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HP SiteScope integration with Amazon CloudWatch - Auto Scaling AWS-hosted Applications

 
Amy Feldman| May 11, 2011
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced this week new capabilities for CloudWatch, allowing custom metrics to be reported into the CloudWatch monitoring service.  The recently released HP SiteScope version (11.10) has out of the box support for integrating with Amazon CloudWatch.

 

Up until now, AWS’ Auto Scaling feature could automatically manage the size of a group of Amazon EC2 instances, but supported only a limited set of system metrics provided by CloudWatch as the input for doing so. Enabling customers to report custom metrics into CloudWatch service makes the Auto Scaling feature much more powerful. AWS customers can now define their scaling policies based on metrics such as end user experience or based on known application bottlenecks.

 

For example, you can define your Auto Scaling policy based on the total time it takes your users to complete a business transaction (e.g. product search, checkout, etc). This type of metric is more aligned with the business impact and SLAs than an infrastructure metric such as CPU utilization. Another use case would be to tune your Auto Scaling policy based on the known application bottlenecks. For example, you can define your Auto Scaling policy based on the number of logged-in users or active threads.

 

Customers can enable this integration by adding “_enableAmazonIntegration=true” to the HP SiteScope master.config file.  A new integration type will show up in the integration preferences dialog.

 

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This new integration allows HP SiteScope customers to report selected metrics into CloudWatch. This integration follows the same paradigm as HP SiteScope generic data integration. First, create a SiteScope Tag to be used for the integration:

 

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Then, tag relevant monitors with the newly created tag. Note that the tag value name and tag value description are used to identify the metric in CloudWatch. Select the tag in the CloudWatch integration preferences screen.  

 

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Once sent to CloudWatch, those metrics can be charted on the AWS Management Console and used for Auto Scaling.

 

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If you already defined an Auto Scaling Policy, you can create a CloudWatch Alarm and associate the needed metric with a scale up or scale down Action:

 

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You can also use HP SiteScope’s AWS Monitor to make sure that your metrics make their way to AWS:

 

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AWS customers can also embed HP Diagnostics Probes in their AMIs (Amazon Machine Images), allowing newly launched instances to automatically show up in the HP Diagnostics UI. In order to achieve probe ID uniqueness, you can include the hostname in the probe id. For example, you can use the following in your Java startup script: “-Dprobe.id=my-app-$HOSTNAME”.

 

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Note that using the HP Diagnostics Topology view you can diagnose load balancing fairness and visually see the time it takes the AWS ELB (Elastic Load Balancing) to add new instances to the load balancer. You can also visually make sure that scaling kicks in as needed. 

 

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Overall, using HP APM Products in your AWS Cloud environment can help you assure that your applications and services are performing as expected. When integrated with your on-prem or HP SaaS-based BSM suite, you can also manage your SLAs in a consolidated fashion - a single pane of glass for all of your applications whether on-Prem or in the cloud.  

 

This blog was written by Udi Shagal and Amy Feldman

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About the Author(s)
  • Beth Parker is a Product Marketing Manager for HP Software. Beth is responsible for outbound marketing and sales enablement for the HP Systems Management portfolio including HP Operations Manager, Operations Agents, Smart Plug-ins and SiteScope. She is based in Naples, Florida.
  • Doug is a subject matter expert for network and system performance management. With an engineering career spanning 25 years at HP, Doug has worked in R&D, support, and technical marketing positions, and is an ambassador for quality and the customer interest.
  • This account is for guest bloggers. The blog post will identify the blogger.
  • Jim is a technology marketer with over two decades experience in product launch, branding, and product marketing
  • Jimmy Augustine is Director of Product Marketing within HP Software and leads the HP Application Performance Management and Configuration Management System product marketing teams. JImmy has been with HP for over a year. Prior to HP, Jimmy was VP of Marketing for ASG Software Solutions. Prior to joining ASG, Jimmy was at IBM for ten years. He was a marketing manager for IBM's Outsourcing business, the market leader, and helped launch IBM's market leading web hosting business. Jimmy holds an M.S. in industrial engineering and a B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida. Jimmy resides in Naples, FL with his wife and two children.
  • Ken is responsible for worldwide marketing of HP’s virtualization and systems management products. His experience includes over 20 years in marketing, product management and business development. In addition to IT management software, his background includes enterprise storage and systems.
  • Mark Pinskey is the Product Marketing Manager for HP Network Management Solutions within HP Software and concentrates on HP's Network Management Center software solutions. Mark has been with HP for over 29 years. Prior to HP, Mark has worked within the IT organization for the FBI in Washington D.C.. Mark has spent much time evangelizing HP's Automated Network Management solution and the value proposition this solution provides to customers. Mark holds a dual major B.S. in Political Science and Biology and additional credentialis in Computer Science. Mark resides in the Cleveland, Ohio area with his wife and two grown children.
  • Ramkumar Devanathan works in the IOM-Customer Assist Team (CAT) providing technical assistance to HP Software pre-sales and support teams with Operations Management products including vPV, SHO, VISPI. He has experience of more than 12 years in this product line, working in various roles ranging from developer to product architect.
  • Sonja is a Product Marketing Manager for the HP Software Operations Center portfolio of products. She has 19 years of product marketing, product management, engineering, and consulting experience with privately-held, start-up, and Fortune 500 companies. Sonja has been responsible for positioning, messaging, strategy, and go-to-market programs for both consumer and B2B product lines.  Companies that she has worked for include InstallShield, Loudcloud, Sun Microsystems, and AT&T.


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