Monitoring system resources

When you apply load to a system under test, the system's resources are consumed increasingly. If the capacity of the resources does not match the load, you will notice performance degradation in the results. With the Resource Monitoring Service, you can continually observe the health of the system's resources whether a schedule is running.

You can use resource monitoring to capture data, such as processor or memory usage, while running a test schedule or to monitor the availability of hosts and services. Resource Monitoring can provide a comprehensive view of a system under test, to help determining problems. Hosts and services can be virtual machines, or any local host or network services. You can also monitor remote host and services with agents.

Monitoring local host and service

You use the Resource Monitoring to monitor local host and service. In this case, you monitor with the local sources. This method is for monitoring hosts on which monitoring agents cannot be installed.

Monitoring remote host with Monitoring agents

You can use the Resource Monitoring Service to monitor remote host and services with agents through wider sets of collectors, computers, and networks to capture CPU load, disk space, memory, and the running process. Agent-based monitoring becomes handy when remote services are not directly accessible through the network.

The advantages of setting up agents are as follows:
Agents are closer to the target that you want to monitor, the configuration task is simplified, and no security changes are required. You can set up the agent on an authorized host when access to an Apache httpd or NGINX server's status page or to a JVM JMX port is restricted to one or few client hosts only.

Requirements for monitoring resources with agents

The service does not require access to the agent host but the agent must reach the service host over HTTPS.

For Linux Performance monitoring, the agent must run on the Linux target.

For Windows Performance monitoring, the agent must run on the Windows target or on a Windows host that is configured to access the performance monitoring data of the Windows target.

You can monitor the performance statistics for the following data sources:

  • Apache httpd server:

    To monitor the performance of the Apache web server resources, you can add the Apache httpd server data source to the Resource Monitoring Service. For example, if you want to view the throughput, requests rate, and CPU usage of the Apache server, you add it as a monitoring source.

  • NGINX and NGINX Plus

    To monitor the performance of NGINX or NGINX Plus server resources, you must add the NGINX server as a source to the Resource Monitoring Service.

  • Java Virtual Machine

    To monitor Resource Monitoring data from a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), you must configure the JVM source and add it to the Resource Monitoring Service. Java Virtual Machine resources can be monitored from a local or from a remote system.

  • Windows Performance Host: To check the performance statistics of the Windows host during a test run, you can add the Windows Performance host source to the Resource Monitoring Service. Resource Monitoring agent is mandatory to get Windows Data Collector.
  • Linux Performance Host

    To check performance statistics of a Linux host during a test schedule run, you can add the Linux host source to the Resource Monitoring Service. Resource Monitoring agent is mandatory to get Linux Data Collector.

To be able to monitor a resource, you must add the source of resource monitoring data to the Resource Monitoring Service first, then you must select the performance counters that will be used to monitor the local sources.

If you monitor a host across monitoring agents, you must first install the Resource Monitoring agents on the target host for which you want to collect the performance statistics. The agents establish a connection with the Resource Monitoring Service. The new source is automatically added to the list of sources in the dashboard, it can be added to the dashboard as a resource monitoring source. Then, you can select counters and view the live performance statistics.

  • Adding Resource Monitoring sources
    You can monitor the performance of NGINX or NGINX Plus server resources, Apache web server resources, the performance of a Java Virtual Machine to check the performance statistics of the host source while a test schedule is running. But additional Resource Monitoring sources can be monitored if you have Resource Monitoring agents running on a Windows or Linux host. To monitor these sources, you must add them to the Resource Monitoring Service.
  • Resource Monitoring Agents
    For testing, you would need many hosts. For example, you might have one host with the application server, another host with the database server, and some hosts to apply the user load. Due to network or firewall issues, sometimes, it becomes difficult for multiple hosts to connect to each other. Resource Monitoring Agents are installed on the target hosts so that they can establish a connection with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server to gather resource statistics of the target host.

Adding Resource Monitoring sources

You can monitor the performance of NGINX or NGINX Plus server resources, Apache web server resources, the performance of a Java Virtual Machine to check the performance statistics of the host source while a test schedule is running. But additional Resource Monitoring sources can be monitored if you have Resource Monitoring agents running on a Windows or Linux host. To monitor these sources, you must add them to the Resource Monitoring Service.

Before you begin

You must be logged in and be owner of an existing new project.

Resource Monitoring sources have to be configured by the project owner.

If you monitor a remote host, it must be connected with the computer that you use to access Resource Monitoring Service.

If IBM Rational Test Automation Server is installed on a Linux system, by default, the Linux host source is displayed in the Resource Monitoring source list. If IBM Rational Test Automation Server is installed on a Windows system and you want to check the performance of the Linux host, you must install the Resource Monitoring agent on the Linux system.

If IBM Rational Test Automation Server is installed on a Windows system, by default, the Windows host source is displayed in the Resource Monitoring source list. If IBM Rational Test Automation Server is installed on a Linux system, and you want to check the performance of the Windows host, you must install an agent on the target Windows host to start monitoring its performance.

Considerations to allow remote access to the performance data on Windows 10:
  • The user name and password are same on the local and remote server. Otherwise you must provide remote server credentials.
  • The remote user is a member of the Performance Monitor Users group (start lusrmgr.msc and add the user to this group).
  • The Remote Registry service is running or automatic on the remote host (start services.msc and check Remote Registry status).
  • The Network Interface of the remote host that is implied in communication with the local host allows file and printer sharing.
  • The remote firewall is not blocking access; the following Windows Firewall rules must be activated:
    • File and Printer Sharing (NB-Name-In)
    • File and Printer Sharing (NB-Session-In)
    • File and Printer Sharing (*)

About this task

From the Resource Monitoring Service, you will be able to add the Resource Monitoring sources and select the counters that capture the performance statistics. You can monitor a local host or a remote host. The remote host can be monitored through agents that are installed on the target host and connected to the Resource Monitoring Service. For more information, see Resource Monitoring Agents.

Procedure

  1. In the Resource Monitoring Service, add a source from Add new Sources, example: Add an NGINX server.
  2. In the New server dialog box, enter the following information:
    Add a source
    1. Target host, specify the IP address or host name and port number of the host where the server is installed.
    2. In Server edition, select the appropriate server by using the drop-down list.
    3. In Path to server status page, specify the name of the page to view the status of the server.

      If you select NGINX Plus (with API version 3) as a source, you must specify the name of the path to view the API root of the NGINX Plus server.

    4. In Security, select the following options:
      Secured with TLS/SSL
      If the application server is secured with TLS/SSL.
      Trust self-signed certificate
      To accept the server certificate.
      Do not verify host name
      To ignore verification of the host name in the certificate
      Require credentials
      If the server requires login credentials, enter a User name and Password.
      Notes: If you added Java Virtual Machine as the source to be monitored, you only have to enter the target host name, the port number, and optional credentials.
  3. Click Add.
  4. Select the resource counters to be monitored. You can select them from the list where they are following the server logical organization:
    For a faster selection, you can select the counters from the built-in sets drop-down list where they are organized by theme and save your selection:
    Choose data counters

    The following tables give the total number of sources in your project and the number of sources ordered by type.
    Tables of available sources
  5. To view the Resource Monitoring live overview, use the links from the Total Sources and All Types tables. A properties table and a chart display the live performance for the first counter among selected ones. To view performance data of resource counters that are not shown in the overview by default, use the drop-down menu. From the Counters column, you can change the resource counters selection in the dialog that opens. You can select or deselect counters. From the Action column, you can change the source parameters or delete them. The changes are reflected in the resource monitoring graph.
    Live performance statistics
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