The query is with respect to BSM (Business Service Map). Using AppDynamics will I be able to automatically discover and map critical business services/applications running in my IT infrastructure and how it is dependent on other IT elements like Services, Databases, Physical/Virtual Host metrics, Network elements and other layers of IT infrastructure spreading across different tiers/layers of IT Infrastructure. The reason behind this dependency mapping (logical) is that how fast I am able to detect, identify and resolve the problem which may be impacting my critical business application/service thus helping us in RCA and Impact analysis.
Hi,
Thanks for writing to appsphere community forum. We confirm that you should be able to track the call strace on the dependent services if the agent is also configured on dependent services as stated in docs listed below, let us know if the following docs helps to configure and how to monitor using appdynamics your apps:
http://docs.appdynamics.com/display/PRO13S/Logical+Model
http://docs.appdynamics.com/display/PRO13S/Mapping+Application+Services+to+the+AppDynamics+Model
http://docs.appdynamics.com/display/PRO13S/Features+Overview
http://docs.appdynamics.com/display/PRO13S/Visualize+App+Performance
You should be able to monitor h/w metircs using machine agent and AD discovers databases as backends, and you can further utilize the appdynamics for database tool to gather more database related statistics, regarding dependent tiers part of web application we request you to configure agent on dependent tiers as stated earlier, else you might see the tier as backends with no call strace part of dependent tiers.
let us know if that information helps and let us know if that clarifies your queries.
Thanks,
Arun
Thanks Arun for the help. But still I have my basic query unsolved. Its true that AD can monitor even the machine level information and DB level info we install the agents like nachine agent on that machine and agent for DB on that node where DB resides.
Its very clear that AD automatically dicovers and maintaines a dynamic map which infact is from Application performance perspective means how a application interacts with its underlying components, so basically if you say its a application flow map.
But what I need to understand is that how it can help me to automatically discover and map critical business services and how this critical service is dependent on other IT components logically. Take a example suppose a SAP application is not accessible and we need to exactly locate and pin point what has gone wrong, so here that issue can be at application layer means it might be application issue where AD can also help identify the real application problem, then it may be the case that application is working fine but DB on which this application is dependent has failed, or may the case that network connectivity to the DB server has failed. So in this case we need a service depedency map which can help me to exactly locate at which layer and what has gone wrong. Basically a business service dependency map or what we call business service map helps us in impact analysis and RCA to minimize the MTTR (mean time to resolution/repair) by exactly pin pointing to the layer where it has the proble or something gone wrong, its basically a tree like map.
Thats what I am wondering how AD can help me to map like this fashion from application layer to the infrastructure layer and how these are dependent and how failure of one impacts the overall business service.
Hi,
Thanks for posting back. AD supports error detection which helps you to capture errors raised at different service layers(tiers) using Error detection feature which will capture both application level and transaction level errors and exceptions under Troubleshoot -> Errors and Exceptions screen
refer docs: http://docs.appdynamics.com/display/PRO13S/Troubleshoot+Errors, please refer attached screenshots with errors captured for different service layers (tiers) at controller UI under errors dashboard and error details in BT snapshot.
Adding to that you can define health rule with email alert if the error count at app/tier/node level or particular exception count raises in controller business application in UI(you can also see the service layer will be affected becomes yellow or red in color if any health rule violation defined on error/exceptions health rule violation)
refer docs: http://docs.appdynamics.com/display/PRO13S/Health+Rules
Let us know if that information helps and let us know if that answers your query.
Thanks,
Arun