Nimsoft Monitor azure Guide v1.0 series
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Contents Chapter 1: azure 1.0 7 azure Overview... 9 azure Metrics... 10 Prerequisites... 13 Installation... 13 Probe Installation... 14 Configuration GUI Installation... 15 Understanding and Configuring Probe Operation... 15 Azure Hosted Service Developer Responsibilities... 16 Creating and Configuring Subscriptions... 17 Storage Accounts and Hosted Services Discovery Process... 18 Configuring the Diagnostics Data Storage Account... 19 Creating and Modifying Templates... 19 Auto Monitors... 24 The Monitoring Cycle... 27 Alarm Messages... 29 Tree Context (right-click) Menu... 31 Configuring Logging... 32 Contents 5
Chapter 1: azure 1.0 This description applies to Azure probe version 1.0. This section contains the following topics: Documentation Changes (see page 8) azure Overview (see page 9) Prerequisites (see page 13) Installation (see page 13) Understanding and Configuring Probe Operation (see page 15) Chapter 1: azure 1.0 7
azure Overview Documentation Changes This table describes the version history for this document. Version Date What's New? 1.0 August 2010 First version of this probe. Related Documentation Documentation for other versions of the azure probe The Release Notes for the azure probe Monitor Metrics Reference Information for CA Unified Infrastructure Management Probes (http://docs.nimsoft.com/prodhelp/en_us/probes/probereference/index.htm) 8 azure Guide
azure Overview azure Overview Windows Azure is a comprehensive cloud computing platform with three products: Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure, and the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric. Windows Azure provides a scalable environment with compute, storage, hosting, and management capabilities. It links to on-premises applications with secure connectivity, messaging, and identity management. SQL Azure is a relational database for the cloud. It allows access to your data any place, any time. SQL Azure is a full relational database in the cloud. AppFabric makes it simpler to connect on-premises applications with the cloud. AppFabric offers identity management and firewall friendly messaging to protect your assets by enabling secure connectivity and messaging between on-premises IT applications and cloud-based services. Azure white papers are available at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/whitepapers/ http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/whitepapers/ Version 1.0 of the Azure probe focuses on monitoring Windows Azure compute instances. The Windows Azure environment is structured as follows: Subscription: Azure customers purchase one or more subscriptions from Microsoft. A subscription defines how many cloud resources (hosted services and storage accounts) the customer is entitled to create or use and how these resources are billed. Storage Account: A storage account provides access to the Azure distributed storage facilities. There are two primary storage types, blob storage and table storage. (Microsoft also puts an additional storage type in their documentation called queue storage, but that is merely persistent storage for message queues, not a general data storage mechanism.) Blob storage is a file-system-like system of containers (non-hierarchical) and objects in those containers. Table storage is schema-less storage of entities comprised of key-value pairs with a limited querying capability. Subscriptions can have one or more storage accounts. Hosted Service (aka Application): A hosted service is a collection of roles. Each role performs a specific duty in the overall application structure. At deployment or re-configure time, the developer chooses how many instances (or copies) of each role to deploy. Each instance is allocated a virtual machine of a user chosen size. Azure applications scale up and down by changing the number of instances. Windows Azure provides a suite of Diagnostics APIs to assist in configuring and gathering diagnostic information from running role instances. Two role types are currently supported: Documentation Changes 9
azure Overview Web role: an ASP.NET/WCF/.NET based web application hosted by IIS in a virtual machine Worker role: A user-mode Windows background application Worker roles are not hosted by IIS. azure Metrics The following table describes the checkpoint metrics that can be configured using the azure probe. Monitor Name Units Description QOS_ROLE_INSTANCE_PERF_COUNTER Performance Counter This probe acts as a gateway to the Azure environment and provides all the metrics accessible through the API (see the default counters available below). For each performance counter you wish to monitor, you will need to specify: Object: The concrete thing or aspect of the system to monitor, such as processor or memory. Counter: The specific measurement to sample. Instance: The specific instance to monitor in cases where objects have multiple instances installed or running. Moving Average? Enable this functionality to have the probe compute and report a simple moving average of the measurement instead of the raw measurement values. Number of samples: The number of samples to use for the moving average calculation. Application Center enables a default set of performance counters that are used to capture performance data on every cluster member and logs this data to the Application Center Events and Performance Logging database. These default counters should meet most of your normal operational performance monitoring requirements. Counter Description Units Scope Available Bytes (memory) The amount of physical memory that is available to processes running on the computer. It is calculated by summing space on the Zeroed, Free, and Stand by memory lists. This figure should be at least 5 percent of total memory at all times.