Monitoring overall system health
Monitoring overall system health is important to ensure your system is performing well. This includes web servers, application servers, databases, back-end systems, and any other systems critical to running your web site.
Before you begin
About this task
Metric | Meaning |
---|---|
Average response time | Include statistics, for example, servlet or enterprise beans response time. Response time statistics indicate how much time is spent in various parts of WebSphere Application Server and might quickly indicate where the problem is (for example, the servlet or the enterprise beans). |
Number of requests (transactions) | Enables you to look at how much traffic is processed by WebSphere Application Server, helping you to determine the capacity that you have to manage. As the number of transactions increase, the response time of your system might be increasing, showing the need for more system resources or the need to retune your system to handle increased traffic. |
Number of live HTTP sessions | The number of live HTTP sessions reflects the concurrent usage of your site. The more concurrent live sessions, the more memory is required. As the number of live sessions increase, you might adjust the session time-out values or the Java™ virtual machine (JVM) heap available. |
Web server thread pools | Interpret the web server thread pools, the web container thread pools, and the Object Request Broker (ORB) thread pools, and the data source or connection pool size together. These thread pools might constrain performance due to their size. The thread pools setting can be too small or too large, therefore causing performance problems. Setting the thread pools too large impacts the amount of memory that is needed on a system or might cause too much work to flow downstream if downstream resources cannot handle a high influx of work. Setting thread pools too small might also cause bottlenecks if the downstream resource can handle an increase in workload. |
The web and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) thread pools | |
Database and connection pool size | |
Java virtual memory (JVM) | Use JVM metrics to understand the JVM heap dynamics, including the frequency of garbage collection. This data can assist in setting the optimal heap size. In addition, use the metric to identify potential memory leaks. |
CPU | Observe these metrics to know if you are at or near the maximum capacity of your system resources. |
I/O | |
System paging |
To monitor several of these statistics, WebSphere Application Server provides the Performance Monitoring Infrastructure to obtain the data, and provides the Tivoli® Performance Viewer in the administrative console to view this data.
Procedure
- Enable PMI through the administrative console to begin data collection.
- Use Tivoli Performance Viewer or other performance monitoring and management solutions to monitor performance. These other solutions include wsadmin scripting, PerfServlet, IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for WebSphere Application Server, third-party performance monitoring and management tools, or your own monitoring applications.
- Extend monitoring capabilities by developing your own monitoring applications or extending PMI.