I have a web-service application that exposes lot of web-methods ( internally calling internal APIs or external web-services). I would like to have a tool to monitor this whole application running under IIS. To be clear I just don't want to inspect the requests that are failing, I also would like to see things like how long different calls are taking . I guess it has to be something like SQL Profiler tool
where you can look at all types of queries ( those that run successfully and those that fail too) and then apply all sorts of filter in focusing on the areas that interests you more.
Is there anything built in IIS that could be used for this purpose?
What you are looking for is a runtime profiler for the CLR. The answer is ETW tracing. The tool that can help is PerfMonitor.
IIS 7 has failed request tracing which can help in diagnosing the cause for the
failure.
Also IIS logs have lot of information on request, response,duration and few more
which can be helpful in getting metrics. I usually use Log Parser for getting
metrics from IIS logs
And if you are in IIS7+ then you could use built-in ETW tracing for webservices.
Here is the ETW provider for webservice
e04fe2e0-c6cf-4273-b59d-5c97c9c374a4: Microsoft-Windows-WebServices Microsoft-Windows-WebServices
For any application running under ASP.NET, you can use perfmon to look at different performance numbers.
If you're using ASP.NET 4, there are even better tools available to you
Also if your web services are WCF based, it gets even better Not only do you have very rich tracing, there's also a gui that displays the logs very nicely.
You can try get official IIS Extensions with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer called Web Performance Monitor
Microsoft sells System Center Operation Manager, which has been used by many big firms. But that's too expensive if you cannot afford it.
Web Performance Monitor of course worth a try, and Perfmon is already an option.
My test team currently uses QTP to test through the GUI, but like any automated test suite that relies on the interface, it is more fragile than automating tests that directly interact with the code. I am attempting to learn more about Siebel and Siebel Tools to better understand how we might be able to test below the GUI, but would like to hear from someone with more expertise to find out if this is feasible.
it really depends on what you want to test, I guess.
I'm using the Siebel Java Data Bean (JDB) a lot to access Siebel. You basically connect to the Siebel Server and execute code very similar to eScript. That means you could create records, invoke workflows and so on; basically everything you could do in eScript. That might be helpful. This will apply all the usual validations, runtime events and events.
As soon as some of your scripts in BusComps or in Business Services or elsewhere access data that needs a UI context (TheApplication().ActiveBusObject() or TheApplication().ActiveApplet() for instance) this approach will fail, though, because the Siebel Data Bean doesn't have a UI context.
Another drawback is that you have to connect to a Siebel Server. That means you have to deploy your SRF to the development server and only then you can run your tests. It sure would be much better if the JDB could connect to your local instance, but as far as I know this is not possible. Have a look at the Object Interfaces guide in the Bookshelf, though. There are different ways to connect to Siebel, not just Java.
Let me know if you have any questions about this. I could maybe post some sample code of how to connect to the Siebel Server etc.
Right now QTP is the best way to go - it's still a PITA but there really is nothing else out there to test the full Siebel Web Client. This is because the Siebel UI is delivered through Internet Explorer with proprietary Active X and Java controls and so you really need a bespoke pack to test it.
Because the UI is a re-interpretation, not just an abstraction, of the Business Object layer (that one accesses with Data Beans / COM etc.) it is not useful to test at that layer except in a small number of unit test cases (such as when you have complex scripting in Siebel).
If you change the end of the URL for the client (login to Siebel first of course) to something like "SWEcmd=GotoPageTab&SWEScreen=Accounts+Screen&SWESetMarkup=XML" then you'll see lots of XML mark-up which is then consumed by the proprietary controls - you might think this would be a cool way to build an automation tool, but it is not (I've tried).
If you want to really use a proper UI testing tool, like Selenium, you'll have to test the HTML Siebel Web Client - this is a 'skinny' 'Standard Interactivity' UI that doesn't use Active X or Java ... it has a lot less cool UI controls but it works essentially the same at the full Siebel Web Client (aka High Interactivity Siebel Web Client, or HI for short), and it works in Firefox!
Have you looked at Oracle Application testing Suite. It comes pre-built accelerators for testing Siebel which makes it all the more easier to test Siebel.
Since Siebel version 7.7 QTP uses Siebel Test Automation (STA) which needs to be purchased separately from Oracle, a quick search found this explanation on how to set up testing with STA (this is written from a QTP prespective but is true for all STA usage).
If you really want to avoid using GUI testing then you can hunt down the API documentation and try to use STA directly but I would not recommend it, QTP has already done all the heavy lifting for you, why would you want to reproduce the effort (especially since your company already owns QTP licenses).
