ca Opscenter
Redefine Triage by Learning the Golden
Nuggets of APM from noted “APM Best
Practices” Author Michael Sydor
Michael Sydor
OCX14S #CAWorld
CA Technologies
Service Assurance

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Abstract
Increase your APM proficiency. Learn how you can identify and harness KPIs to make sense of your APM "big data." And find out how these techniques will help to prepare for your upgrade to the new features and functionality with latest APM release.
Michael Sydor
CA Technologies
Sr. Engineering Services Architect

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Agenda
WHY SO MANY METRICS WITH APM?
WHAT WE ARE LEARNING WITH ADVANCED BEHAVIORAL ANALYTICS (ABA)
HOW TO FIND KPIS
HOW TO GENERATE A CUSTOMER ABA CONFIGURATION
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Typical APM Cluster
Dozens to hundreds of applications
–2800 JVMs/CLRs
Up to 5M metrics, every 15 seconds
Large applications span multiple data centers
–2-8 APM clusters, typical
–30-70 EM Collectors for a nationwide portal application
12M to 28M metrics, every 15 seconds
… certainly sounds like big data!!!

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The Experts …
"[T]he problem ... [w]iththis bulk acquisition of data on everybody [is that the NSA has] inundated their analysts with data. Unless they do a very focused attack, they're buried in information and that's why they can't succeed."
–Bill Binney (former National Security Agency (NSA)), where he was a high- ranking official, mathematician and codebreaker.
The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. We speak for them. We imbue them with meaning .... [W]e may construe them in self- serving ways that are detached from their objective reality."
–Nate Silver

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What is Big Data?
APM information is “big”… but it is not “big data” without enrichment.
5M Metrics
that you don’t fully understand
OR
5M Metrics
that you don’t fully understand
Trouble management
Version
control
Time of ____
constraints
Air traffic
advisories
Weather
forecast
AP news
updates
Marketing
campaigns
Enrichment
Correlation
Trends
Insights
Anomalies

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Challenges for Big Data
Data variety –Different sources give different perspectives. Does your data have a significant perspective?
Validation–Is the data source meaningful/predictive?
Consistency –Are the values trustworthy?
Data structure and nomenclature –Mapping, Transformation
Temporal impedance mismatch
–APM: Real-time with 15 second reporting interval
–Trouble management: +15-30 minutes later
–Stock ticker: +15-30 minutes later
–Air traffic advisories: +30-60 minutes later
–Version control: days to weeks in advance
–Marketing campaign assessment: 2-4 weeks later

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KPI Management Maturity
SGCM:
Stalls,
GC settings,
Concurrency,
Memory management trends
APC:
Availability,
Performance,
Capacity
EKB:
Errors,
Key resource performance,
Business transaction survey
Value
KPI maturity
(Platform)
(Application)
(Transaction)

What We are Learning with APM Advanced Behavioral Analytics

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Advanced Behavioral Analytics Logical Architecture
APM Cluster
5M Metrics
100k Metrics
(via RegEx)
Anomaly engine
Anomalies
Alerts
Why only 100k Metrics?
Why not 5M?

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RegEx = Regular Expression
analytics.metricfeed.process.3 =
Custom Metric Host (Virtual) |Custom Metric Process (Virtual)|Custom Business Application Agent (Virtual)
analytics.metricfeed.metric.3 =
By Business Service|[^|]+|[^|]+|[^|]+:.+

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RegEx is hard … but easy to validate.

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Metricfeed.3
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Series1
metricfeed.3

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Suspects Identified via Baseline Technique
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Series1
Suspects via baselinetechniques
average RT only

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Metric Count TypeView

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What is an Application?
Front-ends
–Browser? Webservice? Messaging?
Back-ends
–Databases WebservicesMessaging Mainframes Trading_Partners
Muck-in-the-middle
–Software quality, stability and scalability
-We want to identify KPIs for each of these elements:
–Helps us build a useful dashboard for operations
–Helps expose with the resources are really doing
–Helps us define acceptance criteria, to act proactively
–Helps us to triage really effectively

How to Find KPIs

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Capacity KPIs –“Tree Rings”

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Performance KPIs
High-volume
+
significant response time

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Create a simple alert and threshold (ConnectionStatus).

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Create a simple alert, find restart and threshold (MetricCount).
“UP” –but not actually doing anything!!!

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Understanding Your Environment
Identify the KPIs.
–Availability
Agent ConnectionStatus
Number live metrics (MetricCount)
–Performance
High-volume components with significantresponse time
–NOT“Top 10 Response Time”
–Capacity
Highest-volume components
Don’t wait for production.
–Make it part of your pre-production review.
–Manage the application lifecycle by trending KPIs.

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KPI Evolution
Good
Better (additional)
Best (additional)
Stalls
Availability –connected status
Errors
GC settings
Availability–metric count
Key resource performance
Concurrency
Suspect performance
Business transaction survey
Memory management (graph)
Suspect capacity
Platform
Coarse information
... but not really APM
Application, transactions, resources
The APM Advantage

How to Generate a Custom ABA Configuration

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Details are on the community site as blog updates.
Search on each of the following keywords:
–“average”, “responses”, “errors”, “Stalls”, “Stalled”
Copy each result to a test file (notepad is best).
Feed the files to ./build_config.py.
Copy the resulting Regular Expressions to your Analytics.properties file.
–96:: hot property –changes detected in about a minute
–95:: recycle MOM

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SORT on
this column

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<CTRL><A>
<CTRL><C>
<CTRL><V>

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Example Execution

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Resources
Community site
–Cookbook: APM HealthCheck
–Understanding Which Metrics Matter (KPI discussion)
–Cookbook: Application Audit
More details on the baseline techniques and process
–Blog entries
Redefine Triage by Learning the Golden Nuggets of APM
What are KPIs and how can I get some quick?!
Big Data -What does it mean for APM
Why Does ABA Find Anomalies When There Is Nothing Wrong In Production?
APM best practices –Realizing Application Performance Management
–Available on Amazon.com and Apress.com
Baselines, Test Plans, App Audits, Triage, Firefighting
Organizational Models, Service Catalogs

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For More Information
To learn more about DevOps, please visit:
http://bit.ly/1wbjjqX
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DevOps

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For Informational Purposes Only
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