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 Ohlhorst
Enterprise IT Analyst & Consultant
fohlhorst@gmail.com
Srinivas Ramanathan, CEO
eG Innovations
srinivas@eginnovations.com

Moderator
Christine Ackley
Director of Marketing Operations
eG Innovations
Christine.Ackley@eginnovations.com

Logistics
 Please submit your questions at any time during the
webinar using the questions panel on the
GoToWebinar client.
 This webinar is being recorded. You will receive a
link to the recording in a few days.
 A copy of this presentation is posted on Slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/eginnovations/

Today’s Presenters
Srinivas Ramanathan
CEO
eG Innovations
srinivas@eginnovations.com
Frank J. Ohlhorst
Enterprise IT Analyst & Consultant
fohlhorst@gmail.com

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 applications
X 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

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
Virtualized
Browsers Locations Frameworks
Devices
Programming
Languages
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

Framework
End User
Experience
Monitoring
Business
Transaction
Tracing
Application
Component
Deep-Dive
Application
Topology
Discovery/Vi
sualization
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

Business Transaction Tracing

ClassFile
Transformer
Business Transaction Tracing
 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. When
Loading…

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.

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.

Server
Infrastructure
Health
Application Processes
TCP
Network
Operating System
Application
Infrastructure Health
Server/Container
JVM
Business
Transaction Health
App hosted on
Container
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.

Framework
End User
Experience
Monitoring
Business
Transaction
Tracing
Application
Component
Deep-Dive
Application
Topology
Discovery/
Visualization
IT Analytics

Application Topology Discovery
Inter-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.

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
Free Trial
http://www.eginnovations.com/freetrial
Send an Email
info@eginnovations.com
Call Us
+1 (866) 526 6700

My Application is Slow | Best Practices for Troubleshooting and Prevention

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