Getting Started with NDE

Once the NDE machine is installed, user can login to the system and access various features of NetDiagnostics Enterprise.

Login to NetDiagnostics

User needs to follow the below mentioned steps to login to NetDiagnostics:

  1. Open web browser and type the following address in the address bar and press ENTER. http://<hostname>/NetDiagnostics.
 note <hostname> in the address bar is the name of the Server on which NetDiagnostics is running.  For example, if the NetDiagnostics is running on a Server named Hostname Server, the URL is http://HostnameServer/NetDiagnostics/.
  1. The NetDiagnostics login window is displayed as illustrated in the image.

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  1. Enter the Username and Password and click Login. User logged-in into the NetDiagnostics system and NetDiagnostics – Home page is displayed.

Product Home Page Description

ND Home page consists of a left pane and a right pane. Left pane contains a menu, which enables a user to view details on sessions, scenarios, monitors, and various other sections. Using these menus, user can access further sections and can perform various operations, such as compare sessions, generate reports, access various features of web dashboard and application end-to-end view, and so on. On the right pane, summary of all-important aspects is displayed, be it a release version, CPU usage, memory utilization, or alerts generated in the system.

Left Pane

It contains following menus / sub-menus, and menu items:

View

  • Dashboard: This displays the current Dashboard.
  • Application End to End View: To view end to end monitoring approach.
  • Geo Map: To view Geo map.
  • DB Monitoring: This is a powerful feature to measure the performance of each query contributing in a session execution. It provides complete monitoring of MSSQL queries with insights into SQL activity, wait statistics, databases, support services, Temp DB, and high availability. It enables a user to detect such queries, which are consuming more resources as compare to normal ones. Once identified, user can diagnose the issue and perform corrective measures.

Analytics

  • Compare: This feature is used to compare two test runs. User can perform further actions for post compare operation:
    • Enable Compare: To apply the comparison.
    • Disable Compare: To disable the comparison applied and back to original form.
    • Update Compare: To update the inputs provided for comparison.

Favorites: Favorite allows a user to save current view of Real Time Graphs (RTG). User can create a new profile by saving current view of RTG UI as a profile. If user wants to see current view of graphs next time in Web Dashboard, then user needs to add graphs in favorite. When user loads saved favorite, then all graphs of favorite are displayed in Web dashboard’s graph panel.

Alerts

  • Alert Maintenance Window: This window provides alert maintenance configuration to disable generation of alerts at the time of maintenance or server goes down.
  • Alert Settings: This is used to enable/disable alert configuration, such as alert mail, capacity/ behavior alert, and thread dump.
  • Baseline: In case of behavior alert, alerts are generated based on trends and trends are defined in baseline.
  • Alert Policy: This is used to create policy for specified condition and rules.
  • Alert Actions: This is used to create actions, such as alert mail, thread dump, and TCP dump.
  • Rules: This is used to activate/deactivate/add/delete/update rules.
  • Active Alerts: This is used to see generated alerts, such as capacity and behavior alerts.
  • Alert History: This is used to see the alerts generated in the past.
  • Active Alert Graphs: This is used to generate graphs for active alerts.
  • Alert Stats Report: This is used to generate stats report for alerts.
  • Alert Action History: It contains details of action taken by alerts, such as SNMP Trap Sent / Email Sent / Cisco Spark Chat sent and so on.

Configuration

  • Derived Metrics: Derived graphs are those graphs that are derived from two or more graphs by applying some formulas provided by user.
  • Monitors: To configure the monitors.
  • Topology: To configure topology.
  • Batch Jobs: To configure batch group and batch jobs.
  • Tier Group: To configure tier group list.
  • Agent Config: For ND agent configuration.
  • Configuration Settings: For various settings, such as dashboard settings, multi-node configuration, show vector in title, and graph tree.
  • Color Management: It is used to define the color of the graphs.
  • Manage Catalogue: It provides a common platform for the selection of graphs and storing them as a catalogue.

