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Application monitoring tools collect data about the performance of remote servers, their connected databasesas well as data about the performance of applications running on these devices. These monitoring tools are the applications for overseeing and supervising the performance and availability of various software applications. Monitoring tools transform the collected performance data into charts and graphs for easy understanding and interpretation by administrators. The chief objective or purpose of application monitoring tools is to turn complex data streams into useful information that will enable an administrator to maintain an expected level of service.

Measuring Performance

There are two basic methods of determining the performance of a device. The first method pertains to the measurement of various devices connected to a computer like memory usage, CPU time, network throughput, network connections, input/output operations, among others (commonly referred to as computational resources). The second method is measurement of performance by the user of the application itself. It has two components:

a) Bandwidth- which is the data transfer rate. In other words, it is the volume of transactions that can be carried out from one point to another in a given time period. Higher bandwidth means higher speed while slower bandwidth means slower speed.

b) Latency- this is the time required for an application to respond to a user’s command or request.

The performance of these components is measured against a given benchmark. Any discrepancy if noted is immediately brought to the notice of the administrator.

When you have websites or a number of servers it helps to have tools at your command that will immediately notify you of any issues related to the performance of servers. Server monitoring tools’ basic purpose is to avoid downtime by supervising your network infrastructure  These monitoring tools possess the capability to measure performance metrics like CPU usage, disk space, etc and offer reports on daily/weekly/yearly usage.

Datastore monitoring software programs are applications for monitoring disk space and alerting the users if available storage falls below a given threshold.

Application monitoring tools are finding increased acceptance for monitoring web applications. They, in addition, to measuring response time for a user can also be used to measure the runtime of web components and identify the cause of delay in responding to user’s command.

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