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We are finishing up our web application and planning for deployment. Very important aspect of deployment to production is monitoring the health of the system. Having a small team of developers/support makes it very critical for us to get the early notifications of potential problems and resolve them before they have impact on users.
Using Nagios seams like a good option, but wanted to get more opinions on what are the best monitoring tools/practices for web application in general and specifically for Django app? Also would welcome recommendations on what should be monitored aside from the obvious CPU, memory, disk space, database connectivity.
Our web app is written in Django, we are running on Linux (Ubuntu) under Apache + Fast CGI with PostgreSQL database.
EDIT
We have a completely virtualized environment under Linode.
EDIT
We are using django-logging so we have a way separate info, errors, critical issues, etc.
Nagios is good, it's good to maybe have system testing (Selenium) running regularily.
Edit: Hyperic and Groundwork also look interesting.
There is probably a test suite system that can keep pressure testing everything as well for you. I can't remember the name off the top of my head, maybe someone can mention one below.
Other things I like to do:
The best motto for infrastructure is always fix, detect, repair. Get it up, get to the root of it, and cure/prevent it if you can.
Since a system exists at many levels, we should test at many levels:
Edit: Have all errors or warnings posted directly to your case manager via email. That way you can track occurrences in one place.
1) Connection : monitor your internet connectivity from the server and from the outside. Log this somewhere
2) Server : monitor all the processes that you need to to ensure they are running and not pinning the server. Use a HP Server or something equivalent with hardware failure notification that it can do from a bios level. Notify and log if they are.
3) Software : Identify the key software that always needs to be running. Set the performance levels if any and then monitor them. Nagios should be able to help with this. On windows it can be a bit more. When an exception occurs, you should be able to run a script from it to restart processes automatically. My dream system is allowing me to interact with servers via SMS if the server sees it as an exception that I have to either permit, or one that will happen automatically unless I cancel by sms. One day..
4) Remote Power : Ensure Remote power-reset capabilities are in your hand. You might want to schedule weekly reboots if you ever use windows for anything.
5) Business Logic Testing : Have regularly running scripts testing the workflow of your system. Selenium can probably achieve some of this, but I like logging the results as well to say this ran at this time and these files had errors. If possible anywhere, have the system monitor itself through your scripts.
6) Backups : Make a backup that you can set and forget. If you can get things into virtual machines it would be ideal as you can scale, move, or deploy any part of your infrastructure anywhere. I have had instances where I moved a dead server onto my laptop, let it run in vmware while I fixed a problem.
Monitoring the number of connections to your Web server and your database is another good thing to track. Chances are if one shoots through the roof, something is starving for resources and the site is about to go down.
Also make sure you have a regular request for a URL that is a reasonable end-to-end test of the system. If your site supports search, then have nagios execute a search - that should make sure the search index is healthy, the Web server and the database server.
Also, make sure that your applications sends you email anytime your users see an error, or there is an unhandled exception. That way you know how the application is failing in the field.
If I had to pick one type of testing it would be to test the end-user functionality of the system. The important thing to consider is the user. While testing things like database availability, server up-time, etc, are all important, testing work-flows through your system via a remote UI testing system covers all these bases. If you know that the critical parts of your system are available to the end-user, then you know your system is prolly Ok.
Identify the important work-flows in your system. For example, if you wrote an eCommerce site you might identify a work-flow of "search for a product, put product in shopping cart, and purchase product".
Prioritize the work-flows, and build out higher-priority tests first. You can always add additional tests after you roll out to production.
Build UI tests using one of the available UI testing frameworks. There are a number of free and commercial UI testing frameworks that can be run in an automated fashion. Build a core set of tests first that address critical work-flows.
Setup at least one remote location from which to run tests. You want to test every aspect of your system, which means testing it remotely. Is the internet connection up? Is the web server running? Is the connection to the database server working? Etc, etc. If you test remotely you make sure you system is available to the outside world which means it is most likely working end-to-end. You can also run these tests internally, but I think it is critical to run them externally.
Make sure your solution includes both reporting and notification. If one of your critical work-flow tests fails, you want someone to know about it to fix the problem ASAP. If a non-critical task fails, perhaps you only want reporting so that you can fix problems out-of-band.
This end-user testing should not eliminate monitoring of system in your data-center, but I want to reiterate that end-user testing is the most important type of testing you can do for a web application.
Ahhh, monitoring. How I love thee and your vibrations at 3am.
Essentially, you need a way to inspect the internal state of your application, both at a specific moment, as well as over spans of time (the latter is very important for detecting problems before they occur). Another way to think of it is as glorified unit-testing.
