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Foglight Experience Monitor 5.8.1 - Installation and Administration Guide

Installing and configuring Multi-appliance clusters Configuring the appliance Specifying monitored web traffic Transforming monitored URLs Managing applications Foglight components and the appliance Using the console program Troubleshooting the appliance Appendix: Third party software Appendix: Dell PowerEdge system appliance

Managing subnets on a Portal

Managing subnets on a Portal

When you access the Subnets page in a multiple-appliance configuration, the configuration list is identical on all appliances, including the portal. You can, however add subnet and mask pairs on the Subnets page on the portal. You cannot use the auto-discovery functionality, since the portal does not monitor network traffic.

Identifying user sessions

The User Sessions page, accessed by clicking Configure > Monitoring > User Sessions, allows you to define how the appliance should identify user sessions, and what login variables are in use on your site.

Figure 53. User Sessions page

To see user sessions that have been captured by the appliance, navigate to the User Sessions Log which can be accessed by clicking Analysis > User Sessions Log.

Figure 54. Example of user session log

The log displays a list of user sessions that have been recorded by the system and is sorted by the time the user session ended. In the Identifier column either the login name or the IP address associated with the user session is displayed. Other information such as the name of an alarm triggered by the user session, the originating subnet or city, the duration of the session and the number of pages downloaded by the user is displayed.

For more information, see these topics:

•
How user sessions are identified
•
Configuring user session identification
•
Defining user session options
•
Configuring client IP tags
•
Augmenting user sessions log information
•
Using logout patterns to detect completed sessions

How user sessions are identified

The most important configuration setting with regard to user sessions is the choice of a session identification variable.

 
* 
IMPORTANT: Without this setting properly configured, your appliance cannot accurately record user sessions.
Session identification variables

Session identification variables are the entities that are used by the applications you are monitoring to distinguish one user session from another. Typically, these are cookie variables but they can also be embedded in the URL either in the path, parameter or as a query variable. In some cases, form variables (POST parameters) can also be used to identify user sessions.

 
* 
IMPORTANT: If you do not define any session identification variables, the system attempts to sessionize based on the user's client IP. It is strongly recommended that you do not rely on this functionality since it is frequently inaccurate in today's complex network environments due to the use of proxies, multiplexors and other devices. If you are not sure what to define as a session identification variable, speak to your application developers and ask them what they are using to track user sessions.

Configuring user session identification

Use the following steps to configure user sessions.

To configure the appliance to accurately capture user sessions:
1
Provide session identification variables.
See Managing user session identification variables.
2
Set the sessionizing mode.
See Changing the sessionizing mode.
3
Configure Client IP Tags.
See Configuring client IP tags.
4
Configure Login Variables.
See Augmenting user sessions log information.
5
Configure Logout Patterns.
See Using logout patterns to detect completed sessions.
Managing user session identification variables

The first step in configuring the system to track user sessions is to define the session identification variables that your application uses. A consultation with your application developers helps you determine what you should configure. If they are unavailable, a number of freely available tools, such as Mozilla® Web Developer Add-on, can also help you determine what you need to configure.

Adding a user session variable

In the Session Identification Variables section, enter a variable used to identify user sessions, then click Add.

The list of user session variables is updated to include your addition.

Figure 55. Session identification variables

The Session Identification Variables section lists all user session variables added to the appliance.

 
* 
NOTE: All defined user session identification variables are listed on this part of the User Sessions page unless your applications also include session identifiers in the path portion of URLs. In this case, define a path segment as the session identifier. Since they are represented by a location in a URL, as opposed to a set variable name, they are not listed here. Instead, they are found within the Path Rules definitions on the URL page.
 
* 
TIP: If any of your applications append extra information to its user session variables, and this extra information is not relevant within the context of tracking user sessions (for example, an originating server name is appended to the user session variable) you can use URL transformations to remove this extraneous information before it is recorded by the appliance. For more information, see Transforming session identification variables.
Prioritizing user session variables

Use the and to establish the priority order with which the system evaluates user session identification variables. The system uses this in order to locate the session identification variable that it uses for a specific session.

Rather than entering session identification variable names manually, use the Auto-Discover Variables feature to find variables used to identify user sessions.

To auto-discover session identification variables:
1
On the User Sessions page, in the Session Identification Variable section, click Auto-Discover Variables.
The appliance begins to detect session identification variables currently in use on your network. The Auto-Discovery page updates every few seconds, adding any newly detected variables to the list.
2
To cancel the search, click Stop.
All session identification variables discovered up to that point are displayed in a list with accompanying check boxes. Each variable discovered provides the following information.
 
Table 14. Auto-discover variable
Data
Definition
Session Identification Variable

Displays the name of the variable that are passed in the URL, POST data, cookies, HTTP headers and Request headers.

You can select its check box and then click Add to configure it as a session identification variable.

Variation

A high variation means that there are many different values that appear for the variable. Variables that are used for session identification are expected to have a high variation ranking because they are different for every unique user session.

Instances

The number of times that the variable was found in the traffic.

# Unique Values

The number of unique values of the variable found in the traffic.

Sample Values

Displays up to three of the most utilized values for the variable. Each variable is no more than ten characters in length.

3
Select the check boxes that correspond to any Session Identification Variables you would like to use to build new variable rules.
4
Click Add.
The User Sessions page is displayed, and the variables are added to the Session Identification Variables list. To prioritize the list, see Prioritizing user session variables.
Removing User Session Variables

Select the check boxes that correspond to the variables you would like to remove, then click the Delete button.

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