Reports: Reports menu is used to create various types of reports, such as stat report, compare/trend report, hierarchical report, and so on. These reports are generated using templates and have other advanced options to include all or selected metrics. The reporting format may be selected as Word, HTML or Excel. It includes tabular data with or without graphical illustration.

Actions

  • Thread Dump: To take thread dump, analyse thread dump, and schedule thread dump.
  • Heap Dump: A heap dump is a dump of the state of the Java heap memory. This is useful for analysing the use of memory i.e.an application is making at some point in time so handy in diagnosing some memory issues, and if done at intervals handy in diagnosing memory leaks. User can take heap dump from here.
  • Process Dump: To take process dump.
  • TCP Dump: This option is used to take the TCP dump.
  • Mission Control: It is a property through which user can get thread JVM information for JRocket. This includes two features – Memory Analyzer and Flight Recorder.
  • Java Flight Recording: To view all java flight recordings
  • Run command: This is used to run command on server.
  • Download File: To download a file from the system.

Admin

  • Projects: Displays the Project Administration window to add, delete, rename a project / sub-project.
  • LDAP Server Settings: To configure LDAP Server settings.
  • Servers: DisplaysServer Administration window to configure a server.
  • Settings: To configure module tab settings.
  • Manage Controllers: To manage controller with details, such as appliance name, controller name, controller URL, and Service End point IP.
  • GIT Settings: To perform GIT Remote Server settings.
  • Retention Policy: To configure the data retention / data backup policy (NDE Purge)
  • Access Control: To perform identification, authentication and accountability of entities through login credentials including passwords.
  • Agent Info: To view machine agent status and application agent status.
  • NetHavoc: A feature to implement resilience testing.

Advanced

  • Sessions: To view running and executed sessions and perform various operations on the same.
  • Design: To design the following components:
    • Script
    • Create Script
    • Scenarios
    • Scenario Profile
    • IP Management
    • Event Definition
    • Health Check Monitor
    • Test Suite
    • Test Case
    • Test Report
    • JMeter 
  • Transactions: To view all the transactions running in the system and perform various operations on the same.
  • Appliance Health: This shows a snapshot / summary of application health in terms of heap memory, CPU utilization, available memory, disk space utilization, and so on.
  • System Logs: This displays system logs that include – Kubernetes, RBU Access Logs, Peripheral Device logs, and system events.
  • Infrastructure View: This displays performance dashboard that includes details for environment, release, disk usage, inventory, and report. The user can perform various operations within this section.

Postgres Stats: This displays overall connection stats that includes Max connections, reserved connections, used connections, and available connections. Apart from this, a user can view detailed connection stats based on database and application.

Right Pane

This section provides a summary of the most details related to release, memory, and CPU utilization. It contains following sections:

Release Details

This section provides release details of product, such as release version and build number, the time when the release is installed on the server. It also provides a tabular view where user can see the release details, such as installation date/time, release version, and build number.
 alertsummary Alert Summary

In this section, user can view a summary of the alerts, such as date/time when the alert is generated, severity of the alert, such as critical, major, minor and the description of the alert.
 tomcatheapmem Tomcat Heap Memory

In this section, stats on the total heap memory is displayed. Heap memory is a memory used for dynamic allocations. Used heap memory is displayed (in GB) with blue color, and free heap memory is displayed with yellow color along with its percentage.
 CPUUtilloadaver CPU Utilization Vs Load Average

This section displays CPU utilization vs load average in the form of a graph. Various parameters, such as user, system, I/O ae displayed with different colors. The load average among all these is displayed with black color.
 availmem Available Memory

This section displays stats on available memory (in GB) in the form of a graph. Cached memory is displayed with blue color and free memory is displayed with black color.
 diskspacutil Disk Space Utilization

This section provides a summary of the disk space utilization by various directories in the system. It contains information such as total space assigned to a particular directory (in GB), free space, used space, along with used percentage.

While doing application performance monitoring, user may face issues in various methods and certain other executions. User can view the root cause of an issue using the drill down feature of NetDiagnostics. In our next section, we are describing how to drill down an issue to find its root cause.