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Foglight for Application Operations 5.9.8.5 - User Guide

Introducing Foglight APM Monitoring Transactions Examining Response Times Examining Error Breakdowns Viewing Real User Activity from a Geographical Perspective Using the SOC Transactions Tab Using the SOC for APM triage Creating Custom Drag-and-Drop Dashboards APM Tile and View Reference Appendix: Enabling End User Transactions from FxM and FxV

Next steps

From the Error Breakdown Explorer you can:

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Click a component icon to drill down for more information about that component.
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Click Find Related Hits — If you are using Foglight APM Appliances, you can drill down to the Search Hits page, where you can investigate pivots or map the hit. From there you can also replay the content of the hit as the affected end user saw it to determine exactly where an issue occurred. For more information about searching hits, see the Foglight APM User Guide.
or
Click View Transaction Replay — If you are using Foglight Experience Viewer (FxV), you can drill down to the hit and session that match the selected request. From there you can replay the content of the hit as the affected end user saw it to determine exactly where an issue occurred. For more information about the Hit Inspector, see the Foglight Experience Viewer User and Reference Guide.
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Click Request Details — Opens the Requests view, which allows you to review the details of the request, including: response times and completed calls, sampled breakdowns, and incomplete or exceptional exits.
 
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TIP: You can also collect traces from this view (select the request and click Collect Traces). For more information, see Monitoring requests in the Foglight for Application Servers User Guide.
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Click Examine Trace — If you have collected traces for a request, you can drill down to the trace details. For more information about the Traces View, see Managing traces in the Foglight for Application Servers User Guide.
 

Viewing Real User Activity from a Geographical Perspective

The Geographical Perspective dashboard displays the real user activity for a selected transaction based on performance problems and errors, total traffic, response time, and other factors. The default view provides a summary for the top 100 locations for the selected transaction. A list of performance-related measurements (such as, “Show locations with the most: Hits” or “Show locations with the highest: Hit Response Times”) help you find performance patterns and problems with geographical features.

 
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NOTE: If the Geographical Perspectives dashboard shows the message “There is no data to display,” an APM Administrator needs to update hit analyzers to populate the map with data. For more information, see “Publishing hit metrics for use in the Geographical Perspective dashboard” in the Foglight APM Administration and Configuration Guide.
Figure 20. Geographical Perspective for Admin dashboard

 
 
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TIP: This example uses transaction data collected by Foglight APM Appliances. If you are using FxV, the appearance of this dashboard (for example, aggregations) is slightly different. The overall functionality is the same. For information on how to populate this dashboard with data from FxV, see Appendix: Enabling End User Transactions from FxM and FxV.

The Geographical Perspective dashboard is divided into three panes. The pane on the left contains lists of: available aggregation types, timeslices, and measurements. The center pane displays either a map, if the Map tab is selected, or a list of results in a tabular format, if the List tab is selected. The pane on the right provides graphical results from the measurements, and the option to drill down for more information.

 
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NOTE: If you are using a version 5.6.4 Management Server, only the List tab is available. The Map tab requires Management Server 5.6.5 or later.

If you are using Internet Explorer® (IE) 8 or earlier, only the List tab is available.
To view real end user activity in a geographical perspective:
1
On the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click APM > Geographical Perspective.
2
Select a transaction from the Transactions list at the bottom of the navigation panel.
Figure 21. Navigation panel showing a list of Transactions
The dashboard display updates.
3
On the left side of the dashboard, select an Aggregation Type: top ten by city, country, or region.
4
Select a Measurement from the list to view the related transaction data. The map and right pane update based on your selection.
For example: select Show locations with the highest: Page Response Times.
Figure 22. Showing locations with the highest: Page Response Times
The map updates to indicate the locations that are experiencing the highest average page response times in the selected timeslice. The right pane displays a chart of the page processing time for the entire transaction (all locations), and the top five locations are listed in a table below the graph and timeslice selector.
Double-click anywhere on the map to zoom in on that location. You can also use the zoom tool in the map pane to zoom in or out. You can move the map in any direction by clicking and holding the left mouse button and dragging the cursor.
The fill-level of each pin on the map shows how close that location is to the maximum value in the current timeslice. In this example, Seattle has the highest response time, so its pin appears full.
5
Select a timeslice from the Timeslice list, or use the forward or back arrows to step through the available timeslices.
 
