10
Monitoring Tips
for Microsoft Applications
and Environments
i | Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments
10 Monitoring Tips
For Microsoft Applications and Environments
Are you battling constant user complaints about downtime and slow performance for Microsoft
applications like Sharepoint, Exchange, Lync and Microsoft Dynamics? Do you have challenges
troubleshooting across technology stack components like IIS, application servers, SQL Server,
and Active Directory?
By adopting a more efficient Microsoft monitoring approach - one that is powered by a unified
monitoring approach across the network, servers and applications - you can effectively
neutralize problems leading to plummeting service levels and downtime once and for all.
Here are 10 tips that will help boost the performance of your Microsoft applications and
underlying environments.
1 | Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments
Tip #1
Automatically discover, map and
document your entire infrastructure,
hardware and software assets, and
connectivity.
You can’t manage the unknown. Therefore, ensuring optimal
Microsoft app performance starts by automatically maintaining
an up-to-date network and server inventory of hardware and
software assets, physical connectivity, and configuration to
truly understand what you support in your environment.
It will save you days of having to identify relationships between
devices, and applications, and then piece that together and
make one big picture out of it. You may even find discrepancies
in application versions or patch levels within Exchange or IIS
server farms that should be corrected soon, so go ahead and
automatically discover, map and document your assets.
TIP: Look for dynamic mapping integrated into your
monitoring interface console with scheduled discovery or
ad-hoc. That way, you can stay on top of assets, changes and
how everything is connected – a must for faster triage and
troubleshooting in minutes, instead of hours or days.
Tip #2
Monitor every server in the Microsoft
application delivery chain.
5
Problems Solved with
the right Microsoft app
monitoring strategy:
1. Know what is running in your
network (hardware, software,
physical and virtual resources) and
how everything is connected. Find
discrepancies for app versions and
patch levels.
2. Triage and troubleshoot faster by
monitoring the entire application
as a whole. Route issues to the right
team. Eliminate false alerts & alert
storms, (if a database is “down,” all
related apps will also be “down”).
Get in control of your SLAs and
bonus.
3. Find problems with IIS,
SharePoint, and your Web-based
applications before your users
are impacted, via proactive Web
performance monitoring (synthetic
users running on a 24x7x365 basis
measuring and reporting back on
Web availability and response time).
4. Identify problem spots and
properly plan capacity.
Periodically analyze historical data
and identify across wired/wireless
networks, systems, Microsoft
application and devices.
5. Get management and crossfunctional teams aligned and
on the same page with one unified
view into IT SLAs, availability and
performance – a stepping stone
towards DevOps adoption.
There are multiple elements responsible for providing
Microsoft services and application content to your end-users.
For example, just Lync alone has a multi-tier architecture –
Front-End Server at the core, SQL Database servers on the back-end, Edge Server to enable outside the
firewall access, Mediation Server for VoIP and more.
The same applies to any Web-based application — SharePoint on the front-end, middleware systems and
back-end SQL databases. And of course there is the underling network. Don’t take any shortcuts — monitor
it all!
If any of these components of the application delivery chain underperform, your app will slow down and
bring employee communications, productivity and business Ops to a halt.
2 | Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments
Monitor the entire application as
a whole – understand dependencies.
You don’t want to receive an alert storm when a problem is
detected. It can take a full-time person just to sit there and try
to figure out what was red, why was it red, and whether it was
a real problem or a false positive. You will waste precious time,
and delay root cause identification and resolution.
Instead, monitor the entire application service as a whole —
IIS servers, SQL servers, physical and virtual servers and the
underlying network — and look for monitoring capabilities
that will discover and track end-to-end dependencies and
suppress alerts (if a database is “down,” all related apps will
also be “down”). This is also the foundation to build your SLA
monitoring strategy aligned with business goals. Just read on.
Monitoring Tips
from the WhatsUp APM
Customer Trenches
“Proactive Monitoring of all
the pieces to the puzzle (IIS/
SQL/Custom application
monitors/General Performance
data/Network) allows us to
proactively monitor apps –
showing growing issues before
they become a disruption to
our end-users.”
