The network staff at Post Communications is getting more sleep now that they don't need to get up in the middle of the night to restart the company's Web servers.
Post Communications is a fast-growing e-mail marketing firm in San Francisco. As the number of its Web, e-mail and database servers increases, so does the job of managing them, says John Sanders, director of operations. Sanders and his three IT staffers took turns being on call 24-7 to deal with Web management issues. Sometimes they were awakened as many as two or three times a night to respond to problems. Sanders realized he needed a larger staff or a better way to monitor and manage the Web site. Sanders solved the problem by buying Platform Computing's SiteAssure, a Web monitoring tool that takes corrective action based on predefined policies. He uses it in conjunction with Freshwater Software's SiteScope real-time Web-server monitoring tool to keep the Web site up and running. Not only are his staffers getting more sleep, Sanders saved money by not having to hire another worker.Scoping out the problem
Sanders has used SiteScope since 1997. The venture capital firm that funded Post Communications had also invested in Freshwater and recommended the vendor's product to him. He evaluated some high-end management platforms such as HP OpenView and Unicenter. However, he didn't like those products' high setup costs and installation requirements. Sanders also tried Ipswitch's What's Up Gold and Big Brother's Big Brother. The drawback was that the products couldn't look at internal diagnostics, they only determined if the Web server was running or not. SiteScope's monitoring capabilities impressed Sanders. The software logs all the readings selected for any given period. He can set SiteScope up to track the amount of disk space and memory used and the number of TCP/IP connections, among other things. He uses SiteScope to check individual URLs and verify that they are all working. Moreover, he has written database monitoring scripts and set the frequency to check database connectivity along with network traffic. Another feature Sanders likes is SiteScope's ability to track usage over time. For example, the product can check e-mail server logs and correlate them with memory usage logs to examine trends. One time, SiteScope helped him realize that memory usage was increasing. By examining reports, he was able to narrow the problem down to a leak in the operating system. But while SiteScope warns the Post Communications IT department when things are starting to go bad, it can't fix the problem quickly. That's where SiteAssure comes in.The next step
When Sanders initially assessed the monitoring and management needs of his Web data center, he recognized its immaturity. He planned to first stabilize his code base and platform, then add products to take corrective action. Sanders sees Web management as a layering process: first encounter the problem and examine frequency, then look at the trend over time. The next step is to go find a product that can fix the problem. He chose to supplement SiteScope with SiteAssure last June primarily because the second tool offers automatic corrective action. When Sanders tested the product, he looked for specific types of Web server errors and made sure that corrective steps were taken. He was pleased by SiteAssure's interoperability with SiteScope, and Platform's integration with Cisco's products was the clincher. He uses Cisco's Local Director load balancer and Platform's development partnership with Cisco made him confident that SiteAssure will work with the product in the future. SiteAssure offers two components: agents that run on Web server and a management console used to set up rules. The product also provides a scripting language and some examples of useful sample scripts. When there was a problem with a Web application SiteScope immediately paged an IT worker, it now sends the alert directly to SiteAssure. SiteAssure will then identify the problem, apply the fix and message the IT staff to let them know what happened. For example, SiteAssure will restart a downed Web application or direct traffic to a healthy Web server. Sanders configured SiteScope to alert an IT manager if the same error isn't fixed within 15 minutes. But if SiteAssure corrects the problem before then, no human intervention is required. Not surprisingly, Sanders has seen a definite decrease in the number of times his staff gets paged. Although SiteAssure can also be used as a monitoring agent to diagnose problems, Sanders says that SiteScope already does that job well on his network. He has put in the time and effort to tune SiteScope, configuring its rules to look for specific error conditions and various content strings. What's more, he can easily change the name of the IT staffer who is paged if a problem arises that can't be solved quickly. The way SiteScope and SiteAssure work through the problem resolution is helpful. Sanders says it lets him go beyond the cookbook-approach of problem resolution. It lets him look at trends and set up more than one solution to address the generic problem. "There are enough different versions of software and hardware that it's critical that the Web monitoring solution work with your environment," Sanders says. "Flexibility for the future is key." RELATED LINKSReview
We looked at four tools that help combat Web site problems. We found that when you're talking about content management, a picture isn't always worth a thousand words, broken links aren't the only things to watch for and continued vigilance is the best approach. Interactive buyer's guide
Our database has detailed product specs for 31 apps. Use our search form to find the one that best meets your specific criteria, or compare two or more of the apps in a variety of categories.
Issues and trends
Web site management isn't just monitoring Web speeds and feeds anymore. As Web sites have grown in size and scope, managing them has evolved into a complex job that entails not only controlling traffic, but also watching access to the site, speeding the delivery of content, tracking the steps that comprise commercial transactions and managing the data behind the site.
Forum
Discuss Web management issues with review author Thomas Powell, who starts off the discussion with three tips on keeping your site running at peak performance.
