Configuration - Application Monitoring


The main purpose of the application monitoring section is to perform real-world actions against the monitored application to assess its performance and response times. Overall availability of the application is monitored as part of system monitoring. In some cases, additional checks not related to performance are made.

File Server

File server monitoring connects to a share, and reads and/or writes a file to the share, assessing data transfer speeds. The file contains random sequences of data, which change with each operation. Also, a recursive directory enumeration is carried out, and the enumeration speed is calculated.

Mail Server

Mail server monitoring measures the time taken to establish a connection to a mailbox on the monitored server, and then scans the inbox to determine the rate at which messages can be read. This second metric will be more accurate for mailboxes containing a higher message count.

Database Server

Database server monitoring determines the time taken to connect to a database server, and executes a query, measuring the execution time and the data retrieval rate. If required, the results of the query can be checked against previous results, and a response generated if they change.

Web Server

Web server monitoring requests a page from a web server, and tracks the connection time, download time and other metrics. It is also possible to check the contents of the returned page, and generate a response if the page content changes, or certain text is present or missing.

Mail Infrastructure

Mail infrastructure monitoring sends a message between two mail servers. It differs from mail server monitoring in that it goes beyond simply checking that a single mail server is operational; rather, it ensures a valid end-to-end configuration for mail delivery.

An organisation will typically use two mail infrastructure applications; one to verify mail delivery, and one to validate mail reception. For complete monitoring coverage, the ideal situation is to have an external mail server that supports the SMTP and POP3 protocols, hosted with an ISP other than that used for internet connectivity. This second mail server can then be used as the destination for outbound test messages, and the source for inbound test messages.