ManageEngine Frees CIOs from Desktop Bondage with Integrated IT Management on the iPad

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 23-02-2012

Released: February 23, 2012
ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company, today announced it is freeing CIOs and IT managers from their desktop bonds with the launch of its Apple iPad interface for IT360, the companys integrated IT management solution.
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From AC to DC

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 23-02-2012

“Sometimes you need to look back to see ahead”. I never thought this saying will go well with data centers. It seems the new big thing with data centers is the transition from AC to DC architecture. DC took the back seat over a century ago and gave way to AC. So why should we revert to DC? We live in an AC world and things seem okay. Why the change?

There is a good reason to change to DC, at least for data centers. Most of the hardware in a data center runs on Direct Current. Since the power grid offers predominantly Alternating Current, conversion from AC to DC needs to take place before consumption. In the conversion process electricity is lost. DC data centers are between 10 and 20 percent more efficient that their AC counterparts. Switching from AC to DC direct infrastructure eliminates three conversion steps in the electrical system, and also reduces the load on the air conditioning by the reduced amount of heat being created in the conversion process.

There is also one great benefit to DC data centers – real estate. With DC infrastructure you can save between 20 and 40 percent floor space, leaving you plenty of room for further expansion.

Most of our electronics run on DC. Windmill power goes through batteries before reaching is, so does solar. It is basically DC converted to ac and then converted back to DC again, just so we can plug in our hardware. It actually makes great sense to switch back to DC.

The big players are already doing it. <a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook adopted a DC architecture in its <a title="Prineville" href="http://blog.websitepulse.com/<a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook-open-compute-project/” target=”_blank”>Prineville, Ore., data center. SAP spent $128,000 retrofitting a data center at its offices in Palo Alto, Calif., to rely on DC power. In 2010 this move cut SAP’s energy bills by $24,000 per year.

Major names are catching up with the trend pretty fast. ABB bought a controlling interest in Validus DC Systems (manufacturers of data center DC equipment), while General Electric bought Lineage Power.

With the conversion cycles down from 5 for AC to DC to only 2 for DC, things look bright for data centers. More efficient, less hardware, more space, easier maintenance. It all seems pretty good. The cost for the end-user is bound to go down in the next couple of years.

Data centers become more and more reliable. Nowadays, small and midsize businesses tend to trust data centers for their computing needs. There are a number of reasons why you still need complete <a title="server monitoring” href=”http://www.websitepulse.com/services/server.and.network.monitoring.php” target=”_blank”>server monitoring solution, despite all advancements in the IT industry. Test any of our services for 30 days and let us know what you think.

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Testing the speed of comment systems for blogs

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 23-02-2012

<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-12423" title="shutterstock_26192218" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/8fa6b_shutterstock_26192218.jpg” alt=”" width=”150″ height=”168″ />For blogs and many other types of sites, getting an interaction going with readers is essential. But it would seem that many believe that installing a third-party comment system on a website, something like Disqus, IntenseDebate, or LiveFyre, drags down the site’s speed considerably.

Instead of spurring on debate, discussion, and interaction, a slower site could discourage users to take part, and users could instead end up leaving the site. But is it really the case that adding these comment systems slow down sites?

We put five comment systems to the test and found out that there’s less difference in speed than you might think.

Comments are important

First, let’s establish that comments are important for many websites, not just blogs. We think comments are a critical component of our blogs at Pingdom, and we have posted before asking for feedback on which third-party comment system we should go with, if any.  As you can see, we still use wordpress’ built-in comment system, but we are right now looking at alternatives.

For example, in December we noted that Disqus has a commanding lead in the Technorati Top 100 blogs, where it had a 22% market share. In the comments to that article we got many good opinions and suggestions as to what we should do.

But if installing a third-party comment system will slow a site down, then it’s something that many webmasters will not want to do. Since users like speedy sites – customers are often won or lost in mere seconds – webmasters obviously take this very seriously.

Number of files loaded (requests)

So we put five of the more common comment systems to the test:

  1. <a href="http://www.wordpress.org”>wordpress’ built-in comment system
  2. Disqus
  3. <a href="http://www.<a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook.com/”><a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook
  4. IntenseDebate
  5. LiveFyre.

You can read more about how we did the testing at the end of the article.

