Application Management archives - IT Trenches

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application management

Sep 25 2009   3:15PM GMT

Performance monitoring dashboard - fping and URL ping



Posted by: Troy Tate
ping, url ping, network performance, application performance, network management, application management, network design, network diagnosis, icmp, web services, webserver, performance analysis

In part one of this series, I discussed ping and pathping. These tools are good for some interactive realtime testing. However, what do you do when you want to run these types of tools over an extended period and then do statistical analysis? In cases like this I use the fping tool. I recently completed an analysis task requiring comparison of network ping times against web server response times. The tool I used for measuring webserver response (time to first byte) is called URL ping. Users were reporting slow webserver (Sharepoint) performance. Everyone was saying it is a network issue. Since there are so many “moving” parts between the users and the webserver farm, I wanted to prove to them that the network was not the issue but that something inherent in the way the webserver responds to the requests is the real issue.

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Aug 28 2009   4:57PM GMT

Performance monitoring dashboard - designing and instrumentation



Posted by: Troy Tate
ping, pathping, network performance, application performance, network management, application management, network design, network diagnosis

One of my biggest challenges as a network manager is when users cry “the network is slow”. Some of you may have tools available to you where you can instantly dig in and see what the user might be seeing. There are some vendors out there with application and network monitoring tools. Netscout is one that comes to mind. However, I don’t have tools like that available so I have to work through several layers of data collection methods and tools to get a picture of what might be happening. Maybe you are in the same boat. Getting an answer to “the network is slow” is not a simple or quick activity. How do you deal with this? Following are some ways that I use to try and address the situation.

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