Application Monitoring

NimBUS for Apache HTTP Server

Optimizing Availability and Performance for End Users

Introduction

The Apache HTTP server’s combination of open source flexibility, stability, feature-rich capabilities, and broad platform and OS support have led it to become one of the most widely deployed servers. Today, the Apache server has a market share of around 50%.

Given the product’s widespread market acceptance, Apache servers are increasingly being relied upon in more business critical sites, and in larger, distributed enterprise environments. In an effort to maintain proactive control over their distributed network of servers, enterprise IT administrators have had to resort to manual health checks and SNMP queries to spot potential performance and availability issues. These ad hoc efforts have proven to be inefficient, time-consuming, and ineffective. How can IT organizations streamline administration, while gaining more effective control over Apache HTTP servers’ performance and availability?

The Solution

The NimBUS Apache probe enables organizations to centrally and comprehensively monitor all their Apache-based HTTP servers. The quality of service data provided by the NimBUS Apache probe makes it possible to detect performance trends, enabling administrators to take precautionary actions before users notice any service degradation, and so more effectively optimize performance and availability.

Utilizing the server status module that comes integrated with the Apache server, NimBUS Apache probe gathers a wealth of availability and performance metrics—without requiring any agents or other software to be added to the Web server host.

The NimBUS Apache probe offers an array of features specifically designed to make it easy to configure and manage the monitoring of large, distributed Apache environments. Featuring support for all operating systems and versions of the Apache server software, the probe can automatically discover the Apache installation on a host machine, as well as all virtual hosts.

Once resources are discovered, the NimBUS Apache probe provides immediate access to the required availability and performance metrics through an intuitive tree view.

Platform Support

• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows 2000
• Windows 2003
• Solaris 9 and 10
• Linux 2.3 and above
• Apache 1.3.x and 2.x

Features

• Robust, intuitive management interface makes all administrative tasks fast and easy
• Enables centralized management of distributed Apache HTTP servers
• Includes automatic resource discovery capabilities for simplified configuration
• Supports agentless monitoring of Apache HTTP running on any supported platform

Benefits

• Significantly reduce the complexity of server administration and improve operational efficiency
• Enjoy cost and time savings through streamlined, centralized administration of complex HTTP environments
• Ensure SLA compliance of business critical services

[ Click image to enlarge ]

Monitoring Features that Yield Practical Insights

The NimBUS Apache probe …

• Offers central, agentless monitoring of multiple servers.
• Monitors server performance and response time, and status of individual requested resources.
• Enables real-time alerts that ensure administrators are apprised immediately of issues.
• Provides quality of service data for trend analysis.
• Monitors compliance with service level agreements.

With these robust capabilities, administrators can …

• Detect Apache server problems and degradations more quickly.
• Immediately identify the source of bottlenecks and points of failure.
• More proactively control service levels and minimize downtime.

Checkpoints Monitored