|
An effective monitoring strategy
should zero in on Web performance problems from three directions: the user
application experience, device availability and site availability. A
three-pronged performance-monitoring strategy can improve problem
identification and resolution. This comprehensive, multipronged approach
enables IT managers to streamline error detection and resolution, while
ensuring that most errors are fixed well before users are impacted.
Of particular interest is a new class of Web-monitoring technology called
real-user monitoring (RUM). RUM’s real-time view of each user’s experience
enables IT organizations to quickly point to causes of errors and to find or
fix even transient brownouts by correlating seemingly unrelated error
patterns.
RUM is important on three key levels. First, it lets operations teams find
and isolate problems instantly, reducing mean time to repair and fixing
problems before the phone rings. Second, it lets engineering teams track the
effects of changes to content, applications, networks and infrastructure,
reducing risk and providing change-management accountability. Third, it
enables line-of-business and marketing teams to monitor customer quality of
service, optimizing performance and availability while resolving service
disputes and protecting revenue/renewals.
Site availability is best assessed by invoking synthetic testing solutions
from various locations worldwide. Some organizations improperly extend this
to include assessing service levels and user satisfaction of individual
transactions, which likely will be ineffective in the case of brownouts and
transient errors, which are often related to the state of a real user’s
session, the timing of the request, navigation, the user’s browser or the
resource selected by a load balancer, and occur only intermittently to a
small percentage of users.
Monitoring the user application experience requires seeing and tracking
pertinent details of every transaction, every page, every object and every
problem encountered by each user, every day. RUM tools cull through and
drill down deeply into this session-level data on a point-and-click basis to
quickly and accurately assess performance levels, correlate common errors
and isolate root causes of problems. By logging and time-stamping all
pertinent transactions and error conditions in every user’s session, RUM
identifies problems and isolates their source. Web-management personnel can
then drill down through the session to uncover root causes.
The best RUM systems detect early warning signs and evaluate overall
performance against a service-level agreement (SLA). These and other
capabilities improve production networks and the entire application life
cycle, including development and deployment testing.
Today’s RUM tools also integrate with complementary monitoring and
diagnostic tools for a more detailed, accurate and comprehensive view of Web
site health and performance. They include application programming interfaces
and other hooks to third-party tools and infrastructure. This enables RUM
summary or individual user activity transcripts to be transported to data
warehouses, for instance, or for RUM output to be streamed to business or
operations dashboards in real time, extracted for archival purposes, or
loaded into third-party or custom reporting tools or enterprise-wide data
buses.
Fred Dumoulin is a project manager for Coradiant,
Poway, Calif.
For more information:
www.rsleads.com/609cn-250
|