We have our own (very nice) monitoring system, so I can't comment on Nagios or other apps. Our use case is similar to yours, though (cgi app on apache).
Add a logging.monitor() type method, which will log information to disk. This should support, at the least, logging simple numbers and dicts of numbers (the key=>value association can be incredibly handy).
Have a process that scrapes the monitoring logs and stores them into a database.
Have a process that takes the database information, checks them against rules, and sends out alerts. Keep in mind that somethings can be flaky. Just because you got a 404 once doesn't mean the app it down.
Have a way to mute alerts (very useful for maintenance or to read your email).
Thats all pretty high level. The important thing is that you have a history of the state of the application over time. From this, you can then create rules (perhaps just raw sql queries you put into a config somewhere), that say "If the queries per second doubled, send a SlashDotted alert", or "if 50% of responses are 404, send an alert". It also bedazzles management because you can quantify any comment about whether its up, down, fast, or slow.
Things to monitor include (others probably mentioned these as well): http status, port accessible, http load, database load, open connection, query latency, server accessibility (ssh, ping), queries per second, number of worker processes, error percentage, error rate.
Simple end-to-end tests are also very handy, though they can be brittle. Its best to keep them simple, but you should have one that tries to touch core pieces of the app (caching, database, authentication).
I use Munin and Monit, and have been very happy with both of them.
Internal logging is fine and dandy but when your whole app goes down or your box/enviro crashes you need an outside check too. http://www.pingdom.com/ has been very reliable for me.
My only other advice is I wouldnt spent too much time on this. my best example is twitter, how much energy did they put into the system being able to half-die instead of just investing that time and energy into throwing more hardware / scaling it out.
Chances are what ends up taking you down, your logging and health systems will have missed anyway.
The single most important way to monitor any online site is to monitor externally. The goal should be to monitor your site in a way that most closely reflects how your users use the site. In 99% of cases, as soon as you know that your site is down externally, it's relatively easy to find the root cause. The most important thing is to know as soon as possible that your customers are unable to load your site.
This generally means using an external performance monitoring service. They very from the very low end (mon.itor.us, pingdom) to the high end (Webmetrics, Gomez, Keynote). And as always, you get what you pay for. The things to look for when shopping around for a monitoring service include:
The size and distribution of the monitoring network
Whether or not the monitoring solution is able to monitor your site using a real browser (otherwise you aren't testing your site like a real user would)
The scripting language (to script the transactions against your site)
The support department, to help you along the way, and provide expertise on how to monitor correctly
Good luck!
Web monitoring by IP Patrol or SiteSentry have been useful for us. The second is a bit like site confidence but slightly prettier lol.
Have you thought about monitoring the functionality as well? A script (either in a scripting language like Perl or Pyton or using some tool like WebTest) that talks to your application and does some important steps like logging in, making a purchase, etc is very nice to have.
Aside from what to monitor, which has already been answered, you need to make sure - whatever system you use - that you get only one notification of an error that happens multiple times, on each request. Or your inbox will run out of memory :) Plus, it's plain annoying...
Divide the standby shifts among the support/dev team, so one person does not have to be on call every single evening. That will wear people down. Monitoring is a good thing, but everyone needs to get a chance to have a life once in a while. Your cellphone buzzing at 2AM for a few nights will get very old pretty soon, trust me. And not every developer is used to 24/7 support, so you need to find the balance between using monitoring and abusing monitoring.
Basically, have distinct escalation levels, and if the sky is not falling, define a "serenity now" window at night where smaller escalation levels don't go out.
I've been using Nagios + CruiseControl + Selenium for running high-level tests on mission critical web applications. I got burned pretty hard by a simple jquery error that stopped users from proceding through an online signup form.
http://www.agileatwork.com/the-holy-trinity-of-web-2-0-application-monitoring/
You can take a look at AlertGrid. This web application allows you to filter and forward alerts to your team (worldwide). It has also nice ability to monitor if something did not happen.
To paraphrase Richard Levasseur: ah, monitoring tools, how your imperfections frustrate me. There doesn't seem to be a perfect tool out there; Nagios is pretty easy to set up but the UI is kinda old fashioned and you have to have a daemon running on each server being monitored. Zenoss has a much nicer UI including trend graphs of resource usage, but it uses SNMP so you have to have some familiarity with that to get it working properly, and the documentation is not the best - there are hundreds of pages but it's really hard to find just the info you need to get started.
Friends of mine have also recommended Cacti and Hyperic, but I don't have personal experience with those.
