We have many performance monitoring tools in the market from freeware to licensed. All those tools can be divided as Agent less and Agent based tools.
Agent based tools are very intuitive in terms of performance monitoring but costly to implement. CA Wily Introscope is the best example for Agent based monitoring. Agents/Probes play a major part in collecting the performance metrics from the systems under test, we have to manually build them but are very intuitive as they collect the metrics from the lowest level possible and it depends on how its configured. This type of monitoring is very useful as you can track each and every request from a module/function/component where the agents are placed. The negative part of it is these configured agents will be an overhead to the system, more are the agents more are the metrics configured and more is the overhead on the system.
Most of the agent less monitoring tools used SNMP(Simple Network Management Protocol) to track all the performance metrics for the applications. All SNMP compliance systems can be monitored using SNMP. To monitor a system, we have to activate the SNMP service on that system and set all performance metrics to be monitored and the frequency at which it has to monitor. Once these basic settings are done you are ready to go. HP SiteScope is an example of agent less successful monitoring tool.
In brief:-
Agent based monitoring
Pros:- more intuitive, monitoring at module/function/component level, more metrics can be configured.
Cons:- skill set to configure all agents, overhead on the system.
Agent less monitoring
Pros:- fast to implement, no skill set required, all high level metrics can be monitored.
Cons:- used more network, cannot be customized. metrics are limited
Agent based tools are very intuitive in terms of performance monitoring but costly to implement. CA Wily Introscope is the best example for Agent based monitoring. Agents/Probes play a major part in collecting the performance metrics from the systems under test, we have to manually build them but are very intuitive as they collect the metrics from the lowest level possible and it depends on how its configured. This type of monitoring is very useful as you can track each and every request from a module/function/component where the agents are placed. The negative part of it is these configured agents will be an overhead to the system, more are the agents more are the metrics configured and more is the overhead on the system.
Most of the agent less monitoring tools used SNMP(Simple Network Management Protocol) to track all the performance metrics for the applications. All SNMP compliance systems can be monitored using SNMP. To monitor a system, we have to activate the SNMP service on that system and set all performance metrics to be monitored and the frequency at which it has to monitor. Once these basic settings are done you are ready to go. HP SiteScope is an example of agent less successful monitoring tool.
In brief:-
Agent based monitoring
Pros:- more intuitive, monitoring at module/function/component level, more metrics can be configured.
Cons:- skill set to configure all agents, overhead on the system.
Agent less monitoring
Pros:- fast to implement, no skill set required, all high level metrics can be monitored.
Cons:- used more network, cannot be customized. metrics are limited
