Advanced Monitoring: APM Tools - Dynatrace

Advanced performance monitoring tools like Dynatrace’s are available for system administrators looking for more detailed information about how their Liferay DXP servers and instances are performing. Dynatrace’s web-based dashboards can display real time system info on memory usage, garbage collection, CPU levels, and heap dumps. Each dashboard is its own detailed report. System administrators can view up to date information on Liferay DXP servers’ performance metrics down to the individual user.

To use Dynatrace’s dashboards with Liferay DXP, three things are needed: a Dynatrace client which contains the user interface (UI), a Dynatrace license, and the Dynatrace agent.

Lastly, system administrators should also sign up for a Dynatrace account if they have not already done so; this way they get access to Dynatrace’s support teams.

Dashboards

Multiple dashboards are available to display ongoing transactions and processes. Because the entire Liferay DXP stack can be analyzed, there are dashboards for every component: web server, browser, application server, and database. Some of the images below are from a single instance (not clustered) of one application server (Apache Tomcat 8.0.32) connected to a MySQL 5.7 server. Installations differ but the default dashboards are the same.

Figure 1: The top level gives you an interface for selecting a component to analyze.

Select Tomcat.

This dashboard shows the internal state of the application server. During a load test, these graphs would be much more interesting. You get a breakdown of CPU usage, memory, and more.

Figure 2: Monitoring the application server during a load gives you valuable information on your system's performance.

Returning to the root level allows administrators to view performance metrics from other parts of the environment. For example, clicking MySQL shows database transactions, which you can do without installing an agent: deploying a separate database agent is optional because the Dynatrace Collector contains database management functionality out of the box (see Database Monitoring.

Figure 3: Database transactions can be viewed as they happen.

One available default dashboard tracks user experience; Dynatrace can monitor user activity on a web browser or mobile app. There are three categories for each visit: Satisfied, Tolerating, and Frustrated. According to Dynatrace, a satisfied visit is one in which 1) no action failed; and 2) more than 50% of all actions were satisfied. On the other end of the spectrum, a frustrated visit is one in which 1) the last action failed (the web site does not work); and 2) the user’s lastaction was frustrated (the web site was too slow). See How Does UEM Work? for more information.

Figure 4: Browser metrics help you find client-side performance problems.

If you have created a custom dashboard (usually in XML format; more information is below on the FastPack developed for Liferay), you can import it through on this menu.

1. Click the Dashboard menu → Open.

2. Navigate to where the dashboard has been located.

3. Click Open Dashboard.

Liferay Digital Enterprise FastPack

The Dynatrace FastPack for Liferay provides a pre-configured Dynatrace profile custom-tailored for Liferay Digital Enterprise 7.0 environments. It contains sensors, a template system profile with measures and business transactions, and dashboards for the Liferay DXP platform. If you’re using UEM, you also get conversion and visitor tagging.

The Liferay Digital Enterprise FastPack is available for download on the Dynatrace site. These dashboards go beyond the out of the box dashboards already available through Dynatrace.

The fastpack is distributed as a .dtp file. To install the fastpack, follow these steps:

1. In the Dynatrace Client, click Tools →_ Manage Plugins_.

2. Click Install Plugin….

3. Navigate to where the .dtp file was downloaded.

4. Click OK in the Import Resource Pack confirmation window.

5. Click OK to close the Configure Plugins window.

6. Liferay now appears in the Systems Profile left control panel.

7. Disable any other profile so that the Liferay profile is the only active profile.

Dynatrace Client Configuration

As a prerequisite to running both the latest Dynatrace Client and Liferay DXP, Java JDK 1.8 (or its equivalent) must be installed. Be sure to have enough CPU cores allocated in the JVM as well as for running Liferay DXP. Install the Fastpack plugin after the Client has been configured.

1. Install the Dynatrace environment. Follow the steps from the Dynatrace Installation Step 1. The installation files are available for Windows, Unix, and Linux systems.

   Windows users, download then install the full .msi file (approx. 770MB).

   I. Be sure to check Immediately activate the Dynatrace .NET agent. II. Be sure to check Immediately activate the Dynatrace IIS agent. III. Be sure to start all three: Dynatrace Server, Collector, and Client

   Linux users, the installation files are packaged as executable jar. Download the full jar. Run the command java -jar dynatrace-full-linux-x86-64.jar wherever the jar has been downloaded.