(1) Bytes Present value Bytes Total/sec (Web Service) The sum of Bytes Sent/sec and Bytes Received/sec. This is the total rate of bytes that are transferred by the Web Service. Integer Data per time period 10 azure Guide
azure Overview Counter Description Units Scope Connections active (TCP) Context Switches/sec (System) Current Connections (Web Service) Current Disk Queue Length (physical disk) Errors per second (ASP) Get Requests/sec (Web Service) ISAPI extension requests/sec (Web Service) Page faults/sec (memory) Private Bytes (process: Inetinfo) The number of times TCP connections have made a direct transition to the Syn-sent state from the Closed state. This value can indicate excessive locking in code, perhaps creating a contention for resources. If too high, add another server or check with Microsoft for the latest patches. Integer Integer The number of current client connections to the Web Service. Integer The number of requests outstanding on the disk at the time the performance data is collected. It includes requests in service at the time of the reading. Multi-spindle disk devices can have multiple requests active at one time, but other concurrent requests are awaiting service. This counter might reflect a transitory high or low queue length, but if there is a sustained load on the disk drive, it is likely that this will be consistently high. Requests are experiencing delays proportional to the length of this queue minus the number of spindles on the disks.(2) The number of errors generated by ASP applications, per second. The number of HTTP requests that are using the GET method, per second. The GET method is the most common method used on the Web. The number of ISAPI extension requests that are simultaneously being processed by the Web Service, per second. The number of times, per second, that the server reads the page file on the disk or from memory that is not assigned to the working set. Most CPUs can handle a large numbers of page faults without consequence; however, if disk reads are high, there might be performance degradation. The number of bytes of memory that are taken up by a particular process (in this case, Inetinfo, which is part of IIS). Integer Integer Integer Integer Bytes Bytes Present value Data per time period Present value Present value Data per time period Data per time period Data per time period Data per time period Present value Documentation Changes 11
azure Overview Counter Description Units Scope % Privileged Time (CPU) The percentage of non-idle processor time spent in privileged mode. (Privileged mode is a processing mode designed for operating system components and hardware-manipulating drivers. It allows direct access to hardware and all memory. The alternative, user mode, is a restricted processing mode designed for applications, environment subsystems, and integral subsystems. The operating system switches application threads to privileged mode to access operating system services). % Privileged Time includes time servicing interrupts and deferred procedure calls (DPCs). A high rate of privileged time might be attributable to a large number of interrupts that are being generated by a failing device. This counter displays the average busy time as a percentage of the sample time. Percentage Average of accumulate d values Processor Utilization (CPU) The percentage of time that the processor is executing a non-idle thread. This counter was designed as a primary indicator of processor activity. It is calculated by measuring the time that the processor spends executing the thread of the Idle process in each sample interval, and subtracting that value from 100 percent. Processor bottlenecks are characterized by high Processor:% Processor Time numbers while the network adapter remains well below capacity.(3) Percentage Average of accumulate d values % User Time (CPU) The percentage of non-idle processor time spent in user mode. (User mode is a restricted processing mode designed for applications, environment subsystems, and integral sub-systems. The alternative, privileged mode, is designed for operating system components and allows direct access to hardware and all memory. The operating system switches application threads to privileged mode to access operating system services.) This counter displays the average busy time as a percentage of the sample time. Percentage Average of accumulate d values Request execution time (ASP) The number of milliseconds that it took the most recent ASP request to complete. Milliseconds Last value Requests per second (ASP) The number of requests executed, per second. Integer Data per time period Requests Queued (ASP) The number of requests waiting for service from the queue. This number should be small, except during heavy traffic periods. Large numbers of queued requests indicates that there is a performance bottleneck somewhere in your server. Integer Present value Request wait time (ASP) The amount of time that the most recent ASP request was waiting in the queue. Milliseconds Last value 12 azure Guide
