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CA Tuesday Tip: Instrumentation Best Practices

  • 1.  CA Tuesday Tip: Instrumentation Best Practices

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Apr 10, 2014 07:08 AM

    Hi,

    Here are some instrumentation best practices:

    1. Use APM Studio: there's a new update available on the Update Site, Andreas wrote a new documentation that is awesome!
    2. Reference your <application>.pbl in the introscope.autoprobe.directivesFile property in your IntroscopeAgent.profile. Relieves you of the need to update the profile.
    3. Reference your custom pbds in your <application>.pbl. You can add any number of pbs files independently of the profile.
    4. Separate the TurnOn directives into a <application>-toggles.pbd
    5. Automate deployment of your custom pdbs and <application>.pbl to your test server (e.g. using ant build.xml)
    6. Add your APM config files to version control (cvs, subversion, …)
    7. Automate your (UAT/Prod) agent deployments using existing processes/tools (e.g. application deployment, release automation, software delivery)
    8. 3 step pbd creation:
      1. Optional (usually done by CA Services if needed): Implement and test custom nameformatters and tracer, define tracer mappings
      2. Create (SetFlag) and enable (TurnOn) your tracer group
      3. Add classes to tracer groups (Identify…)
        1. From classes in Eclipse (drag & drop, right mouse click – context menu “Introscope”)
        2. From AutoProbe.log file
        3. Manually
      4. Add methods, tracers and metric names to tracer (Trace…)
        1. Use TraceComplexMethods... if you don't know what to instrument. Don't ever use TraceAllMethods!
      5. Optional: add skips (Skip…) to reduce number of instrumented methods/classes
    9. Evaluate and reduce your instrumentation:
      1. Monitor only methods that add significant time to a transaction: use search tab on a high level node, search for "Average Response" and enable "Show min.max, count". You get all relevant info in one sortable table!
      2. Remove (or skip) methods with high invocation count and low (near zero) response time (e.g. getters/setters, utility methods). Focus on methods like execute, processXXX, ...

    Here’s the List of All 91 Supported Probe Builder Directives on https://support.ca.com. For more info see http://apmstudio.org and the CA APM/Wily Global User Community.

    If you got questions or other best practices to share reply to this thread!

    Ciao,
    Guenter