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User Manual Web Performance System 1.0.2

Ginsbourg.com

“Monitoring empowers operators to catch complications before they develop

into problems, and helps you preserve high availability and deliver high quality

of service. It also assists you in making informed decisions about the present

and the future, serves as input to automation of infrastructures and, most

importantly, is an indispensable learning tool.” Slawek Ligus

UM version 5

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Table of Contents

About This Release 3

Key Features 3

Key Benefits 3

On Monitoring 4

Installing WPS 4

OS Update & OS Upgrade 4

Operating WPS 4

WPS Online Monitor 5

WPS Disaster Recovery 6

Reference 6

Contact and Order 6

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About This Release

Web Performance System 1.0.2 is both a product and a service developed and delivered by Ginsbourg.com. It offers

continuous visibility into the availability and user experience of business oriented websites and web applications.

Running as a background process or on any standard display, the Web Performance System (WPS) provides IT teams

with critical alerts, performance metrics, and scheduled reports. It enables identification and immediate response to a

very wide set of pre-defined conditions to guarantee a highly positive customer and end-user experience.

WPS can be configured to run in the desired frequency (be it once a minute, once an hour or daily), 24x7. It launches

any JMETER script of any virtual user type without adding a noticeable load to the monitored websites and web

applications. The ultimate goal of Ginsbourg.com is to deliver a powerful and reliable platform to allow IT teams

continuous monitoring and control of their systems. Optionally, scripts that have already been prepared for load testing,

and previously used for validating the performance of the websites and web applications, can now be reused for ongoing

performance monitoring.

WPS currently runs on a virtual machine that can be played on any existing hardware, virtual host, or cloud. WPS sends

alerts by email for any deviation from the required Service Level Agreement (SLA). Daily performance reports are also

available by mail and optional SMS.

With WPS, you control the availability of your websites and web applications, to provide optimal efficiency and customer

satisfaction.

Key Features

Full-Service – No irritating self-service partial solutions. WPS is available either as a service or as a software product.

Open Source – No software license fees at all. Excellent free validated code.

Script Reuse – Any previously prepared JMETER script can be used for monitoring your websites and web applications.

Cloud Ready – WPS runs on a 64-bit Linux virtual machine that can be played on various platforms or hosts on any cloud.

Mobile Users – Any action by a mobile user is virtually performed by the script that the WPS’ JMETER operates.

Easily Configurable – Rapid configuration of tests, frequency of testing, and reporting.

Email Integration – Prompt alerts and daily reports are sent via e-mail and optional SMS.

Prompt Alerts – WPS automatically alerts for any deviation from the requirements of the customer.

Daily Reports – WPS automatically sends reports on daily availability and user experience.

CRON Scheduling – CRON time-based job scheduler automates the system operation.

Key Benefits

For your customers – WPS provides superior end-user experience.

For your IT team – WPS provides persistent control of websites and web applications.

For your management – WPS provides online business availability 24x7.

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On Monitoring

“Monitoring has become an umbrella term whose meaning strongly depends on the context. Most broadly, it refers to the

process of becoming aware of the state of a system. This is done in two ways, proactive and reactive. The former

involves watching visual indicators, such as time series and dashboards, and is sometimes what administrators mean by

monitoring. The latter involves automated ways to deliver notifications to operators in order to bring to their attention a

grave change in system’s state; this is usually referred to as alerting.” [REF1] Continue reading this user manual to learn

how the above specified aspects are dealt with using WPS.

Installing WPS

Web Performance System is conveniently delivered pre-installed onto a Linux virtual machine pre-configured with a

highly stable Operating System (OS) Ubuntu 14.04 LTS desktop edition. Neither post installation setting nor configuration

are further required.

Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux operating system, with Unity as its default desktop environment. According to some

metrics, Ubuntu is the most popular desktop Linux distribution to date. Development of Ubuntu is led by Canonical Ltd.

Canonical generates revenue by selling technical support and other services related to Ubuntu. The Ubuntu project is

publicly committed to the principles of open source development; people are encouraged to use free software, study how

it works, improve upon it, and distribute it.

OS Update & OS Upgrade

Each Ubuntu release is given its own updates repository. The repository is supported by Canonical Ltd., and updates are

scheduled to be available until the end of life for the release.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS may be updated and upgraded once a month or so (from a Terminal window) for receiving security

updates, OS fixes, etc. To open a Terminal window, press: ‘Ctrl+Alt+T’ on your keyboard. If that doesn't work, then go to:

Applications → Accessories → Terminal, which is located in main menu. Inside the Terminal window, type the following

four UNIX commands:

sudo apt-get install software-center

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Operating WPS

Web Performance System was designed for running as a background process. That means that no operating tasks are

required at all. Even a user LOG-IN is actually not required for running the monitoring and alerting process. WPS

provides IT teams with critical alerts, performance metrics, and scheduled reports without any attendance. As long as the

machine power is ON, the system would keep working. Just to be on the safe side, you may consider its hosting machine

as a production server, and regularly PING it.

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WPS Online Monitor

Web Performance System 1.0.2 has an optional built-in Online Monitor. In order to invoke it, double click on its desktop

icon. While there are no current alerts in the monitored system, a green screen displays the time, host name, host IP, last

response time, and last sampling time, with some additional technical data regarding the monitoring process. A response

time graph shows the daily history of the sampling results, which are at heart of the monitoring process. Both the green

screen and the graph figure are constantly updated with new samples and response measurements [see figure below].

All the above is automatically performed and no external user operation is required what so ever.

If the current state of monitored system requires alerting, then a red screen invokes audible beeps, displays the time,

host name, host IP, failure message, last response time, and last sampling time, with some additional technical data

regarding the monitoring process. A response time graph continues to show the daily history of the sampling results.

Both the red screen and the graph figure are constantly updated with new samples and response measurements [see

figure below]. All the above is automatically performed and no external user operation is required what so ever.

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WPS Disaster Recovery

Web Performance System is conveniently delivered pre-installed onto a Linux virtual machine pre-configured with a

highly stable Operating System (OS) Ubuntu 14.04 LTS desktop edition. Every virtual machine of any type is a digital file

by its nature. Consequently, the recommended disaster recovery procedure is a simple straight-forward file copy

operation. In order to allow that, IT manager are advised to keep in a safe place a simple copy of the virtual machine that

has WPS on it. Nothing further is required.

The less preferred way of getting things back to work following a disaster, is to create a clean Linux virtual machine by

downloading the OS ISO image from the internet, and download JAVA, JMeter, and WPS onto the newly created VM.

Download Ubuntu from: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Download JAVA from: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

Download JMeter from: http://jmeter.apache.org/download_jmeter.cgi

Download WPS from: http://www.ginsbourg.com

Reference

[REF1] Slawek Ligus, “Effective Monitoring and Alerting”, First Edition, Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc. 2013.

Contact and Order

Email: sginsbourg@gmail.com

Viber: +972 54 66 909 15

Skype: shay.ginsbourg