My Application is Slow | Best Practices for Troubleshooting and Prevention

© eG Innovations, Inc | www.eginnovations.com

My Application Is Slow!

Best Practices for Troubleshooting and Prevention

Frank OhlhorstEnterprise IT Analyst & [email protected]

Srinivas Ramanathan, CEOeG Innovations

[email protected]


Moderator

Christine AckleyDirector of Marketing OperationseG [email protected]


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Today’s Presenters

Srinivas RamanathanCEOeG [email protected]

Frank J. OhlhorstEnterprise IT Analyst & [email protected]


Agenda

• Application performance monitoring today

• Why APM is easier said than done?

• Six best practices for troubleshooting and avoiding “my application is slow” problems

• Q&A


Performance Monitoring in the Past Focus on Resources

MemoryCPU Disk Network

Adequate for simple, client-server applicationsX Not sufficient for complex, modern applications


Slow-Time vs. Down-Time

Down-time : $21,000 Slow-time : $4,100

Average revenue loss due to 1 hour of:

However, slowness occurs 10 times more often than downtime.A 1 sec delay in response time decreases customer satisfaction by 16%, reduces conversions by 7%.


Focus of Performance Monitoring Today Great User Experience


Great Application Performance is

Easier Said Than Done!


Database

User

Multi-Tier Applications are Hard to Manage


Database

User



Database

User



Database

User



Database

User



Database

User



Virtualization Introduces New Challenges

Virtual infrastructures are hard to manage. Traditional monitoring tools are not designed to handle these dynamic environments.

Streaming Media AppSlow Database Queries

Excessive disk reads by the media server

slow down Oracle database accesses

Disk reads


Virtualization Introduces New Challenges• A failure or a slowdown in a virtual infrastructure is far

more severe than in a physical infrastructure

Physical Virtual

• Configuration of VMs can make a big impact on performance; changes to configuration are hard to track


Infrastructure & Application Evolution Poses Challenges

Public cloudPrivate cloud

Virtualized

Browsers Locations Frameworks

Devices ProgrammingLanguages Platforms


Is it due to the client device/ application? Is it the server application code? Is it in the database queries? Is it due to the application platform/

framework? Is it due to the virtual/cloud platform? Is there a slowness in the local or regional

network? Could it be due to storage?

When an Application is Slow …


How to Achieve Application

Performance Monitoring Success?


Application Performance Monitoring Framework

Defines APM as a 5 Dimensional Model

End User Experience Monitoring

Business Transaction

Tracing

Application Component Deep-Dive

Application Topology

Discovery/Visualization

IT Analytics





Tracing




IT Analytics


User Experience Monitoring

Emulates users

Imposes the same workload again and again

Provides a measure of experience EVEN when there is no real load

Synthetic MonitoringSynthetic Monitoring



Record a script to simulate a user session

Open the same application that a user access (e.g.,

browser, Citrix receiver)

Indicate what actions to perform

Specify what to match in the

response

Name the transaction step



Results of synthetic monitoring shown in the monitoring tool



Emulates users Imposes the same workload again

and again Provides a measure of experience

EVEN when there is no real load

Synthetic Monitoring

Monitors real users Actual workloads Direct measure of what users

are seeing

Real User MonitoringSynthetic Monitoring


Real User Monitoring Approaches

Agentless RUM

Use Javascript support in web browsers to monitor web access in an agentless manner

Agentless – no software installed on the client

Works for any browser – desktop or mobile

Easy to setup - No need for network taps


Monitoring the Real User Experience


User Experience - Best Practice

Use a combination of synthetic and real user monitoring approaches to gain a complete view of the user experience.

Synthetic Monitoring Real User MonitoringSynthetic Monitoring


User Experience - Best Practice Consider this scenario:

• Users access web site, place orders

• Order processing happens in the background as an asynchronous process.

• What happens when order processing fails?

• User Experience Monitoring still indicates that all is OK, despite the failure of orders.

Monitoring the user experience is not sufficient. Track your critical business processes as well.

INVENTORY HANDLING





Tracing




IT Analytics


Business Transaction Tracing




ClassFileTransformer


Application is not modified

Introduces some overhead

Tag and follow transactions

Ideal when problems are in the application code

Using byte-code instrumentation

JVM

ClassLoader

Class A

Class B

Class C

Agent

1. Premain

2. addTransformer

5. redefineClass

4. transform

3. WhenLoading…


Transaction Tracing - Best Practice• Transaction tracing is very important for identifying coding

issues and poor database queries.

• May not provide true end-to-end visibility for off-the-shelf applications like SAP, PeopleSoft, etc.

• 3% - number of respondents to Gartner’s APM Survey who ranked this as #1 priority for APM.

Use transaction tracing as one part (not the only part) of your end-to-end application performance monitoring strategy.





Tracing




IT Analytics


Application Monitoring = Transaction Tracing

Suppose there is an infrastructure issue – say a database-wide slowdown.



Transaction tracing will NOT point to the root-cause of an infrastructure problem.


ServerInfrastructure

Health

Application Processes

TCP

Network

Operating System

ApplicationInfrastructure Health

Server/Container

JVM


BusinessTransaction Health

App hosted onContainer

CUSTOM


Component Deep Dive


Monitoring Every Layer, Every Tier from One Console

Can you access the application server?

Can you ping the server?

Can you access the TCP port of the server?

Is the application’s Windows service

running?Is the application process

running normally?

Is the server’s OS working properly?

Are applications published on the server

working well?

How is the user experience?


Component Deep Dive – Best Practice

Have the right mix of reach and depth when it comes to monitoring capabilities.





Tracing




IT Analytics


Application Topology DiscoveryInter-dependencies abound in today’s application infrastructures:– Application to application

(Java to SQL)– Application to VM/cloud

instance– VM to physical machine/

cloud service– Application to external service– Application to infrastructure services (DNS)


Using Dependencies for Root-Cause Diagnosis










Topology Discovery – Best Practice

Don’t just discover – use application dependencies for root-cause diagnosis.





Tracing




IT Analytics


IT Analytics

• Auto-baselining• Automatic correlation• Prediction• Capacity analysis• Historical reporting• Bottleneck detection• Optimization recommendations


Auto-Baselining for Proactive Alerting

Automatic, time varying baselines make monitoring

PROACTIVE


Make Optimization Decisions Based on Empirical Data

A few of the servers are handling most of

the sessions


Invest Wisely with Capacity Analytics


IT Analytics – Best Practice

IT Analytics is 2nd in importance to user experience!

Look for monitoring tools that reduce your burden by automating analysis and providing you actionable insights.


Adopt a combination of synthetic and real user monitoring to track user experience

Monitoring key business processes is as important as monitoring user experience

Transaction tracing should be an important, but not the only part of your application performance monitoring strategy

Reach and depth of monitoring are both important as you look at unified monitoring capabilities

Don’t just discover application inter-dependencies, use them for accurate root-cause diagnosis

Analytics capabilities are important to make monitoring agile and automated

Best Practices Summary


Ensure great user experience Detect problems before users notice –

be proactive Resolve problems quickly, keep MTTR

low Handle problems with fewer people,

less expertise Plan/invest wisely for growth

Benefits of Application Performance Monitoring Success


Next Steps

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My Application is Slow | Best Practices for Troubleshooting and Prevention