6. How is Knoa monitoring impacted by changes in the application? Typically, changes in the back-end environment (application or database servers) do not affect the Knoa monitoring solutions, which only capture information generated by the User Interface. Changes in the User Interface itself have a limited impact of Knoa monitoring solutions, depending on the type of changes: changes in the screen layout, application permissions, activation of new screens or modules, addition of new buttons, etc - do not impact Knoa's monitoring Page 8

9 major changes in the application UI, customizations done outside of the framework provided natively by the application - may have an impact on Knoa's monitoring Knoa monitoring solutions rely, by design, on detection of UI elements and properties which are considered resilient to most customization or configuration changes. Typically, when application functions are changed or new functions are added within the existing UI framework, the Knoa monitoring solutions will automatically detect those changes, with no adjustments. As part of its standard maintenance, Knoa will assess the impact of changes in the production environment on the monitoring solution with every major change. Page 9