How a reader became a believer in agentless monitoring

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: AUDREY RASMUSSEN ON NETWORK/SYSTEMS
MANAGEMENT
08/03/05
Today's focus: How a reader became a believer in agentless
monitoring

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Agent vs. agentless: a reader's perspective
* Links related to Network/Systems Management
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: How a reader became a believer in agentless
monitoring

By Audrey Rasmussen

A few weeks ago, I wrote two articles on agent and agentless
monitoring, and I received an interesting note from a reader who
shared his experiences with both. Today's column includes
excerpts from the note by our reader, a global program manager
for a large outsourcer who was "in charge of developing and
installing new monthly response-time performance metrics for
more than 150 critical applications" for a large client.

"In the beginning of the project, we thought we would be using
an active agent solution - installing 'robot' workstations at
various locations around the network, in close proximity to end
users. The robots would perform a series of typical tasks from
each of the pertinent applications, in endless cycles, and then
accumulate and report response-time performance data to feed the
monthly metric calculations required in the contract. I should
point out that availability was not a measurement issue here -
we were interested only in application response time (of course
any availability issues did impact our response-time
performance).

"We quickly uncovered three obstacles from a business
standpoint: cost, scalability, and network impact. Our active
agent approach was superb at the detailed level - the client
embraced it in concept, but scaling it to a global coverage
level was getting way too expensive. In addition, the networks
were already strained and were suffering from capacity issues.
We could only get agreement for about 3% coverage. Otherwise, we
got in the embarrassing position of destroying response time in
order to measure response time. I kept asking our engineering
team if there wasn't another approach that I could afford and
that would scale to a global solution without straining the
client's networks. They exposed me to a relatively new tool that
offered an agentless, passive approach to measuring application
response times. I was skeptical at first, but after thorough
testing in the client's network space we validated that the tool
could handle this enormous metrics challenge at a cost we could
afford and without placing a significant load on the client's
networks.

"There were some twists - the tool required that TCP/IP be
present somewhere in the circuit, and the tool reported
response-time performance at the packet level. We crafted
another approach for those cases, mostly mainframe, where there
was no TCP/IP, and the client agreed that having 100% coverage
of all transactions at the packet level was better than having a
3% sample at the synthetic business task level.

"I understand that there are perfectly valid cases where active
agents are needed and preferred, but I must admit that this new
passive, agentless technology has made a believer out of me for
certain situations. We were able to deliver a global solution to
this huge contract-required response-time SLA to our largest
client, at a cost significantly under our original budget and
about seven months ahead of schedule. And after we installed
this technology in the client's infrastructure, we were able to
begin exploiting the massive amount of new information that the
tool provided to help us improve our day-to-day operations - far
beyond the required monthly response-time reports."

This reader admits that his strength is on the business side of
things rather than the technical. And even though he couldn't
understand all of the technical aspects particularly during
internal debates on agent vs. agentless approaches, he goes on
to say, "I completely understood significant cost avoidance and
coming in way ahead of schedule. Now that I've deployed both
approaches, I think the passive approach to measuring
response-time performance is about ready to explode into much
greater use."

This is another user perspective on the agent vs. agentless
discussion. And I'd like to thank our reader for sharing his
experiences with us.

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<http://www.networkworld.com/nlnsm4330>

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<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/080105-blackhat.html>

4. Google now a hacker's tool
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlnsm4331>

5. Michael Lynn and Cisco: Stepping in front of the freight
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_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Audrey Rasmussen

Audrey Rasmussen is a vice president with Enterprise Management
Associates <http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/> in Boulder,
Colorado, a leading industry analyst firm focusing exclusively
on all aspects of the management of information technology.
Audrey has more than 25 years of experience working with
distributed systems, applications and networks. Her current
focus at EMA is system management, application management and
enterprise management technologies. Reach her at
<mailto:rasmussen@enterprisemanagement.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Oracle
Download this IDC White Paper: Oracle Builds a Comprehensive SOA
Platform

Through the recent evolution of BPM around the Business Process
Execution Language (BPEL) standard, a comprehensive SOA platform
has become a key requirement for implementing standards-based
BPM. SOA empowers a business environment with a flexible IT
infrastructure and reusable business and systems services for
deploying processes. This white paper covers the requirements
for building a comprehensive SOA platform including BPEL,
service development, integration, management, and security.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=109128
_______________________________________________________________
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