Foglight : A Single Window to Monitor Apps

An enterprise is dependent on wide array of IT applications, such as

databases, application servers like WebSphere or JBoss, platforms like Java or

.NET and other business applications. If any of these applications fail even for

a minute, it leads to tremendous loss to the organization. That's why it becomes

necessary for an IT manager to use event consoles and monitoring tools to manage

these applications for proper functioning. However, the limitation of these

tools is that they alert you to events and leave you to decide how that event

will impact your business applications or services. Foglight is an application

management solution that gives a 360 degree view of your applications, ranging

from end user to databases and from service levels to infrastructure. It

collates data from various applications and helps you identify the root-cause of

problems of business services that are being affected.

What's new in Foglight



Foglight is an application management solution from Quest Software and has two
components: Foglight Management Server and Foglight Agent Manager. Each

application like WebSphere, Oracle Database, MS SQL Server and even operating

systems like Windows 2003 or Linux have some parametric values for different

functions, which are used to monitor the stress load on them. Foglight has

installable cartridges that can be integrated with Foglight Management Server

(FMS) to manage these applications. The Foglight Agent Manager on the other hand

is the client that resides on the host machine that has the application which

has to be monitored by FMS. The Agent Manager captures the metric values of the

monitoring parameters from the application on the host machine and sends them to

the FMS periodically.

The FMS can be installed on a tiered architecture or on a single server as

well. It is likely that in an enterprise, applications such as databases and

servers are hosted on different machines and on different platforms. Foglight

can be installed on a dedicated server and linked via cartridges to different

client agent mangers to monitor disparate applications that reside on the same

machine or on different networked machines. The FMS gives a console view of the

consolidated data gathered from different applications on the monitored

environment that helps you decide the stress junctions that could become

critical for any application's functioning and hence letting you take the

necessary action to ensure smooth functioning of the business applications

without any hassles.

Most of Foglight's monitoring tasks can be handled from the left dashboard pane. To create an OS monitoring agent, select Windows_System as agent type

Getting started



Before you start, you need to choose the monitoring environment for

applications and what platform you will be installing FMS and agent managers on.

Also, you need the cartridges for each application that you intend to monitor.

For the demonstration implementation of Foglight version 5.2.5, we will use an

Intel Quad Core 2.6 MHz processor based machine with 4GB RAM and having Windows

2003 as the operating system to install FMS. And we will be using the operating

system monitoring cartridge to monitor the host machine on which FMS is

installed.



Before starting the installation of the FMS installer for Windows 32-bit
platform, make sure that Java Runtime Environment is installed as FMS and the

Foglight Agent manager. Now using the installer for the specific platform, we

proceed with the installation of FMS. It offers two installation options:

Standard and Custom. With the Standard options, the default embedded MySQL

database is installed, whereas with custom installation you can choose an

external database that will be used by FMS for its own functions. Once the

installation is complete, you can go to Start Menu items and start the Foglight

service and then open the Foglight console to proceed with the configuration

settings and also with installing the license for FMS.

Installing cartridges



As we intend to monitor the host operating system, we'll have to install the

cartridge for the same and it's agent manager so that they can feed the system's

monitoring values to the FMS. To install a cartridge, go to the Foglight console

that opens up in a browser, and from the dashboard pane on the left navigate to

the Administration node and expand it. Now click on the Cartridges Inventory

link by expanding the Cartridges node. In the Install Cartridge pane, choose the

appropriate .car file meant for Windows 2003 Server from Foglight's DVD. Do

ensure that 'Enable on Install' checkbox option is selected and then click on

the Install Cartridge button. Upon successful installation, the cartridge list

is populated. As we also need an Agent Manager, we will upload another .car file

meant for Foglight Agent Managers and install it using the same procedure. Now

go to 'Components for Download' link under the Cartridges node from the

dashboard panel, and there on the main pane you can download the

fglam-windows-i32.exe file and install it. This is the Agent Manager for Windows

platform.

FMS shows real-time monitoring of the host system. It shows that a high network usage is happening by showing huge transfer rate values.

Creating monitoring agents



Once the Agent Manager and cartridges have been installed, we have to deploy

the agent packages. Go to the Agents node under the Administration node in the

dashboard pane and then click on 'Agents' Status' link. From the main pane,

click on 'Deploy Agent Package' and when the pop-up window opens, select the

host name and the package, named as OSCartridge_ Windows _2003 _ 5_2_5. Select

this cartridge and click on Create button.

Now upon deployment of this package, you need to create an agent that will

perform the monitoring function. As soon as the pop-up window opens, click on

the Create Agent button and select the Agent_Type as Windows_System. Name the

instance as Win2k3_Monitor and click on Create button. Now select Win2k3_Monitor

from the 'Agents List' pane and click on Activate to start monitoring the

operating system.

Upon expanding the Host's node and after you've clicked on the Host's Monitor

link, you can get real-time graphical representation of the host machine and the

various tasks or activities taking place.