Stopping the
Application Management Blame Game through Integrated Infrastructure Management Tools
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Introduction
Imagine the following scenario: A business critical order
processing application is slow and sales personnel in branch
offices are unable to process orders. Cash flow is impacted,
help desk is flooded with calls, and business stalls. Application
team blames the server team. But server team insisted that
servers are operating at 99.9% availability and hinted something
might be wrong at the network level. And the network team
shot back saying the WAN links are up and kicking. Now who
is to blame the applications team, the server team,
the network team, or the lack of integrated approach to infrastructure
management?
When did the Blame Game Start?
It all happened when the sales executive at one of the branch
offices could not process an order when he tried accessing
the ERP application over the corporate WAN. And he rang up
the help desk not long before the customer walked out of his
sight. Help Desk escalated the problem to the IT head. And
the blame game started when the application team, the server
team, and the network team said to each other that if
you cant prove its my fault, then its not
my fault. And to further fuel the chaos each had their
own reports showing their assets were highly available during
the time of the call.
Reason for Chaos: False Security
Assured by Point Products
Monitoring the network, systems, and applications as disparate
entities without proper integration is the root cause for
blame game. Moreover the individual tools assure false security
by claiming that every entity was available at the time of
problem. But the realtime user experience is a combination
of lot of factors including which server they are served from,
what was the health of that server at that time, was the application
really available at that time, and what was the response time
with respect to that server etc.
Poor application performance could be due to many reasons
including:
- At the network level
- Non-availability of the primary WAN link between head
office and the branch office
- Longer round trip time experienced in the WAN link
due to congestion
- Performance issues on Router leading to increased
latency
- At the server level
- Insufficient resources (CPU, Memory etc.) on the Server
due to increased loads
- HardDisk or NIC card errors resulting in slow or poor
server performance
- Unusually high traffic activity on the Server at certain
times (Peak hours)
- At the application level
- Applications data persistence module was not
optimized and was causing intermittent connection problems
- Application went through a major revamp and was crashing
often. Probably wasnt well tested before deployment.
- Application load shot up at the particular moment
causing poor performance to everybody
The first step in stopping the blame game is to avoid the
false security assured by the point products which fail to
pin point the root cause of the problem when hurricane hits
your IT.
Network monitoring without an integrated approach would
result in an unproductive IT environment
The Solution: Integrated Approach
to Network, Systems, and Applications Management
Integrated approach here refers to the ability to gain real-time
visibility into the performance of your Network, Servers and
Applications, and pin point the root cause of failure, when
it occurs. An integrated enterprise infrastructure management
solution would assign higher importance to the server which
runs the application and would escalate the disc space utilization
issue through appropriate alarms and notifications.
Implementing integrated management solution
results in a productive IT environment
ManageEngine Suite: Cost Effective
Integrated Network, Systems, and Application Management Tools
for SMEs
For SMEs who cannot afford traditional infrastructure management
solutions such as HP Openview, CA Unicenter, IBM Tivoli, and
BMC Patrol, ManageEngine offers an affordable range of products
that offer the integrated management experience when clubbed
with a centralized trouble ticketing software.
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Tools for WAN Visualization and
Monitoring: For the Network Team
OpManager helps network teams
to visualize their WAN links running across the branch
offices. Individual link performance, statistics on
bandwidth usage, router latency issues etc., can be
identified using NetFlow
Analyzer.
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Tools for Server Monitoring: For the Server Team
OpManager monitors key health
parameters of your servers such as CPU, Memory and Disk
Utilization and proactively alerts you on low disk space,
high CPU utilization etc.
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Tools for Applications Management : For the Applications Team
Applications
Manager helps in-depth application and database
monitoring. Application support teams would benefit
using this tool in terms of knowing the exact response
time under various usage scenarios.
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Integrated Console for
IT Troubleshooting
ManageEngine ServiceDesk
Plus helps in providing a single console for IT
troubleshooting. Alarms generated in OpManager,
Applications
Manager, and NetFlow
Analyzer can be automatically converted into tickets
in ServiceDesk
Plus. In the case discussed above, two tickets would
be automatically generated for the same server. One
from OpManager for low disc
space and other from Applications
Manager for poor response time. These tickets will
give the totality of the problem and help in getting
the unified view. Moreover the administrator can merge
these two tickets into a single problem and work on
resolving the issue.
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The single console for IT maintenance will help in knowledge
sharing and developing a knowledgebase over a period of time.
ServiceDesk Plus
offers a web based knowledge base portal which accumulates
the notes added so far and serves as a ready reckoner for
freshers.
ManageEngine Enterprise Infrastructure management solutions
offer value for money
For more details on ManageEngine solutions and how they can
help you manage your application, systems, and network seamlessly,
please contact sales@adventnet.com. For comments on this article
contact devanand@adventnet.com
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