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6 APPROACHES TO MONITORINGCOMPLEX TIBCO-CENTRIC APPLICATIONS

6 Approaches to Monitoring ComplexTIBCO-Centric ApplicationsTable of ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Common Monitoring Approaches for TIBCO Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4TIBCO Admin Tools, TIBCO Hawk, TIBCO RTView, APM Tools, Custom Monitors,RTView Enterprise EditionBecoming Proactive with End-to-end Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10RTView Enterprise: End-to-end Monitoring for TIBCO-centric Applications . . . . . 12understanding large systems with logical groupings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16understanding how components can impact a business service . . . . . . . 17support across multiple environments including the cloud . . . . . . . . . . . 18centralized real-time alerting and notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19custom displays & flow diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20integration with other monitors and systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21About SL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22RTView and RTView Enterprise Monitor are trademarks of SL Corporation.TIBCO, BusinessWorks, TIBCO Enterprise Message Service, TIBCO Hawk, TIBCO BusinessEvents, and the TIBCO logo are registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc.2 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.Last updated: Oct 24, 2017

16 Approaches to Monitoring ComplexTIBCO-Centric ApplicationsAs Many Companies Adopt Hybrid and Cloud StrategiesThey must continue to support their legacy applications which are running on older infrastructure. This cansqueeze IT Operations and Support teams which are tasked with doing more with fewer and fewer resources.In the TIBCO world, integration middleware is rapidly evolvingfrom running in traditional on-premise systems to hybridapplications or even running entirely in the cloud. Ascompanies architect for these environments, they are usingnew TIBCO products and services such as TIBCOBusinessWorks Container Edition, TIBCO FTL , and TIBCOCloud Integration (TCI). The challenge is how best tomonitor and manage both the older and newer platformsefficiently.This document will review the most common methods for monitoring TIBCO environments and show why adopting an endto-end monitoring platform to monitor on-premise, hybrid, or cloud applications and the supporting infrastructure is thebest solution.3 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.SECTION 01SECTION 02SECTION 03SECTION 04

1Common Monitoring Approaches forTIBCO EnvironmentsTIBCO Administration ToolsTIBCO Hawk Several approaches are used formonitoring TIBCOenvironments. Each has itsadvantages and ideal use cases.The most common methods are:TIBCO RTView Standalone MonitorsApplication Performance Management (APM) ToolsCustom Built and Maintained MonitorsRTView Enterprise End-to-End Monitor4 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.SECTION 01SECTION 02SECTION 03SECTION 04

2TIBCO Administration ToolsRuntime monitoring is only one of many tasks that middleware admin consoles aredesigned to perform, so the monitoring capability in these tools is limited.TIBCO users will always require admin tools to managetheir environments. However, users often strugglewith a multiple admin tool approach for monitoringcomplex environments.Admin tools are typically technology-specific and require users tomanually work through each environment to look at individualinstances to understand overall system health. It is challenging tounderstand the interplay between the different technologiesduring application run-time, therefore, understanding thebusiness impact of one technology on another in real-time isalmost impossible. Many administrators report that, uponreceipt of an application alert, it can take upwards of 4 hours justto identify which component is failing and have no way ofdetecting if the failure is part of a larger pattern.5Administration tools do not provide access tohistorical information which can complicatetroubleshooting since errors and issues can betransient and difficult to troubleshoot after the fact.The different tools also generate separate event andstatus information for each component.For high-performance business-critical applications,the vast amount of TIBCO runtime health and statusdata that are generated is challenging to comprehendusing an administration tool. 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.SECTION 01SECTION 02SECTION 03SECTION 04

2TIBCO HAWK However, TIBCO Hawk does havesome limitationsUsers cannot save historical data, making it difficult totroubleshoot issues after they have occurred.Hawk interface does not lend itself to comparativeanalysis between engines, servers, and agents. Usersmust drill down to one engine or process individuallywhich can be cumbersome.TIBCO Hawk is TIBCO’s legacy monitoring solution and is broadlyused within TIBCO’s core integration customer base.It has been TIBCO’s primary monitoring solution for monitoringon-premise, distributed applications, and systems for years.It has proven to be very reliable and highly scalable with someimplementations consisting of tens of thousands of rule-based agents.6Hawk does not aggregate metrics across domains orenvironments which can be limiting to users wishing togain a better high level understanding of how theirenvironments are performing. 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.SECTION 01SECTION 02SECTION 03SECTION 04

