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Foglight APM for Real User Experience 5.9.11 - Installation and Setup Guide

Table of Contents

Installation overview

Introducing the monitoring architecture

Software components

Foglight Management Server Archiver Sniffer Browser Instrumentation Relayer Archiver databases

Ports used by Foglight APM

Appliance types Typical monitoring solutions

Monitoring physical networks Monitoring virtual networks Mixing physical and virtual appliances Adding Foglight APM to an existing Foglight installation

Installing physical appliances

Before you begin

Physical appliance components Other network components required Anatomy of an appliance

Planning an installation of physical appliances

Public network switch Private network switch for the capture subnet Network taps

Monitoring individual web servers Monitoring web server farms

Network information required for physical appliances

Installing appliances on a network rack Connecting appliances to the network Connecting Sniffers

Connecting Sniffers to network taps Connecting Sniffers to Archivers

Connecting one Sniffer to one Archiver Connecting Sniffers to Archivers

Starting physical appliances and configuring remote access Launching the Console Program remotely with DRAC

Installing virtual appliances

Monitoring multiple ESXi hosts

Monitoring multiple hosts through a centralized Sniffer Monitoring multiple hosts using local Sniffers Mixing virtual and physical appliances Scaling out a multiple host configuration Installing virtual appliances to monitor multiple hosts

Monitoring a single ESXi host

All-on-one-host variation Scalability Installing virtual appliances to monitor a single host

Before you begin

Software environment Foglight APM OVF templates Required port groups RAID configuration Network information for virtual appliances

Creating port groups on virtual switches

Configuring port groups on a distributed switch

Creating a Monitoring Network port group required by Sniffers Creating the Capture Network port group required by Sniffers and Archivers Creating a virtual adapter for the Capture Network port group

Configuring port groups on a standard switch

Deploying Foglight virtual templates Deploying the Foglight virtual Sniffer template Connecting virtual appliances on different servers Powering on virtual appliances

Setting up appliances

Logging in to the Console Program Enabling SSH and changing the default password Setting the date and time Specifying network settings Exiting the Console Program Launching Foglight Configuring software components

Working with appliance-hosted Management Servers

Configuring Management Server settings Configuring the Management Server to work with SSL keys

Creating a new SSL key for Foglight HTTPS access Using an existing SSL key for Foglight HTTPS access Configuring Foglight for secure remote LDAP access

Restricted file access Transferring support files from a physical appliance

Transferring files to Windows systems Transferring files to Linux systems

Troubleshooting appliance-hosted Management Servers Differences from working with server-hosted Management Servers

Setting up server-hosted Management Servers

Server requirements

Downloading and installing 256-bit encryption files Disabling the NetBIOS over TCP/IP setting

Installing Foglight APM cartridges Communicating with Sniffer and Archiver appliances Configuring Federated Children Enabling High Availability mode

Maintaining appliances

Launching the Console Program

Accessing physical appliances using SSH on Microsoft Windows systems Accessing physical appliances using SSH on UNIX systems

List of tasks available from the main menu Managing user accounts

Adding new user accounts Modifying user accounts and enabling SSH Removing user accounts

Modifying the time zone, time, or date Modifying the list of NTP servers for physical appliances Modifying network settings Shutting down appliances Rebooting appliances Updating software

Upgrading from a PKG file Displaying the upgrade log

Testing network settings Stopping and starting processes Reviewing the appliance system details and health status Reviewing the status of NIC devices Verifying monitored traffic by port Purging and resetting Archiver databases Creating support bundles Creating TCP dump files Accessing the home directory Creating Dell report archives on physical appliances

Backing up and restoring physical appliances

Setting up appliances as NetVault clients

Enabling an appliance's NetVault client Registering an appliance in NetVault

Running and restoring backups

Stopping Foglight and running a backup Restoring backups

Preparing a new appliance Restoring a backup

Appendix: Troubleshooting

Diagnosing Sniffer issues

Overview of the Sniffer test Running the Sniffer test Investigating and resolving issues in monitored traffic

Understanding packet drops with SPAN ports and aggregation network taps Expanding full partitions on virtual appliances

Expanding the size of virtual disks Expanding the size of partitions

Appendix: Troubleshooting

Review the following table to identify the symptoms you are experiencing and to see the recommended actions.


	TIP: In some cases, you may want to permit a remote troubleshooting session on an appliance. To set up remote access to the appliance, create a user account for the troubleshooter on the appliance and enable SSH. As soon as the troubleshooting session ends, disable SSH access for this account and/or delete the account. For instructions, see Managing user accounts.

Table 14. Troubleshooting summary
Symptom/Requirement	Description	Action
Performance of the APM dashboards is very slow, but the other Foglight dashboards are fine.	If you are running the Management Server on a Windows® operating system, Windows may be experiencing delays negotiating SSL communications with the embedded Linux® operating system on the appliances.	Disable the network setting NetBIOS over TCP/IP. See Disabling the NetBIOS over TCP/IP setting.
Monitored traffic is incomplete, duplicated, or missing.	A variety of causes may contribute to these situations.	See Diagnosing Sniffer issues.
The partition on a virtual appliance is full.	By default, the disk is partitioned using all the available space, so if the disk size is 200 GB, the partition is also 200 GB.	Expand the disk size and the partition size. See Expanding full partitions on virtual appliances.
Session replay is missing hits for SSL sessions. OR The Sniffer SSL metrics show a high number of SSL session resume errors.	If you are using virtual Sniffers deployed to each monitored host, and you are using vMotion®, a vMotion activity may have interrupted monitoring of HTTPS traffic.	For more information, see vMotion and local Sniffers.

For detailed information, see the following topics:

•

Diagnosing Sniffer issues

•

Understanding packet drops with SPAN ports and aggregation network taps

•

Expanding full partitions on virtual appliances

Diagnosing Sniffer issues

If you become aware of issues in the monitored traffic—for example Foglight alerts you that packets are being dropped—you can use the Sniffer test to identify potential causes. The test monitors the incoming traffic and outputs information about the traffic on each NIC.

This section covers the following topics:

•

Overview of the Sniffer test

•

Running the Sniffer test

•

Investigating and resolving issues in monitored traffic

Overview of the Sniffer test

The Sniffer test runs the following actions for each NIC:

1

Checks for valid link and link speed.

2

For physical appliances only, checks for ingress and egress packets. Recall that ingress traffic and egress traffic are monitored using separate NICs. (For virtual appliances, traffic is monitored through promiscuous mode port groups, and this check does not apply.)

3

Checks for packet drops on the NIC hardware.

4

Checks for VLAN tags in the traffic.

5

Displays the Maximum Frame Size.

6

Checks for Checksum errors.

7

Checks for virtual IP address use.

8

Checks for duplicate packets.

9

Checks for unsupported SSL traffic (e.g. Diffie-Hellman).

10

Checks for missing segments.

The results are organized by NIC, as in the following example:

Speed: 1000Mb/s

Link detected: yes

TCP packets found

MaxFrameSize on eth2:1514

DuplicateClientIPHeaders on eth2

MissingSegments on eth2

Link detected: yes

LowLinkSpeed on eth3

TCP packets found

MaxFrameSize on eth3:1514

MissingSegments on eth3

Running the Sniffer test

You run the test from the Sniffers dashboard.

To run the Sniffer test:

1

In the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click APM > Configure > Traffic Capture > Sniffers.

2

3

If issues are reported, see Investigating and resolving issues in monitored traffic.

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