Prerequisites Counter Description Units Scope Total Server Memory (SQL Server: Memory Manager) The total amount of dynamic memory the server is currently consuming. Bytes Present value (1) This value should be greater than 20 MB. (2) This difference should average less than 2 for good performance. (3) Processor utilization does occasionally peak at fairly high levels, but this level should not be sustained for a long period. Prerequisites Installation The Azure probe requires Java 1.6.0.14 or later. The Azure probe configuration GUI requires Java 1.6.0.14 or later. The Azure probe runs on Microsoft Windows only. The following operating systems are supported: Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 (32 and 64 bits), Windows Server 2008 (32 and 62 bits). The Azure probe requires.net Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. More Information Probe Installation Configuration GUI Installation Documentation Changes 13
Installation Probe Installation The Azure probe installs via drag-and-drop from the Nimsoft Infrastructure Manager. The probe is run by the robot via the standard runprobe.bat on Windows and runprobe.sh on UNIX. Java 1.6.0_14 or later can be installed either using the standard Java installer available from Sun (http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp) or by dragging the jre/java_jre package from your Nimsoft package archive onto your robot. Please see the java_jre documentation from Nimsoft for details. If you install using Sun's installer, please ensure that java.exe is available on your path environment variable. The probe is launched by the Nimsoft robot and thus inherits its process environment. To examine your robot's environment, launch the Infrastructure Manager, right-click on your robot and choose Properties, then, click the Robot environment button and you will see: If you need to manually modify your robot's environment, you must restart your computer to make the changes visible to your robot. 14 azure Guide
Configuration GUI Installation The Azure probe configuration GUI is automatically downloaded and installed by the Nimsoft Infrastructure Manager when probe configuration is attempted. The configuration GUI has the same Java requirements as the probe and supports the same Java installation methods on the computer running the Infrastructure Manager. IMPORTANT: If you choose the java_jre installation method, the configuration GUI may fail to startup if more than one java_jre package is installed and one or more of the java_jre packages is for a version of Java that is earlier than 1.6.0_14. In this situation you must remove obsolete java_jre packages before attempting to launch the configuration GUI. Understanding and Configuring Probe Operation The Azure probe monitors aspects of deployed Azure hosted services. It is important to understand how these services must be prepared for monitoring and the basics of how the Azure probe performs monitoring. The sub-sections in this section lay out a sequence of steps you must follow in order to configure your probe. IMPORTANT: Section The Monitoring Cycle, contains important information about how the probe configures and obtains data from your role instances. It is strongly recommended that you read and understand this information before using this probe. More Information Azure Hosted Service Developer Responsibilities Creating and Configuring Subscriptions Storage Accounts and Hosted Services Discovery Process Configuring the Diagnostics Data Storage Account Creating and Modifying Templates Auto Monitors The Monitoring Cycle Alarm Messages Tree Context Menu Configuring Logging Documentation Changes 15
Azure Hosted Service Developer Responsibilities These requirements must be met before you can configure and run the probe. DiagnosticMonitor Azure application developers must include code in their role startup methods that starts a DiagnosticMonitor. This is a manager object that enables the role instance to log various diagnostic information. It also enables remote diagnostics configuration and access to the diagnostic data. The Azure probe requires this manager in all roles the user wishes to monitor. Microsoft has excellent developer documentation on how to do this at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/hh411537.aspx Note: Azure uses Azure Storage accounts as intermediate storage for diagnostics information that is collected by the Azure probe. Each role instance must point its DiagnosticMonitor at a specific Azure storage account. The Azure probe version 1.0 collects diagnostics data from a single storage account only. Details on how to configure which storage account the probe uses are provided later in this document. Service Management API Certificate The Azure probe uses the Windows Azure Service Management API to perform some of its duties. This API is secured using an X509 certificate. Before the probe can function, the developer must: 1. Create or acquire an X509 certificate with private key. Self-signed certificates will work. 2. Upload the certificate (without private key) to the Azure developer portal and associate it with the subscription that the probe will be monitoring. (Do this for each subscription if necessary). 