Table Of ContentThese materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any
dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any
dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
Application
Performance
Management
Riverbed Special Edition
by Lawrence C. Miller, CISSP
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dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
Application Performance Management For Dummies®,
Riverbed Special Edition
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Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................1
About This Book ............................................................1
Icons Used in This Book ................................................2
Chapter 1: Understanding What Application
Performance Management Is ....................................3
Complex Application and Infrastructure Landscape ...3
Different Elements of APM ............................................8
Monitoring and Troubleshooting Applications .........9
Chapter 2: From the Driver’s Seat:
End-User Experience Monitoring ...........................13
Understanding User Behaviors and Patterns ...........14
End-User Experience Monitoring ...............................16
Real end-user experience monitoring ..................16
Synthetic end-user monitoring .............................17
Chapter 3: Looking Under the Hood:
Transaction Tracing ..................................................19
Following a Single Application Transaction
Across All Components ............................................20
Monitoring Performance at the Code
Level at Every Step ....................................................20
Tracing Transactions ..................................................21
Chapter 4: Horsepower and Fuel Efficiency .........23
Instrumentation: Keeping It Light ..............................23
Dealing with Lots of Data — Every Transaction ......24
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dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
iv
Applying Big Data Techniques ...................................25
Leveraging Analytics to Detect Patterns
and Problems .............................................................27
Chapter 5: Exploring the Application
Performance Management Terrain ........................29
Monitor Application Performance
and SLA Compliance .................................................30
Perform Triage .............................................................31
Troubleshoot Application Performance ...................31
Map Application Dependencies .................................32
Manage Application Performance in the Cloud .......33
Manage Performance with Application
and Infrastructure Change .......................................35
Chapter 6: Ten (Okay, Five) Application
Performance Management Evaluation
Criteria .........................................................................37
End-User Experience (EUE) Monitoring ....................37
Transaction Tracing and Application
Component Monitoring ............................................39
Application Dependency Mapping ............................40
Analytics .......................................................................41
Dashboards ...................................................................41
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Introduction
A
pplication Performance Management For Dummies,
Riverbed Special Edition, introduces you to appli-
cation performance management (APM) solutions and
how these tools can help you monitor and trouble-
shoot your mission-critical applications — from the
perspective of your users, as well as your systems.
About This Book
This book contains volumes of information that rival a
map of the human genome, conveniently distilled into
six short chapters chock-full of just the information
you need! Each chapter is individually wrapped (but
not packaged for individual sale) and written to stand
on its own, so feel free to start reading anywhere and
hop, skip, or jump between chapters (or around your
office)! Here’s a brief look at what awaits you.
Chapter 1: Understanding What Application
Performance Management Is. I begin by exploring
some application trends and different elements of
APM, including monitoring and troubleshooting.
Chapter 2: From the Driver’s Seat: End-User
Experience Monitoring. This chapter takes a look at
application performance from the user’s perspective.
Chapter 3: Looking Under the Hood: Transaction
Tracing. Here, you take an in-depth look at how appli-
cation transaction tracing accelerates troubleshooting,
and how APM helps bridge the workflow between appli-
cation support and development.
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any
dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
2
Chapter 4: Horsepower and Fuel Efficiency. In this
chapter, you learn to use a “big data approach” to deal
with all of the data that APM collects.
Chapter 5: Exploring the Application Performance
Management Terrain. Here, you learn about some
creative uses for APM to help improve efficiency and
effectiveness in your organization.
Chapter 6: Ten (Okay, Five) Application Performance
Management Evaluation Criteria. Here, in classic
For Dummies style, I tell you about several important
criteria to look for in an APM solution.
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout this book, you sometimes see icons that
point out important information. Here’s what to expect.
This icon points out information that may
well be worth committing to your nonvolatile
memory — along with anniversaries and
birthdays!
If you’re an insufferable insomniac or vying to
be the life of a World of Warcraft party, take
note. This icon explains the jargon beneath
the jargon.
Thank you for reading, hope you enjoy the
book, please take care of your writers!
Seriously, this icon points out helpful nuggets
of information.
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dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
Chapter 1
Understanding What
Application Performance
Management Is
In This Chapter
▶ Recognizing trends and challenges
▶ Looking at different APM components
▶ Bringing it all together in a complete solution
T
oday’s complex business applications present new
challenges that legacy application monitoring tools
are ill-equipped to address. This chapter talks about
these challenges and the important elements that make
up a complete and effective application performance
management (APM) solution.
Complex Application and
Infrastructure Landscape
Increasingly, application performance directly impacts
business performance. Users rely on applications to
reach customers, build and sell products, provide
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4
services, automate business processes, and perform
almost every other task critical to the business. And as
applications have become more critical, they have also
become more complex. For IT teams, application per-
formance and availability are the most visible indica-
tors of their success.
Accordingly, IT organizations are changing the way
they manage performance to be more holistic and
application focused. In a 2012 study, Enterprise
Management Associates found that 81 percent of
participants regularly leverage cross-domain teams to
tackle and manage application performance. Also in
2012, Gartner found that 20 percent of Global 2000
enterprises are reengineering their entire IT operational
process framework in a way that shifts the central focus
to the monitoring and management of applications.
The demand for newer, more powerful business appli-
cations at an ever-increasing rate has led to the adop-
tion of rapid software development methodologies that
increase the speed of delivery for new applications. At
the same time, the introduction of new IT infrastruc-
ture technologies has increased the complexity of the
underlying infrastructure over which applications run
(see Figure 1-1). Some examples of these trends include
✓ Agile development and DevOps. Agile develop-
ment is a conceptual software development frame-
work in which cross-functional teams share
knowledge, ideas, opinions, and experiences to
identify evolving requirements and solutions.
Team tasks are divided into short timebox itera-
tions that typically last only a few weeks and
cover all development functions including
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