One last thing - one of the other answers suggested running a tool that stresses your site. I wouldn't recommend doing that on your live site unless you have a reliable quiet period when nobody is hitting it; even then you might bring it down unexpectedly. Much better to have a staging server where you can run load tests before putting changes into production.
One of our clients uses Techout (www.techout.com) and is very pleased with the service.
There is no charge for alerts, no matter what kind or how many, and they offer email, voicemail and SMS alerts -- and if something major happens, a phone call from a live person to help you out.
It's all based on service -- you don't install the software and you have a consultant who works with you to determine the best approach for your business. It's one of the most convenient web application monitoring services because they take care of everything.
I would just add that you can predict error likelihood somewhat based on history of past errors and having fixed them. With smaller scale internal testing if you were to graph the frequency and severity of problems that have been corrected to this point you'll have an overview of predictable new problems. If everything has been running error free for some time now, then the two sources of trouble would be recent changes or scalability issues.
From the above it sounds like scalability is your only worry, but I just mention the past-error frequency test because the teams I've been on invariably think they got the last error fixed and there are no more. Until there is.
Changing the line a little bit, something I really think is useful and changed a lot how I monitor my apps is to log javascript exceptions somewhere. There's a very nice implementation that logs that directly from user browsers to Google Analytics.
This is a must for Javascript centered web applications, and can give you results based directly on users browsers what can lead to very unexpected errors (iE and mobile browser are pain)
Disclaimer: My post bellow
http://www.directperformance.com.br/en/javascript-debug-simples-com-google-analytics
For the internet presence monitoring, I would suggest the service that I am working on: Sucuri NBIM (Network-based integrity monitor).
It does availability and integrity checks, looking for changes on your internet presence (sites, DNS, WHOIS, headers, etc) and loss of connectivity. It is free and you can try it out here.
At my day job we have load balanced web servers which talk to load balanced app servers via web services (and lately WCF). At any given time, we have 4-6 different teams that have the ability to add new web sites or services or consume existing services. We probably have about 20-30 different web applications and corresponding services.
Unfortunately, given that we have no centralized control over this due to competing priorities, org structures, project timelines, financial buckets, etc., it is quite a mess. We have a variety of services that are reused, but a bunch that are specific to a front-end.
Ideally we would have better control over this situation, and we are trying to get control over it, but that is taking a while. One thing we would like to do is find out more about what all of the inter-relationships between web sites and the app servers.
I have used Reflector to find dependencies among assemblies, but would like to be able to see the traffic patterns between services.
What are the options for trying to map out web service relationships? For the most part, we are mainly talking about internal services (web to app, app to app, batch to app, etc.). Off the top of my head, I can think of two ways to approach it:
Analyze assemblies for any web references. The drawback here is that not everything is a web reference and I'm not sure how WCF connections are listed. However, this would at least be a start for finding 80% of the connections. Does anyone know of any tools that can do that analysis? Like I said, I've used Reflector for assembly references but can't find anything for web references.
Possibly tap into IIS and passively monitor the traffic coming in and out and somehow figure out what is being called and where from. We are looking at enterprise tools that could help but it would be a while before they are implemented (and cost a lot). But is there anything out there that could help out quickly and cheaply? One tool in particular (AmberPoint) can tap into IIS on the servers and monitor inbound and outbound traffic, adds a little special sauce and begin to build a map of the traffic. Very nice, but costs a bundle.
I know, I know, how the heck did you get into this mess in the first place? Beats me, just trying to help us get control of it and get out of it.
Thanks,
Matt
The easiest way is to look through the logs, but if that doesn't include the referrer than you may also want to monitor what is going out from your web to the app server. You can use tools like Wireshark or Microsoft Network Monitor to see this traffic.
The other "solution" and I use this loosely is to bind a specific web server to app server and then run through a bundle and see what it is hitting on the app server. You could probably do this in a test environment to lesson the effects on the users of the site.
You need a service registry (UDDI??)... If you had a means to catalog these services and their consumers, it would make this job of dependency discovery a lot easier. That is not an easy solution, though. It takes time and documentation to get a catalog in place.
I think the quickest solution would be to query your IIS logs and find source URLs which originate from your own servers. You would at least be able to track down which servers your consumers are coming from.
Also, if you already have some kind of authentication mechanism in place, you could trace who is using a particular service based on login.
You are right about AmberPoint. There are other tools that catalog the service traffic and provide reports showing what is happening to your services. Systinet, SOA Software and Actional also has a products similar to Amberpoint but Amberpoint has a free-ware version, I believe.