3. Install the certificate (with private key) into the Windows certificate store on the computer that will run the probe. The certificate should be installed in the Local Computer/Personal/Certificates store. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2009/09/17/introducing-the-windows -azureservice-management-api.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2009/09/17/introducing-the-windows -azure-service-management-api.aspx for an introduction to API Certificates. 16 azure Guide
Creating and Configuring Subscriptions The first step to configure the Azure probe is to create one or more subscriptions using the configuration user interface. To begin monitoring an Azure account, you may either edit the provided Sample Subscription or create a new subscription by right-clicking on any node in the tree and choosing New Subscription. The new subscription appears in the tree. Select the node with the subscription's name and you will see that subscription's configuration information on the right: Note: You will see [Discovery Error] next to your subscription when you first create it. This is because the probe does not yet know the Subscription ID and Certificate Thumbprint that it needs to communicate with the subscription. These will be configured next. Subscription Setup Information Please enter the following information to configure your subscription: You may test the information you have entered by clicking the Test Subscription button. The probe must be running for this feature to work. You will be notified if your subscription information is valid. You must save and restart the probe to begin monitoring this new subscription. Field Name Description Enter a name for the subscription. Documentation Changes 17
Field Subscription ID Certificate Thumbprint Description The unique ID of your subscription. Windows Azure generates this ID for you. You can look up this ID on the Azure Developer Portal. It will be in GUID form, such as cn612bea-f271-42ac-bc05-4ebf9a102c28 Enter the value of the X509 field called Thumbprint. You can find this value by opening your certificate in the Windows certificate viewer and choosing the Details tab. Storage Accounts and Hosted Services Discovery Process The Azure probe periodically scans the Azure Cloud using your subscription information in order to find all of the Azure Storage Accounts and Hosted Services associated with your subscription. The results of this scan, also called discovery, are displayed and periodically updated in the tree. For example: Note: The Sample Subscription node in the tree no longer shows a discovery error. In this example, the probe discovered two Storage Accounts and one Hosted Service. 18 azure Guide
Configuring the Diagnostics Data Storage Account The next step in configuring your probe is to select the Azure Cloud node in the tree. In the Setup section on the right, choose the Storage Account you will use to store diagnostic data from your role instances. The combo box should be populated with all of the storage accounts the probe discovered for all of your subscriptions. Save and restart the probe. Creating and Modifying Templates A template is the specification of a set of monitors (or checkpoints) to sample. It includes a sampling interval, or schedule. Begin by right-clicking on the tree or clicking the New Sampler Template button just above the tree. Documentation Changes 19
Name your template whatever you like. The 1.0 version of the Azure probe supports templates for Role Instance types only. Click Ok and the template appears in the tree: The sampling frequency is seen on the right side. Adjust to your desired frequency. To add monitors, click the Add Monitors button and you will be presented with a dialog: 20 azure Guide
Performance counters are a standard feature of Microsoft Windows operating systems. Details are available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb734903.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb734903.aspx. For each counter you wish to monitor, specify: Field Object Counter Instance Moving Average? Number of samples Description The concrete thing or aspect of the system to monitor, such as processor, memory, and so on. The specific measurement to sample. The specific instance to monitor in cases where objects have multiple instances installed or running. Check this box to have the probe compute and report a simple moving average of the measurement instead of the raw measurement values. The number of samples to use for the moving average. The dialog remains open after you click the Add button to facilitate easy entry of multiple counters. Here is a template with some counters added: Documentation Changes 21