First, we looked at how many requests were made when using the different comment systems. With our testing site, we saw 6 files being loaded in with just plain wordpress, without any third-party comment system. Disqus and LiveFyre each loaded 9 files, IntenseDebate 11 files, and <a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook 14 files.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12486" title="comment system speed test page size.001" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/a3a4f_comment-system-speed-test-page-size.001.jpg” alt=”" width=”580″ height=”283″ />

Page size

You would perhaps expect that this difference in number of files that are being downloaded mean a big difference in the total size being requested when the site is loaded. However, there is not much difference between plain wordpress and three of the third-party systems: Disqus, IntenseDebate, and LiveFyre. For example, the difference between wordpress and Disqus, was only about 4 kB.

The only comment system that really stuck out in terms of page size was <a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook, which required almost 47 kb extra to be loaded compared to plain wordpress. Although this, in and of itself, may not seem like much, it’s very likely a website will also have other plugins and additions installed, each requiring something additional to be loaded, so the page size can then quickly increase.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12487" title="comment system speed test page size.002" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/adb69_comment-system-speed-test-page-size.002.jpg” alt=”" width=”580″ height=”283″ />

Website performance

But of course page size and number of files don’t necessarily accurately reflect how fast or slow a website is as perceived by a user. Here’s how the sites fared when we looked at the time it took to load them:

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12489" title="comment system speed test.001" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/b2e58_comment-system-speed-test.001.jpg” alt=”" width=”580″ height=”580″ />

What this showed us is that again there is not that much difference between the five different comment systems, with a few exceptions. wordpress is, in each instance, the fastest one to load, but it’s only when testing from Amsterdam it crushes the others.

When we then finally combined the results from each location, and looked at an average loading speed for each of the comment systems, this is what we got:

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12488" title="comment system speed test page size.003" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/6197f_comment-system-speed-test-page-size.0031.jpg” alt=”" width=”580″ height=”283″ />

Again, as you can clearly see, there was not that much of a difference between using wordpress’ built-in comment system and any of the other four, third-party systems. We would even go so far as to guess that there was less of a difference than you would have thought before reading this.

Not a big drag on site performance

The conclusion must be that there is not such a big difference in website performance between running just plain wordpress and having one of these third-party comment systems installed. That is, with the possible exception of <a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook.

Of course this is just a very limited test, which doesn’t necessarily reflect real-life cases, where multiple users access a site running multiple plugins, and other modifications. Where servers are located also play a role, as does where content is located (on a CDN, for example).

That said, we think it indicates that installing a third-party comment system does not necessarily drag down a site’s performance. At least there is not a big difference in performance in our tests.

Could there be other things adding to the issue of users perceiving sites with these add-ons installed as slow? Let us know what you think.

Take our poll

<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12442" title="shutterstock_62266657_small" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/0298b_shutterstock_62266657_small.jpg” alt=”" width=”150″ height=”80″ />We created a simple, one-question poll, trying to gauge what our readers would prefer to see implemented here on the Royal Pingdom site.

Click here to take the poll!

How we tested: We tested on a wordpress site, which was hosted in Sweden. It had the latest wordpress, 3.3.1, and all plugins were up to date. However, we disabled all plugins other than the ones needed for each comment system to work. We also used the default wordpress theme with no modifications, just so we could get a test that was as fair as possible. For each comment system we used the corresponding official wordpress plugin, with the exception of <a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook, for which we used the<a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-<a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook-comments-for-wordpress/installation/”> Simple <a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>facebook Comments plugin. We tested ten times for each comment plugin from all three testing sites that our Tools uses (tools.pingdom.com/fpt): Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Dallas, Texas, USA, and New York City, New York, USA. From the ten tests we then took the average for requests, page size, and performance.

Speech bubble image via Shutterstock.

This was a post from the guys at Pingdom, a site monitoring service that makes sure you’re the first to know when your site is down. Check it out for free.

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Pingdom Podcast #10 – QML and Office for iPad

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 23-02-2012

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12415" title="shutterstock_17943478" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/4861a_shutterstock_17943478.jpeg” alt=”" width=”580″ height=”207″ />Pingdom’s Podcast is a show about Internet, web, security, and mobile stuff. In this show we covered the following topics:

About the show

The show is hosted by Magnus Nystedt at Pingdom and <a href="http://<a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/05/04/twitter-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>twitter.com/dot1ne”>Saleh Esmaeili, User Experience Designer at dots & lines in UAE, currently working on Carbon for Windows Phone, <a href="https://<a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/05/04/twitter-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>twitter.com/#!/carbonandroid”>Android, and iOS.

Join us

We are always looking for interesting guests. If you want to join us, get in touch.

