The importance of monitoring system performance in corporate IT systems
IT systems play a critical role in business
From basic office machines to the critical systems that drive business operations, IT is today a vital part of any company, present behind all areas of corporate activity. It follows that faults or problems with corporate IT systems potentially cause major losses through delays and interruptions, impacting on the credibility of the corporation.
Meanwhile, diversification of market needs, changes in regulatory requirements, and the evolution of global markets are all proceeding at an increasing rate. A competitive company's IT system performance-monitoring tools must keep pace with these changes.
Why system performance monitoring is necessary
Some companies use the standard tools supplied with an OS to monitor servers and applications in their IT system. Others use event logs and system logs. A weakness shared by most standard OS tools is that they only report system failures after the event. Post-reporting of failures allows for a prompt response and rectification, but unless potential faults can be predicted before they occur, preventive measures are difficult to implement. Additionally, locally monitoring systems with a variety of different tools can be cumbersome and time-consuming.
Integrated monitoring of servers and applications is essential to ensure that corporate IT systems will run smoothly. System administrators must be able to prevent problems from arising, and they must be able to promptly identify any faults that do occur and eliminate the cause. System administrators also need access to information on server resources and application performance in order to identify potential problems and ward off threats to operational stability. Finally, monitoring of system performance is necessary to flexibly adapt IT systems to the changing business environment.
System performance management cycle
A coordinated approach consisting of three phases - monitoring, analysis, and planning - is necessary to ensure operational stability of the corporate IT system. It is also important to properly understand the problems experienced by users in order to optimize the IT system.
System performance management cycle
Monitoring
The monitoring phase consists of monitoring and coordinating the availability of OS and database resources to ensure uninterrupted operation of the corporate IT system, as well as prompt detection and notification of system errors as they occur.
Analysis
In the analysis phase, operational information collected via monitoring is used to identify the causes of faults and errors as they occur, as well as to forecast performance levels and threats to operational stability. The analysis phase also includes assessing issues experienced by users and continually modifying the IT system for efficiency.
Planning
The planning phase involves using the findings of the analysis phase to evaluate whether the IT system is providing a useful and supportive environment for users, and to identify any bottleneck locations. Any system upgrade or expansion requirements are determined, along with the cost of associated equipment.
What is JP1 availability management?
Backup support throughout the System performance management cycle
JP1/Performance Management (JP1/PFM) delivers solid support throughout the three stages of the system performance management cycle, Monitoring, Analysis, and Planning. With separate products and features at each stage, it allows the system configuration to be closely tailored to business strategies in all areas, from day-to-day operations to system upgrades.
The benefits of JP1 availability management are listed below.
Saving - Reduced administrator workload
- JP1 provides a single GUI that allows administrators to understand the entire system's status at a glance.
- JP1 provides integrated system management without requiring special administrator skills.
- JP1 provides rich reporting capabilities to aid in troubleshooting when failures occur.
- JP1 is ready to use immediately after installation, thanks to its preset threshold values.
Stability - Improved system stability
- JP1 monitors thresholds to detect system abnormalities early and notifies you with an icon or e-mail.
- JP1 prevents serious potential problems through early detection and coordinated automated action.
- JP1 analyzes problems and forecasts operational status to help effectively plan future system expansion.
- JP1 minimizes the system load by reducing the network load and server resource consumption.
Scalability - Flexible scale with an eye on future growth
- JP1 allows more targets to be monitored just by adding the necessary agents.
- JP1 allows the operating status of other management tools to be monitored according to customer needs.
- JP1 can work with HP OpenView or JP1/AJS2 to implement a wider range of operations.
JP1/PFM monitoring phase
A central management server coordinates regular monitoring of operations and Internet service response times for all operating systems and applications on the network. A single GUI then provides a graphical overview of the operating status of the entire system. There is no need to apply different tools to each operating system and application. This makes the standardized monitoring process easy to understand and eliminates the requirement for advanced skills on the part of the system administrator.
Continuous monitoring of threshold values detects potential system errors and immediately generates alert icons and email messages before dangerous situations can develop. In order to avoid false alarms and detection errors, the monitoring process compares operational thresholds against the frequency of fault occurrence and only generates alerts when the faults are likely to be genuine.
Alarm Monitor window
Application server performance
JP1/PFM constantly searches for signs of worsening response times and potential system failures to allow potential threats to operational stability to be addressed before they can occur.
Monitored targets:
- Operating systems (Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, and Linux)
- Databases (Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server)
- Applications (SAP R/3® and JP1/AJS2)
Internet service response times
JP1/PFM continually monitors response times for Internet services, particularly web servers (HTTP) and mail servers (SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4). It also simulates the typical Internet operation sequences of users and analyses the resulting response times. In this way, it allows anticipation of the user experience.
JP1/PFM analysis phase
JP1/PFM can be used to assess whether the system is providing a sound, functional environment for system users and to identify bottleneck locations.
Proactive performance management
JP1/PFM analyses operating information and calculates when possible resource shortages and threats to performance may occur. Proactive system administration involves identifying these potential performance issues and allocating additional system resources to specific areas as needed.
Prediction of when a critical state will be reached
Troubleshooting assistance
JP1/PFM uses correlations between performance data and the underlying system configuration, along with other supporting data, to identify areas with a high likelihood of failure. It then provides information designed to help isolate the root of the problem.
Correlation analysis and its results
JP1/PFM planning phase
JP1/PFM generates long-term operational status reports based on monitoring information and analysis results. These reports are used to evaluate operational trends and plan capacity expansion based on real data, rather than intuition.
Using reports for capacity planning
Daily and monthly reports show current operating status data together with data from previous periods of stable operation. This form of direct data comparison quickly identifies any changes in system status.
Report window
Baseline comparison
With JP1/PFM, you will improve the availability of IT systems
When the system is running smoothly, the tendency is to assume that system performance monitoring is not really necessary. Failure, however, can occur at any time. If your system is currently problem-free, then this is the ideal time to start using JP1 and prepare for the time when something does go wrong.
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