IMPORTANT NOTE: About Objects, Counters, and Instances: The Add Performance Counters dialog populates the lists with items found by examining the Windows registry on the computer running the probe and not on the virtual machine running a role instance in the Azure cloud. This means that some objects, counters, or instances may be selectable even if they are not applicable to Azure VMs. If you choose one of these non-applicable counter specifications no harm occurs, but no data is logged. Nimsoft is working on enumerating possible counter specifications for Azure VMs. Customizing Individual Monitors Monitors are added to templates with the following default settings: QoS values will be sent to NMS No alarms will be tested/sent You can use the edit monitor dialog to change these settings by clicking on the monitor name: 22 azure Guide
Send QoS? - Check this box to send a QoS value to NMS when the probe samples the monitor value. Moving Average? - Check this box to have the probe compute and report a simple moving average of the measurement instead of the raw measurement values. Number of samples - the number of samples to use for the moving average. The Conditions list shows the set of currently defined alarm conditions. You can edit a condition directly in the table. Enabled - Disable conditions you do not want to use right now but may want in the future. Operator - The mathematical operator to use when comparing the measurement value with your set threshold. Threshold - Your numerical threshold. Severity - The severity you would like to give an alarm if your condition results in an alarm. Message - Choose a message from the probes pool of messages. You can also edit the alarm message text directly in the Message Text area. See the Alarm Messages section for complete details about alarm messages. The Properties table lists monitor properties. For performance counters, you see a single property named Counter Specification whose value shows the textual specification of the counter to monitor. A template by itself does not cause the probe to start monitoring the monitors specified in the template. Templates are applied by the probe by Auto Monitors. Documentation Changes 23
Auto Monitors Auto Monitors are instructions for the probe. They tell the probe which templates to apply to objects that the probe finds during discovery. Each auto monitor includes an object matching specification and a list of templates to apply. Begin by right-clicking on the tree or clicking New Auto Monitor just above the tree: Name your auto monitor whatever you like. Note: The 1.0 version of the Azure probe supports auto monitors for Role Instance types only. Press Ok and the auto monitor appears in the tree: 24 azure Guide
Customize the auto monitor by entering values for: Field Object Counter Description Enter text to help you remember the purpose of the auto monitor. If this box is checked, this auto monitor becomes a special kind of auto monitor that de-activates all monitoring for matching role instances. Disabling auto monitors take precedence over all other auto monitors. Object Match Criteria: (See the following section for more information.) Subscription ID Service Name Service Label Deployment ID Deployment Label Deployment Slot Role Name Pattern matching a unique subscription ID. Pattern matching the name of a hosted service Pattern matching the label given to a hosted service by the service developer. Pattern matching the unique Azure deployment ID. Pattern matching the deployment label entered by the service developer. Pattern matching the deployment slot. Two deployment slots are possible, Production or Staging. Pattern matching the role name. Object Match Patterns Object match patterns are strings of characters that are matched against actual values at runtime. Each character in a pattern is either a literal match or the wildcard character *. The wildcard matches any sequence of 0 or more characters. Matching is case-sensitive. Here are some examples: Actual Value: 'This is a label' Field Pattern '*' '*This is a label*' 'This *' 'my pattern' 'This is a *.' Description Matches? yes yes yes no no, note the trailing period. Documentation Changes 25
If you would like to test your match patters against the current set of role instances the probe has discovered, click the Highlight Matches button. The matching role instances are highlighted in magenta in the tree. Auto Monitor Templates The Add/Remove Templates button displays the following dialog: Move desired templates from the Available Templates to the Applied Templates using the Add button. 26 azure Guide