“
Tip #3
– Matt Cline, Sr. Systems Engineer
(Optim Healthcare)
Tip #4
Get in control of your SLAs (and your bonus).
Today, IT success (and in many cases your bonus) depends on how you well you meet your SLAs. Yet, your
application services are unique to each environment. To isolate and resolve application performance
problems quickly, IT teams need a “single version of the truth” that cuts across organizational silos.
Therefore, IT Pros need to monitor their application SLAs (what is included, states, alerting, reporting and
actions) in a way that reflects their unique organizational priorities.
For example, your team may be responsible for certain infrastructure elements or application components,
but not all. In that case, if you are responsible for Exchange and the network goes down, your network
counterparts can respond quickly without having to hunt down and locate the problematic spot. Similarly,
if you are on the network side, your SLAs should not be impacted if Lync is unavailable and wireless
users cannot connect, but wireless WAPs are fine. Look for dependency-aware APM monitoring, so you
can configure monitored application components to be “critical” or “non-critical”. That way when a critical
component fails, your application is reported as “down” and when a non-critical component fails, your
application is reported in a “warning” state. Moreover, take the time to define the right SLA view for you
and your organization (“all applications,” “my application with all components,” “my application with
the components that I own”) so you can get credit when due, route issues to the right team and provide
management with an accurate assessment of application health and SLAs.
3 | Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments
Monitoring Tips
from the WhatsUp APM
Customer Trenches
“Exchange just sucks memory.
The great thing with APM is I can
start tracking, and noticing those
trends, and have an alert kick
off to e-mail that says, ‘Exchange
has hit the 65 percent threshold.’
When I get home, I can log into
the server, do a quick reboot, and
everything is back to normal. The
users never notice down time.”
– Steve Bennett, Director of IT
(Burke County, GA)
“Besides network performance,
we collect and alert on system
performance, event log errors,
disk space usage, Windows
services and ports, Microsoft
Exchange and many other
active monitors, including fan,
temperature, and power supply.
We have the power to do all this
from one single console.”
“
– Jason Alberino, Systems Administrator
(Clayton)
Tip #5
Look for unified application/server/
network monitoring with drill-down
capabilities.
Continuously monitor all elements that impact Microsoft
application availability and performance, including hardware,
operating system, server processes, memory, Active Directory
health and all enabling technologies in one application
dependency tree.
Select APM monitoring that lets you drill down from one
unified view into the offending component to reduce triage
and troubleshooting to just minutes. Even if you are not a DBA,
you should be able to quickly identify that SQL is the culprit.
Plus, think about automatic corrective actions as part of your
monitoring strategy (Write Event Log, Run Scripts, Reboot,
Active and PowerShell scripts…) to restore service levels faster.
For example, Exchange and SQL are well-known for their
high memory consumption and high IOs, so you may want to
automatically reboot them to avoid service disruptions for your
users when exceeded memory reaches a problematic level.
Tip #6
Search for prepackaged MS app
monitoring capabilities.
With hundreds of performance metrics that can be collected,
monitored and alerted on, and not enough hours in the day,
try to find out-of-the-box monitoring support that already
encompass Microsoft monitoring Best Practices for the
standard MS Applications you support (Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, IIS, Dynamics, SQL, Windows…) to save
time and make your life easier. Every IT shop is different, so there is really not a one-size APM monitoring
solution that out of the box will fit all. Look for pre-packaged monitoring with capabilities to easily tweak
monitoring settings, so you can also monitor custom applications or more feature-rich applications.
4 | Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments
Tip #7
Look for proactive Web application
monitoring from a user perspective.
“My application is slow” is one of the most common complaints
you will get. Get ahead of the gripes. Proactively monitor
your Microsoft Web applications from a user perspective —
continuously access and measure end-to-end transactions or
multi-step interactions with your IIS-based apps, Exchange or
SharePoint — and look for alerting and reporting capabilities to
detect early warning signs or performance degradation before
your users are even impacted. For example, continuously check
availability and response time of your Website, validate that
a user can log into your Intranet, or get more sophisticated
with your monitoring and oversee a complete set of steps (e.g.
logging, browse, add to your cart, enter credit card, purchase).