2TIBCO RTVIEW STAND ALONEMONITORSTIBCO RTView Standalone Monitors featurepre-built displays and pre-configured alertsSince no programming is required, the monitors can bedownloaded, configured and quickly deployed. Theseapplications have been broadly used within the TIBCOcustomer base for several years and are licensed throughTIBCO.RTView Standalone Monitors complements Hawkin several ways. Users can: Develop custom displays driven by Hawk metrics and alertsusing TIBCO RTView Standard Monitor (SL RTView Core) Archive Hawk metrics and alerts to relational and NoSQLdatabasesTIBCO resells these separateRTView monitors for: TIBCO RTView Monitor for EMS TIBCO RTView Monitor for BusinessWorks TIBCO RTView Monitor for BusinessEvents Create displays that blend data from Hawk and other datasources such as SQL7 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.SECTION 01SECTION 02SECTION 03SECTION 04

2Application Performance Mgmt. ToolsAPM tools are sometimes used for monitoringTIBCO middleware environments from the primaryperspective of monitoring a transaction.APM tools can be beneficial for the right use cases, such as findingand debugging issues in transaction flows, creating transactionprofiles and providing application-centric performance views.Moreover, APM tools can be very good at identifying code-basedbottlenecks. However, APM tools have limitations when used tomonitor TIBCO environments:8APM tools are not designed forservice-level monitoring.They provide an external look at the JVMand not deep visibility into the TIBCOmiddleware running inside the JVM. This isa material limitation because most TIBCOBusinessWorks problems occur at theactivity level and not at the JVM level.APM tools often have limitationsaround monitoring C-based applicationssuch as TIBCO EMS and TIBCOActiveSpaces . Moreover, APM tools areunable to monitor EMS queues.APM tools require the installation andmaintenance of proprietary agents onevery machine.Maintenance costs will be higher sinceevery product update and upgrade requiresusers to update every agent.An APM tool can tell you where atransaction failed but not why since theyhave no transactional visibility into theentire TIBCO domain. 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.SECTION 01SECTION 02SECTION 03SECTION 04

2Custom-Built & Maintained MonitorsUsers always have the option of creatingcustom monitoring tools, and this is a usefulapproach for many organizations.Custom-built tools can be very effective butrequire time to build and resources to maintainThe build vs. buy decisions is complicated and outside the scopeof this document.That said, the time to build a custom monitor and ongoingexpense of maintaining it, which includes modification andtesting to every update of the middleware, often outweigh thebenefits of creating an in-house solution.And internally developed monitoring solutions are oftendependent on one or two employees.It can be difficult to maintain a custom-built system when theseemployees are reassigned or leave.9 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.SECTION 01SECTION 02SECTION 03SECTION 04

3Becoming Proactive withEnd-to-End MonitoringAs middleware layers become more complex, small problems can quickly turn into big ones.It is essential for support teams to be proactive with real-time monitoring and effective alerting to evolve beyond reactive incidentmanagement. One global retail bank we work with cited war room meetings often involving more than 30 attendees and onemeeting in the previous year lasting more than 24 hours! They felt acute pain which they blamed on being stuck in a reactive mode.Application and middleware support teams cannot work effectively without gettingthe right information, at the right time and in the proper format. Also, resources inone technology area need to be associated with the dependent resources in theother technology areas for Impact analysis to take place. General enterprisemonitoring solutions do not meet these requirements and can result in significanttime delays and communication problems.TIBCO middleware andsupport teams canproactively reduce Sev 1 & 2incidents and lower MTTRwith the proper middlewarefocused monitoring toolsProactivity requires centralized monitoring and alerting to minimize the lag timeassociated with navigating through different monitoring applications, alertingsystems, and log files.Business owners often require information about the health and availability of theirapplications and services. Unfortunately, they usually rely on Operations and Supportteams for this when they would prefer self-service access to the information.Business owners are often tasked with contacting several Technology owners andacting as the communications hub when solving Sev 1 and 2 issues and the result isunnecessarily long resolution times and a great deal of frustration and confusion.10 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.SECTION 01SECTION 02SECTION 03SECTION 04

3Benefits from Proactive Monitoringare Well DocumentedReduction in Severity 1 and 2 incidents as reported by a major U.S. bank at the TIBCO NOWconference in 2016.11 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.SECTION 01SECTION 02SECTION 03SECTION 04

4RTView Enterprise: End to end Monitoringfor TIBCO-centric ApplicationsRTView Enterprise Edition is used by manycompanies to monitor their custom and complexmiddleware environments more efficiently.It is designed from the ground up to focus on middleware tiers andis often the monitoring application of choice for TIBCO middlewareand support teams.Figure: View the health of the entire TIBCO environment in a single displayRTView Enterprise enables users to not only monitor the healthand performance of a wide range of technologies but also tocorrelate the technologies that support a business service orapplication and quickly identify the actual cause of problems.RTView Enterprise is designed for TIBCO middleware and support teams that require:ConsolidatedMonitoring12More PowerfulDiagnostic ToolsHistoricalPerformanceInformation 2017 SL Corporation. All Rights Reserved.Cross-TechnologyCorrelationsSECTION 01SECTION 02CentralizedAlerting Across theTIBCOEnvironmentSECTION 03SECTION 04