WhatsUp Gold Technology

Application Monitoring

Monitor and Ensure Business Critical Application Performance

Like it or not, more and more complex business applications are being added to the mix and it’s your job as the network manager to ensure their performance and availability. With these new applications more things can go wrong – yet your users expect IT services will keep getting better. To reduce the negative impact, responses to business disruption need to be quicker – almost in real time. It would be nice if you could actually identify impending issues before they affect your users and get them resolved.

If this sounds all too familiar, there’s help available now. With WhatsUp Gold, you can find and predict application performance problems before the first call to the help desk. WhatsUp Gold lets you quickly and easily verify the status and health of multiple types of complex Web and Windows applications. Through the execution of synthetic transactions and active polling, WhatsUp Gold captures key performance and process related information for each monitored application. And it does this continuously over time, enabling you to find out and nip problems in the bud, before they become user-affecting issues.

With WhatsUp Gold, you can:

• Ensure critical IP services, applications and processes are healthy and available
• Identify and alert on application slowdowns before users are affected
• Troubleshoot application issues in real time with process and performance counter visibility
• Verify execution and content integrity across multiple types of IP services
• Build custom monitors to track business critical applications

WhatsUp Gold makes application monitoring simple, by providing a full set of easy to use application monitors including basic IP services like FTP, Telnet, SMTP, HTTP/S etc; Windows operating system component processes; and more complex end user applications like MS Exchange and SQL databases. Using synthetic transactions wherever possible provides rich information on application performance and integrity - than can be gleaned from basic up or down monitoring.

IP Services Monitoring

WhatsUp Gold provides broad support for monitoring IP services and Web applications. For example, file access and exchange via FTP can be tracked by setting up upload, delete or download test transactions with designated FTP sites. Similarly, WhatsUp Gold can monitor HTTP web pages, including applications requiring login and password authentication and those located behind a firewall. WhatsUp Gold can even verify if an individual page is accessible, and if it is also being returned with the right content.

Supported IP Services: Monitoring protocols (Ping, TCP/IP, SNMP, WMI); File Services (FTP), Access Services (Telnet); Email Services (SMTP, IMAP, POP3), Web pages (HTTP, HTTPS)

MS Exchange Monitoring

WhatsUp Gold Premium, Distributed, and MSP editions monitor all MS Exchange versions– ensuring that this vital communication channel is fully covered. WhatUp Gold’s proactive monitoring alerts inform administrators if the email system is facing performance issues, enabling them to take corrective action before business users are affected. For example, the new MS Exchange 2007/2010 monitor tracks the 3 main functions (Transport Server, Mail Server, and Outlook Web Access) and 18 running services. The existing MS Exchange monitor continues to address 2000/2003 versions.

Supported Versions: MS Exchange 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010 Beta

SQL Database Performance

The proper functioning of SQL databases is vital to business operation. Whether for external applications like ecommerce or internal ones for finance and operations, the response time and integrity of databases has enormous impact on business. WhatsUp Gold Premium, Distributed, and MSP editions include the SQL Query monitor that puts MS SQL Server and MySQL databases to the test, by running active queries against known record values, ensuring database integrity and performance. A separate SQL Server monitor tracks key internal processes in MS SQL Server and provides deeper insight for application troubleshooting.

Supported Versions: MS SQL Server 2005, 2008; MySQL 5.0 and above

Windows Process Monitoring

WhatsUp Gold preconfigured WMI monitors provide ready to use functionality enabling users to monitor a variety of Windows based processes. Generic WMI support ensures that standard applications like IIS as well as custom Windows applications can be configured for monitoring.

Operating Systems: Windows 2003, XP, Vista, Server 2008 and all applications that support WMI

Typical Problem Solving Scenarios

WhatsUp Gold enables you to rapidly identify and resolve application performance problems. With WhatsUp Gold, you can:

• When an application slows - ensure that core IP services like HTTP/S, SMTP and FTP are responsive and successfully completing synthetic test transactions from an end user perspective
• Set response time and failed transaction thresholds for web page loads or SQL queries to proactively identify performance degradation issues prior to application failure
• Troubleshoot instances of application failure by monitoring health of component processes and host server workloads
• Track entire services by grouping together component applications and processes and identify weak links in the chain