Basic deployment use case

The basic deployment use case, shown in the following figure, requires one instance of each BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring component. This simple system responds to monitoring situations with the following characteristics:

  • The application front end is in a single data center.
  • One Real User Collector instance can handle the profile of traffic between end users and the application.
  • One Real User Analyzer instance provides an adequate number of Watchpoints (120).
  • One Analyzer instance provides enough processing power to generate the various artifacts that the user needs (for example, statistics, dashlets, reports).
  • One Performance Analytics Engine instance can handle all demands for insertion and query capabilities.
  • Segregation of data for multiple tenants is not necessary.

Basic BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring system

deploy_general.png

The BMC Application Performance Management Console is the only component that requires internet access. Device updates occur via your web browser.

For troubleshooting, the command-line interface (CLI) of all components requires access via port 22 (SSH).

Recommendations
  • You can improve performance by deploying instances of the Performance Analytics Engine component on the same host as the Real User Analyzer with which they are associated.
  • When allocating resources such as memory or processor to a component, dedicate those resources to the particular VM instance. Do not rely on shared resources.

Traffic capture

For all use cases, the system can capture end-user traffic in the following ways:

  • Network tap — The preferred method, a network tap copies traffic for the purpose of monitoring. It is a passive device that, if it breaks, does not interrupt network traffic or the functioning of your application. A "smart" tap is better still, because it can filter on IP addresses and port numbers.

    BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring monitors only HTTP and HTTPS traffic, so you can configure a smart tap to copy only traffic on ports 80 and 443. Taps are fast and purpose-built for copying traffic. However, installing or replacing a tap forces you to take a segment of your network offline for a time.

  • Mirror port — It is known as a SPAN port on Cisco devices and a RAP port on 3com devices. You can configure a mirror port on a switch to copy traffic. In many cases, a switch already has a spare port that you can set up as a mirror. However, the device considers mirroring a secondary function, and if the device becomes overloaded, it might suspend mirroring, and the Collector will experience packet drops.

    Note

    You must be sure that the mirror port is copying traffic both to and from the application (bidirectional).

  • Mirror pool — You can invoke a mirror pool on a load balancer, which can be configured to filter traffic. In many cases, a load balancer already has a spare port that you can set up as a mirror. However, the device considers mirroring a secondary function, and if the device becomes overloaded, it might suspend mirroring, and the Collector will experience packet drops.
Capture limitation in Hyper-V

Capture ports must have Promiscuous Mode/Accept enabled. Passive (promiscuous) mode traffic capture is not possible in Hyper-V because the Virtual Switch (vSwitch) will not forward packets to a virtual machine unless it has the MAC address of the virtual machine as a destination . In order to deploy a Real User Collector on Hyper-V, you must use Encapsulated Remote SPAN (ERSPAN) with a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnel to encapsulate and carry the traffic .

For information, see Knowledge Base article KA395990 (Support logon ID required).

Tapping points

You can set up tapping "in front of" or "behind" the load balancer:

  • In front (in the following diagram, see 1) — This is the recommended method. It provides the best visibility of end-user traffic. To monitor HTTPS traffic, if the load balancer or web servers are performing encryption and decryption, you must upload a copy of SSL private keys to the Collector.
  • Behind (in the following diagram, see 2) — You can also tap here, but you must tap incoming and outgoing traffic in the same place. To monitor HTTPS traffic, if encryption and decryption occur on the load balancer, you have no need to upload a copy of SSL private keys to the Collector. However, tapping in this way prohibits reporting of the SSL Latency metric.

Tapping points

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Related topics

Architecture
System-requirements
Preparing-for-installation

Default protocols and port configuration

End-user-experience-metrics

 

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