The Monitoring Cycle Once you have completed the above configuration steps and have saved and restarted the probe, the probe enters the monitoring cycle. During this time the probe performs the following: Periodically scans your subscriptions in the Azure cloud and discovers any associated storage accounts and hosted services. Searches all configured auto monitors for matches each time a new, running role instance is found. If one or more disabling auto monitors are found, the probe configures the role instance to stop logging all performance counters. If no disabling auto monitors match, the probe instructs the role instance to start logging the performance counters specified by all of the templates attached to the matching auto monitors. It also instructs the role instance to periodically upload the logged performance counters to its diagnostic data storage account. Duplicate counters are avoided. Important: The probe completely replaces the role instance's performance counter configuration. If you have configured the role instance using another tool, that configuration is overwritten. Configurations for other types of diagnostic data are not modified by the probe. Periodically scans the storage account you configured for new performance counter data. When data is found the probe downloads the data, performs any averaging calculations, publishes QoS values to NMS, checks alarm conditions and sends any resulting alarms to NMS. Important: The probe then deletes the data from the storage account. This prevents data from piling up in storage and accruing Azure storage costs, and it allows the probe to perform its duties most efficiently. If you have role instances in your subscriptions that you do not wish to monitor using the Azure probe, please configure them to log their diagnostics data to a different storage account. The probe configuration user interface will show you exactly what the probe is monitoring. Select a role instance node in the tree and examine the presentation on the right side: Documentation Changes 27
The Setup section shows the role instance's Status as reported by Azure. The Matching Auto Monitors section shows a list of all matching auto monitors that the probe found for this role instance. The Active Monitors section displays all of the templates that were applied to the role instance. 28 azure Guide
Alarm Messages The probe is configured with a set of common alarm messages called the message pool. The Alarm Messages button on the top toolbar displays the message pool editor dialog: Documentation Changes 29
You can edit the Alarm Subsystem and message text for existing messages. Use the buttons on top to create new messages, delete obsolete messages, or clone an existing message. Messages Are Shared It is important to note that messages are shared by all monitors in the probe. If you modify the message text for a message and it is used by two different monitors, they will each use the updated message text. Message Parameters Messages often contain replaceable parameters that the probe will substitute with real values at runtime. Replaceable parameters start with a $ character. When you type $, a context menu appears with the set of allowed parameters. Field Operator Threshold Monitor Name Units Units Abbreviation Last Sample Time Description The condition's mathematical operator (<, >, etc.) The condition's numerical threshold. The name of the item being measured, for example, Execute Time or Storage Used. The measurement's units, such as seconds. Shorthand for the units, for example Sec. The date and time the last measurement was taken. 30 azure Guide
Field Last Sample Value Description The numeric value of the last measurement. The syntax of this parameter is $monitorprop.<property_name>. Supported property names are: Monitor Property Monitor Type Performance Counter Property Name counter Desc resolves to the text string specification of the performance counter, such as: \Memory\Page s/sec Endpoint Name Endpoint Property Target of Measurement Resolves to the node name of the leaf-node on the tree that the monitor applies to. In many cases, the endpoint name is the same as the target of measurement. See Target below. N/A for this probe. Resolves to the name of the monitored entity. In version 1.0, this means a role instance name. Tree Context (right-click) Menu A context sensitive popup-menu is available by right-clicking on a tree node: Field Description New Sampler Template Delete Sampler Template New Auto Monitor Delete Auto Monitor New Subscription Delete Subscription Creates a new template for monitoring. Deletes the selected sampler template. The template is also removed from all auto monitors that list it. Creates a new auto monitor. Deletes the selected auto monitor. Creates a new subscription. Deletes the selected subscription. Documentation Changes 31
Configuring Logging You can configure Azure probe to log messages during its operation. Click the Options button on the top toolbar. Probe Options dialog appears: Log Level Nimsoft recommends that: When you first use the probe or are actively troubleshooting a problem you set the log level to Debug. Once you are confident the probe is functioning properly, change the logging to Normal Operations to save disk space. The Errors/Warnings Only level is intended for rare situations when disk space is at a premium. Max Log Size (MB) The maximum size of a single log file in megabytes. Max Logfiles When a log file reaches the Max Log Size, the probe rolls the old log into a saved file, empties the primary log file, and continues logging. The Max Logfiles property defines how many saved files are preserved. 32 azure Guide