Monitoring Tips. for Microsoft Applications and Environments. i Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments

Transcription

1 10 Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments i Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments

2 10 Monitoring Tips For Microsoft Applications and Environments Are you battling constant user complaints about downtime and slow performance for Microsoft applications like Sharepoint, Exchange, Lync and Microsoft Dynamics? Do you have challenges troubleshooting across technology stack components like IIS, application servers, SQL Server, and Active Directory? By adopting a more efficient Microsoft monitoring approach - one that is powered by a unified monitoring approach across the network, servers and applications - you can effectively neutralize problems leading to plummeting service levels and downtime once and for all. Here are 10 tips that will help boost the performance of your Microsoft applications and underlying environments. 1 Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments

3 Tip #1 Automatically discover, map and document your entire infrastructure, hardware and software assets, and connectivity. You can t manage the unknown. Therefore, ensuring optimal Microsoft app performance starts by automatically maintaining an up-to-date network and server inventory of hardware and software assets, physical connectivity, and configuration to truly understand what you support in your environment. It will save you days of having to identify relationships between devices, and applications, and then piece that together and make one big picture out of it. You may even find discrepancies in application versions or patch levels within Exchange or IIS server farms that should be corrected soon, so go ahead and automatically discover, map and document your assets. TIP: Look for dynamic mapping integrated into your monitoring interface console with scheduled discovery or ad-hoc. That way, you can stay on top of assets, changes and how everything is connected a must for faster triage and troubleshooting in minutes, instead of hours or days. Tip #2 Monitor every server in the Microsoft application delivery chain. 5Problems Solved with the right Microsoft app monitoring strategy: 1. Know what is running in your network (hardware, software, physical and virtual resources) and how everything is connected. Find discrepancies for app versions and patch levels. 2. Triage and troubleshoot faster by monitoring the entire application as a whole. Route issues to the right team. Eliminate false alerts & alert storms, (if a database is down, all related apps will also be down ). Get in control of your SLAs and bonus. 3. Find problems with IIS, SharePoint, and your Web-based applications before your users are impacted, via proactive Web performance monitoring (synthetic users running on a 24x7x365 basis measuring and reporting back on Web availability and response time). 4. Identify problem spots and properly plan capacity. Periodically analyze historical data and identify across wired/wireless networks, systems, Microsoft application and devices. 5. Get management and crossfunctional teams aligned and on the same page with one unified view into IT SLAs, availability and performance a stepping stone towards DevOps adoption. There are multiple elements responsible for providing Microsoft services and application content to your end-users. For example, just Lync alone has a multi-tier architecture Front-End Server at the core, SQL Database servers on the back-end, Edge Server to enable outside the firewall access, Mediation Server for VoIP and more. The same applies to any Web-based application SharePoint on the front-end, middleware systems and back-end SQL databases. And of course there is the underling network. Don t take any shortcuts monitor it all! If any of these components of the application delivery chain underperform, your app will slow down and bring employee communications, productivity and business Ops to a halt. 2 Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments

4 Tip #3 Monitor the entire application as a whole understand dependencies. You don t want to receive an alert storm when a problem is detected. It can take a full-time person just to sit there and try to figure out what was red, why was it red, and whether it was a real problem or a false positive. You will waste precious time, and delay root cause identification and resolution. Instead, monitor the entire application service as a whole IIS servers, SQL servers, physical and virtual servers and the underlying network and look for monitoring capabilities that will discover and track end-to-end dependencies and suppress alerts (if a database is down, all related apps will also be down ). This is also the foundation to build your SLA monitoring strategy aligned with business goals. Just read on. Monitoring Tips from the WhatsUp APM Customer Trenches Proactive Monitoring of all the pieces to the puzzle (IIS/ SQL/Custom application monitors/general Performance data/network) allows us to proactively monitor apps showing growing issues before they become a disruption to our end-users. Matt Cline, Sr. Systems Engineer (Optim Healthcare) Tip #4 Get in control of your SLAs (and your bonus). Today, IT success (and in many cases your bonus) depends on how you well you meet your SLAs. Yet, your application services are unique to each environment. To isolate and resolve application performance problems quickly, IT teams need a single version of the truth that cuts across organizational silos. Therefore, IT Pros need to monitor their application SLAs (what is included, states, alerting, reporting and actions) in a way that reflects their unique organizational priorities. For example, your team may be responsible for certain infrastructure elements or application components, but not all. In that case, if you are responsible for Exchange and the network goes down, your network counterparts can respond quickly without having to hunt down and locate the problematic spot. Similarly, if you are on the network side, your SLAs should not be impacted if Lync is unavailable and wireless users cannot connect, but wireless WAPs are fine. Look for dependency-aware APM monitoring, so you can configure monitored application components to be critical or non-critical. That way when a critical component fails, your application is reported as down and when a non-critical component fails, your application is reported in a warning state. Moreover, take the time to define the right SLA view for you and your organization ( all applications, my application with all components, my application with the components that I own ) so you can get credit when due, route issues to the right team and provide management with an accurate assessment of application health and SLAs. 3 Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments

5 Monitoring Tips from the WhatsUp APM Customer Trenches Exchange just sucks memory. The great thing with APM is I can start tracking, and noticing those trends, and have an alert kick off to that says, Exchange has hit the 65 percent threshold. When I get home, I can log into the server, do a quick reboot, and everything is back to normal. The users never notice down time. Steve Bennett, Director of IT (Burke County, GA) Besides network performance, we collect and alert on system performance, event log errors, disk space usage, Windows services and ports, Microsoft Exchange and many other active monitors, including fan, temperature, and power supply. We have the power to do all this from one single console. Jason Alberino, Systems Administrator (Clayton) Tip #5 Look for unified application/server/ network monitoring with drill-down capabilities. Continuously monitor all elements that impact Microsoft application availability and performance, including hardware, operating system, server processes, memory, Active Directory health and all enabling technologies in one application dependency tree. Select APM monitoring that lets you drill down from one unified view into the offending component to reduce triage and troubleshooting to just minutes. Even if you are not a DBA, you should be able to quickly identify that SQL is the culprit. Plus, think about automatic corrective actions as part of your monitoring strategy (Write Event Log, Run Scripts, Reboot, Active and PowerShell scripts ) to restore service levels faster. For example, Exchange and SQL are well-known for their high memory consumption and high IOs, so you may want to automatically reboot them to avoid service disruptions for your users when exceeded memory reaches a problematic level. Tip #6 Search for prepackaged MS app monitoring capabilities. With hundreds of performance metrics that can be collected, monitored and alerted on, and not enough hours in the day, try to find out-of-the-box monitoring support that already encompass Microsoft monitoring Best Practices for the standard MS Applications you support (Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, IIS, Dynamics, SQL, Windows ) to save time and make your life easier. Every IT shop is different, so there is really not a one-size APM monitoring solution that out of the box will fit all. Look for pre-packaged monitoring with capabilities to easily tweak monitoring settings, so you can also monitor custom applications or more feature-rich applications. 4 Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments

6 Tip #7 Look for proactive Web application monitoring from a user perspective. My application is slow is one of the most common complaints you will get. Get ahead of the gripes. Proactively monitor your Microsoft Web applications from a user perspective continuously access and measure end-to-end transactions or multi-step interactions with your IIS-based apps, Exchange or SharePoint and look for alerting and reporting capabilities to detect early warning signs or performance degradation before your users are even impacted. For example, continuously check availability and response time of your Website, validate that a user can log into your Intranet, or get more sophisticated with your monitoring and oversee a complete set of steps (e.g. logging, browse, add to your cart, enter credit card, purchase). Proactive 24x7x365 Web performance monitoring is one of the best ways to find and resolve problems before your users escalate, because you will get notified when applications start to slow down, before critical outages occur. You can even detect problematic signs at 3am, when there is very limited real user activity happening in your network. Tip #8 5 Must-Know Facts about Ipswitch 1. WhatsUp Gold is a powerful, cost-effective and proven solution for monitoring wired/wireless networks, servers, applications, network traffic, configurations, connectivity, and IP devices from a single dashboard. It s tried, tested, and proven on networks just like yours thousands of them. WhatsUp APM is fully integrated into WhatsUp Gold. 2. Privately held, we were founded in Headquartered in the USA, Ipswitch has a global presence in Europe, APAC and Africa. 4. Our customers are global leaders, ranging from SMBs to enterprises, that are realizing enterprise-class functionality at a small business price. 5. We make more than software. We make a difference. Community involvement is an integral part of Ipswitch culture and values. Don t forget wireless monitoring! It is a wireless world out there, and BYOD continues to grow. Mobility has transformed wireless networks into business-critical assets that support employee connectivity, productivity and business Ops. For example, Microsoft corporate headquarters runs Lync over Aruba WI-FI. Just like you want a map of your wired assets, look for capabilities to automatically generate dynamic wireless maps WLCs, APs and Clients from the same single point of control. In fact, when a wireless user calls to report a problem, you should have monitoring capabilities to drill-down from your wireless map to the user that is reporting an issue and see the connection path and performance data AP, wireless controller, signal strength to help you identify if the problem is with Microsoft or the wireless network. 5 Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments

7 Tip #9 Periodically share network/server/application historical data and reports with cross-functional teams, Line of Business Owners and stakeholders. Your applications are the backbone of your business. From fueling day-to-day operations (sales and order processing, lead management, procurement, HR, accounting, employee communications and collaboration...), showcasing information to the world (portals, websites...), or delivering revenue-generating services to customers (healthcare, travel, ecommerce, financial services...), your application must out-perform at all times. App slowdowns, intermittent problems or failures will drive escalations through the roof, and bring productivity, Ops and revenue to a halt. Therefore, look for customizable reporting (by application, by servers, by location, etc.) and automatic distribution capabilities (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) to keep cross-functional team members and stakeholders aligned and in the know. Get in the habit of periodically analyzing all performance data to identify problematic trends early on, properly plan capacity, and justify investment on additional resources. Tip #10 Look for affordable, integrated and simple monitoring: Check out WhatsUp Application Performance Monitor! With WhatsUp Application Performance Monitor, you can boost Microsoft app performance and restore Service Levels in minutes, instead of hours or days, with one unified view into networks, applications, enabling technologies and underlying infrastructure. Get ready to: Find and resolve problems faster, before your users and the business are impacted Isolate and route issues to the right team (network, Sys Admin, Exchange, Web Team, Lync, DBAs ) Troubleshoot and triage issues in minutes Just see what our customers are raving about. Stop the user complaints once and for all! Attend a live APM Demo today, and be on your way to monitoring and boosting service levels in your entire Microsoft application environment before your users are impacted. ATTEND AN APM DEMO 6 Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments

8 About Ipswitch 10 Ipswitch helps solve complex IT problems with simple solutions. The company s software is trusted by millions of people worldwide to transfer files between systems, business partners and customers; and to monitor networks, applications and servers. Ipswitch was founded in 1991 and is based in Lexington, Massachusetts with offices throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. For more information, visit See how Unified Monitoring can transform IT s workflow and improve performance. Download your 30-Day FREE TRIAL of WhatsUp Gold Network & Server Monitoring 7 Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments