IBMs WebSphere is one of the leaders in the application server field, but it lacks self-monitoring software. In an age when application performance is the equivalent of Web service delivery, the application server needs monitoring software, claim officials from a 25-year-old monitoring software company, Candle Corp.
Candle is the supplier of the Omegamon mainframe management system, and it is now offering Omegamon eXtended Edition for WebSphere Application Server and its host operating system. Since WebSphere is a Java application server, Omegamon XE can offer statistics on how quickly an Enterprise Java Bean is launched when it is called or the response times to user requests to running applications, said Mary Hall, a marketing manager for Candles WebSphere monitoring product line.
“Our installed customer base is very blue. Many have already implemented IBM WebSphere. But they needed to get inside it and see how it is performing,” she said.
Omegamons WebSphere performance monitoring includes a JVM profiler, which summarizes key Java Virtual Machine information, such as whether it is effectively performing garbage collection. JavaBeans are assembled and launched for specific functions, then collected as garbage when their task is done. Failing to collect garbage burdens the memory of a system to the point where it can bog down with the number of unused software objects that it is retaining, said Tony Spina, product manager for Candles WebSphere monitoring products.
That characteristic makes Omegamon XE useful not only for monitoring running applications but in reviewing the performance of application under development as well, said Spina.
“It can be used in the development phase to determine when an application component is failing,” he said. It can view the specific performance of Enterprise JavaBeans; the small server command programs known as Servlets; or Java Server Pages for placing interactive Java applets in an HTML page, he said.
The monitoring software can capture transaction rates and chart them over an extended time period. If a single application is sagging under the burden of meeting calls for transactions, Omegamon can instantiate another version of the application and share the workload with it, said Hall.
The management capabilities are displayed in a new graphical user interface on the XE version of Omegamon, and a related Omegamon DE performance monitor that can integrate information from multiple systems or multiple Omegamon XE performance monitors.
Omegamon XE is available immediately and priced at $440 per server. Pricing on Omegamon DE varies, depending on the number of systems it is managing and number of users.