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TIP: The vertical blue bar on the graph indicates the currently selected timeslice.
6
Click Transaction Detail (in the lower right corner of the right pane) to open the Summary view for the transaction. For more information about this view, see Real User (APM) Performance detail view.
7
Hover your cursor over a pin to open a quick view of metrics for that location.
Figure 23. Metrics for a selected location
8
Click a pin to view a graph of the average page response time for that location in the right pane.
Figure 24. Select a city to see its response times
The Similar Locations list, in the right pane, updates to show locations that are ranked near the selected location in the current category. These are locations that have similar performance measurements to the selected location. Click any location name in the list to view the graph for that location.
9
Click Location Detail to drill down to detailed information for the selected location.
Figure 25. Detailed information for a selected location
The Location Detail view provides a table of measurements in context that helps you understand how the selected location is behaving relative to other locations during the selected timeslice and aggregation period.
Measurements for the selected location are sorted in order of severity.
The value in the Highest Rank column indicates the highest ranking that the selected location attained at any point during the selected time range. The time range may span multiple timeslices. For example, at some time during the selected time range, Seattle had the highest page response time of all locations. Therefore, for the measurement Page Response Time, Seattle’s Highest Rank is 1 (first).
The value in the Current Rank column indicates the selected location’s current ranking for the selected timeslice. This may or may not be the same as its highest rank, depending on when the peak value for the location occurred. In this example, Seattle is ranked second for the Current Rank for Bandwidth Usage. That is, during the currently selected timeslice, Seattle has the second highest page response time.
10
Click any location’s name in either the Similar Locations list or the Top Ranked Location column to open a detail view for that location for comparison.
11
To view the transaction data for the selected location in the appliance, click More Details.
The Search Hits page opens. From here, you can continue your investigation using the Foglight for Application Operations Search dashboards. For more information, see the Foglight APM User Guide.

Generating geographical perspective reports

There are a number of reports specific to geographic perspectives for FxM transactions. For example, you can generate reports on top locations by errors and violations, by response time, or by user volume.

 
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NOTE: The Top Locations by... reports are only available for FxM transactions.
To access these reports:
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Click Reports at the top right corner of the Geographical Perspectives dashboard.
Figure 26. The Reports menu

The report wizard prompts you to specify the input parameters (such as time range, application, and granularity) and properties (such as report name and export format). You can also schedule the report to run at regular intervals.

 

 

Using the SOC Transactions Tab

Service mechanisms in Foglight allow users to organize monitoring components into logical groups. A primary use case for this is for a multi-tier application where objects are organized into service tiers and visualized in the Service Operations Console (SOC).

Foglight for Application Operations includes an extension to the SOC that adds visualization for end user data in the context of application services in Foglight. This information appears on the Transactions tab of the SOC. Use this tab to quickly identify if any transactions are having issues, to determine the magnitude of impact on the user population, and to view preliminary information that can aid in troubleshooting, including geographic discrepancies and whether the performance problems are in the back end architecture or the client-side browser or network.

The Transaction tab displays data from the following specific end user monitoring systems:

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Foglight APM Appliances — Network appliances that monitor web transactions from real end users, and stores and indexes request/response pairs captured from the network.
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Foglight Experience Monitor (FxM) — A network appliance that monitors web transactions from real end users by tapping into the HTTP/HTTPS traffic stream as it transverses the internal network.
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Foglight Experience Viewer (FxV) — A transaction repository that stores and indexes every HTTP/HTTPS request/response pair captured from the network, and enables users to search, find, and analyze individual problematic transactions.
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Foglight Transaction Recorder (FTR) — A Windows®-based application that records and plays back synthetic web transactions at regular intervals.
 
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NOTE: For complete information about Foglight APM Appliances, FxM, FxV, or FTR, see the documentation included with those products.

The Transaction tab can also display application-specific transaction data (that is, Java™ EE or .NET® transactions) with or without end user data. For more information, see Investigating application server transactions.

For a full list of all domain-specific tiles available through the SOC Transactions tab, see APM Tile and View Reference.

For more information, see the following topics:

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Exploring the SOC Transactions tab
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Exploring response time breakdowns from the SOC
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Configuring display options
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