Monitor an application server or database

This tutorial describes how to create, configure and use a monitor for monitoring your application or database server. It sets out the steps involved using an actual example, the Linux monitor.

To gain the most from this tutorial, it is recommended to read Monitors.

NeoLoad provides numerous statistics on your application, focused mainly on your pages response times. It is often useful and instructive to combine and check those figures against statistics coming from components in your application architecture such as the application server or database server. NeoLoad provides features that let you monitor these components. This tutorial describes the different types of monitors in NeoLoad and where and how they can be defined, configured and used.

Add and define monitors

1. Click on the Monitors tab in the Design section of NeoLoad.
2. To add a monitor, specify which machine you want to monitor. Click on the New monitored Machine button.
3. NeoLoad displays a dialog that allows you to define the monitors to be placed on the machine.
4. The dialog lists the types of components and/or protocols that NeoLoad is able to monitor. These monitors are optional modules; if you are interested in a particular monitor type, please contact Neotys for more information.
5. Enter the machine host name or the server IP address and select the monitors you wish to place on the machine. For the example, we may select the Linux monitor.

Configure the monitor

1. Click Next to configure the monitors you have selected. The next panel displays the monitor information.
2. Click Next once more to enter the monitor details.

Check the connection

1. To make sure the monitor is working properly and that NeoLoad can connect to your server, we may test the connection by clicking on the Test button.
2. If the monitor is working, the message "The connection settings are correct" is displayed. If not, details of the error are displayed.

Monitor information

1. Click Next to define the performance counters you wish to put in place on your server. Depending on the type of monitor selected (in this case, Linux), NeoLoad will automatically define the most appropriate counters to be monitored and the associated alert thresholds.
2. Check or clear a box to add or remove a counter from the monitor. Here, we may have added the CPU User, CPU System and CPU Idle counters, among others, to the Linux SSH monitor.
3. Click on the Alert thresholds tab to set the alert thresholds for the desired performance counters. In this example, two thresholds have been set for the CPU Idle counter:
   • a warning-level alert will be triggered if the counter value falls to or below 50 for more than 5 seconds.
   • a critical-level alert will be triggered if the counter value falls to or below 10 for more than 5 seconds.
4. Then click Finish to create the monitored machine, monitor and associated performance counters.

View the monitor information during a scenario execution

• While the scenario is running, we may select the Runtime Monitors tab in the Runtime section and add any monitor information you wish to the display area.

Combine NeoLoad statistics with monitor information

The Results section allows you to view the graphs representing the various items monitored during Runtime.

For example it can show a graph obtained by combining user load and the Linux SSH monitor CPU Idle counter. In this example, the value of the CPU Idle counter regularly exceeds the alert threshold <= 50% at a user load greater than 120 simultaneous Virtual Users.

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