2. Start the Dynatrace instance and deploy the Dynatrace trial license (see below).

   a. Request the Dynatrace license key; the key is available either through your web credentials or from a link in the welcome email. Place the file in a suitable location. When the client starts for the first time and prompts for the license, navigate to the file.

   b. Once the license has been successfully imported, the Dynatrace Client will prompt for a server restart.

3. After the server restarts, verify that the following services have started:

   • Dynatrace Server
   • Dynatrace Front-End
   • Dynatrace Collector

   You can do this by checking to see if the processes are running:

   # ps -A | grep dt    
   

   You should see output like this:

   3954 ?00:00:43 dtcollector 
   5924 ?00:01:54 dtserver 
   5949 ?00:00:42 dtfrontendserver 
   

   Use netstat to make sure the client is listening on the proper ports:

   # netstat -an | grep 021    
   

   You should see output like this:

    tcp  0  0 :::2021 :::* LISTEN (port for dynaTrace client connections)    
    tcp  0  0 :::8021 :::* LISTEN (the dynaTrace server's web interface) 
   
   # netstat -an | grep 99    
   

   You should see output like this:

   tcp        0      0 :::6699    :::*     LISTEN    (port for dynaTrace collector connections)    
   tcp        0      0 :::9998    :::*     LISTEN    (port for dynaTrace agent connections)
   

Congratulations! You have the Dynatrace client installed!

Dynatrace Agent Configuration

Deploy the Dynatrace agent to the Liferay DXP servers. The agent sits on top of existing infrastructure (in this case, Apache Tomcat).

1. Download the agent .jar for your operating system. Use this agent only if the Dynatrace Client and the Liferay DXP bundle on Tomcat are connected remotely. Administrators must install the agent on the same machine Liferay DXP is on.

2. The location of the agent must be set in each application server. If the client and Liferay DXP are on the same machine, you don’t have to install anything else (the agent is already included in the full installation), but you do have to configure it. This configuration is only for testing and demonstration purposes; the Dynatrace Client’s JVM requirements can be different from Liferay DXP’s. Either way, edit the setenv.bat|sh:

   `-agentpath:${location of the dtagent .dll}"=name=Tomcat_Monitoring,server=liferay-cfe3684:9998`    
   

   For example in Windows:

   -agentpath:"C:\Program Files\Dynatrace\Dynatrace 6.5\agent\lib64\dtagent.dll"=name=Tomcat_Monitoring,server=liferay-cfe3684:9998     
   

   For other application servers, place the property in the file where other JVM settings are set (for example, standalone.conf.bat for JBoss EAP).

3. Connect the Liferay DXP with the Dynatrace agent to the Dynatrace instance. Refer to Dynatrace’s documentation for further details. Click the Application Servers tab on the right. The example below uses Apache Tomcat but according to Dynatrace, the steps are virtually the same for JBoss and WebSphere.

   a. Select Client → Monitoring. b. Select Java. c. Select App Server. d. Select Apache 5+. e. Select Java 5 or later (64 bit). f. Select whether the Tomcat bundle is local or remote. g. As long as the connector is on, it should find the Liferay DXP instance. For testing purposes, the Liferay DXP bundle is local.

4. After you import the fast pack, you must a. Select the Liferay profile as the only active system profile in Dynatrace, and b. Restart the application server.

5. Then your Liferay agent starts sending data into the newly imported profile.

Performance Testing

Systems administrators must often perform load testing as part of an overall tuning process. The Dynatrace Client is a great tool to monitor and then analyze the performance of your system. For demonstration purposes, JMeter was used to create a simple load test, and the Dynatrace Client captured the results illustrated below.

Figure 5: Dynatrace Client can generate thread dump reports.

The Dynatrace Client shows garbage collection over time as the number of threads increase during the load test.

Figure 6: Garbage collection statistics at the beginning of the load test.

Here, the Dynatrace Client continues to display in real time the high consumption during the load test.

Figure 7: Garbage collection statistics at the middle of the load test.

One more dashboard of note during a performance test is the CPU Sampling dashboard. The image below is a report generated to capture the CPU process over 100 seconds. This is helpful to show administrators unwanted processes slowing down a Liferay DXP instance.

Figure 8: Dynatrace Client can generate a CPU Sampling report.

All these dashboards come out-of-the-box, and even more dashboards are available after deploying the Dynatrace FastPack developed for Liferay DXP. Using Dynatrace provides many advantages for performance monitoring.

Resources

1. Dynatrace Community
2. Dynatrace Installation Step 1
3. Dynatrace Installation Step 2
4. Dynatrace Installation Step 3