Proactive 24x7x365 Web performance monitoring is one of
the best ways to find and resolve problems before your users
escalate, because you will get notified when applications start
to slow down, before critical outages occur. You can even detect
problematic signs at 3am, when there is very limited real user
activity happening in your network.
Tip #8
5
Must-Know Facts
about Ipswitch
1. WhatsUp Gold is a powerful,
cost-effective and proven solution
for monitoring wired/wireless
networks, servers, applications,
network traffic, configurations,
connectivity, and IP devices from
a single dashboard. It’s tried,
tested, and proven on networks
just like yours – thousands of them.
WhatsUp APM is fully integrated
into WhatsUp Gold.
2. Privately held, we were founded
in 1991.
3. Headquartered in the USA, Ipswitch
has a global presence in Europe,
APAC and Africa.
4. Our customers are global leaders,
ranging from SMBs to enterprises,
that are realizing enterprise-class
functionality at a small business
price.
5. We make more than software.
We make a difference. Community
involvement is an integral part of
Ipswitch culture and values.
Don’t forget wireless monitoring!
It is a wireless world out there, and BYOD continues to grow. Mobility has transformed wireless networks into
business-critical assets that support employee connectivity, productivity and business Ops. For example,
Microsoft corporate headquarters runs Lync over Aruba WI-FI. Just like you want a map of your wired assets,
look for capabilities to automatically generate dynamic wireless maps — WLCs, APs and Clients — from the
same single point of control.
In fact, when a wireless user calls to report a problem, you should have monitoring capabilities to drill-down
from your wireless map to the user that is reporting an issue and see the connection path and performance
data — AP, wireless controller, signal strength — to help you identify if the problem is with Microsoft or the
wireless network.
5 | Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments
Tip #9
Periodically share network/server/application historical data and
reports with cross-functional teams, Line of Business Owners and
stakeholders.
Your applications are the backbone of your business. From fueling day-to-day operations (sales and
order processing, lead management, procurement, HR, accounting, employee communications and
collaboration...), showcasing information to the world (portals, websites...), or delivering revenue-generating
services to customers (healthcare, travel, ecommerce, financial services...), your application must
out-perform at all times. App slowdowns, intermittent problems or failures will drive escalations through
the roof, and bring productivity, Ops and revenue to a halt. Therefore, look for customizable reporting
(by application, by servers, by location, etc.) and automatic email distribution capabilities (daily, weekly,
monthly, etc.) to keep cross-functional team members and stakeholders aligned and in the know. Get in the
habit of periodically analyzing all performance data to identify problematic trends early on, properly plan
capacity, and justify investment on additional resources.
Tip #10
Look for affordable, integrated and simple monitoring:
Check out WhatsUp Application Performance Monitor!
With WhatsUp Application Performance Monitor, you can
boost Microsoft app performance and restore Service Levels
in minutes, instead of hours or days, with one unified view into
networks, applications, enabling technologies and underlying
infrastructure. Get ready to:
• Find and resolve problems faster, before your users
and the business are impacted
• Isolate and route issues to the right team (network,
Sys Admin, Exchange, Web Team, Lync, DBAs…)
• Troubleshoot and triage issues in minutes
Just see what our customers are raving about.
Stop the user complaints
once and for all!
Attend a live APM Demo
today, and be on your way
to monitoring and boosting
service levels in your entire
Microsoft application
environment… before your
users are impacted.
ATTEND AN APM DEMO
6 | Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments
10
About Ipswitch
Ipswitch helps solve complex IT problems with simple solutions. The company’s software is trusted by
millions of people worldwide to transfer ﬁles between systems, business partners and customers; and to
monitor networks, applications and servers. Ipswitch was founded in 1991 and is based in Lexington,
Massachusetts with oﬃces throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.
For more information, visit www.ipswitch.com.
See how Uniﬁed Monitoring can transform IT’s
workﬂow and improve performance.
Download your 30-Day FREE TRIAL of WhatsUp Gold
Network & Server Monitoring
7 | Ten Monitoring Tips for Microsoft Applications and Environments