Listen to the show

Subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Listen using the SoundCloud player:

Pingdom Podcast by Pingdom

Microphone picture via Shutterstock.

This was a post from the guys at Pingdom, a site monitoring service that makes sure you’re the first to know when your site is down. Check it out for free.

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Web Server Performance

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 22-02-2012

<img style="margin: 10px; float: right; width: 150px;" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/ccb01_NetworkServerIcon.png” alt=”" />Website Performance: Taxonomy of Tips introduced a classification scheme to help us organize the many performance tips found on the Internet.  Today’s article reviews the tips in the third category, the-server-processes-the-request. Server-side scripting and services accessed by it (e.g., databases) will be reviewed in future articles. Today we look at the web server and its environment.

The Web Server’s Environment

Web server software (e.g., Apache, IIS) runs on a computer and accesses a network. This is its environment. If its environment is slow, the web server is slow. If the environment doesn’t provide resources when they are needed, the web server is slow. It the network connection is slow, the web server is slow. If the hardware and operating system aren’t designed and configured for high performance, especially high performance networking, the web server is slow.

If the web server’s computer runs any other program, the web server competes with that other program for system resources. If the other program uses too many resources, the web server suffers the consequences. The solution, of course, is to run the web server on a dedicated machine. Even services used by the web server (e.g., a database management system) should be installed on other machines and accessed through a high-speed network.

A web server should never swap memory to disk, so more memory is always a good idea. Go ahead and max out.

High-speed hard disks are also mandatory. Built-in, hardware-based caching is essential. Distributing the load across multiple disks is a good idea, but it requires some thought. Distributing the load is different from distributing the files because some files are used more often than others.

If the hardware is not designed for high-speed applications, especially high-speed networking, the web server software never achieves high speeds. A system is as fast as its slowest component, so clock speed, bus width, internal caching, HDD bus type (e.g., SCSI, EIDE), network cards, and other performance-critical concepts must be carefully considered. Do not expect to find what we need amongst lower-priced machines.

Server machine configuration is important, too. The operating system must be finely-tuned to supply and manage available resources. Bandwidth caps, for example, can negatively impact server performance.

We cannot skimp on the Internet service, either. A typical off-the-shelf service designed for web browsing restricts outgoing bandwidth so it can increase incoming bandwidth, exactly the opposite of what a web server needs. Since servers receive small requests and send back larger responses, much of the incoming bandwidth will never be used. Purchase a service with a large outgoing/incoming bandwidth ratio.

DSL and cable connections may provide enough bandwidth for small websites, but they are bottlenecks for larger sites. Look at other options.

Networks should be tuned for performance, especially to minimize packet loss and retransmission rates. Packets are dropped when the number of connection requests exceeds the number of connections. When this happens, the browser has to send the request to the server a second (or perhaps third) time.

Web Server Configuration

Having created a lightning-fast environment for our server, let’s turn our attention to the web server software itself. Apache and Microsoft supply tips for their products, but many of these tips (with appropriate changes) apply to other web servers, too.

Apache gives us the following tips for configuring its web server:

  • at compile time:
    • Choose an appropriate MPM (multi-processing module).
    • Eliminate modules you don’t use.
    • Use the –enable-nonportable-atomics switch if your hardware allows it.
    • Set ExtendedStatus off (which is the default).
    • Run servers without multiple Listen statements if you want the highest performance, but… (read the doc)
    • Implement the scoreboard in shared memory, not on disk.
    • Set -DDYNAMIC_MODULE_LIMIT=0 and don’t use dynamically loaded modules.
  • Control the MaxClients setting so that your server does not spawn so many children that it starts swapping.
  • Turn HostnameLookups off to avoid reverse DNS lookups for every request.
  • Allow or Deny should use IP addresses rather than domain names (if possible).
  • Avoid symlinks security checking if you can. Configure it correctly if you can’t.
  • Use AllowOverrideNone.
  • Specify a complete list of options with DirectoryIndex (e.g., “DirectoryIndex index.cgi index.pl index.shtml index.html” instead of “DirectoryIndex index”) where you list the most common choice first.
  • Explicitly create a type-map file rather than using MultiViews.
  • Depending on your platform, turn memory mapping on or off.
  • Depending on your platform, turn sendfile on or off.
  • When more than 4 children are spawned per second, a message is sent to the ErrorLog. If you get a lot of these errors, tune MinSpareServers, MaxSpareServers, and StartServers.
  • Set MaxRequestsPerChild appropriately.
  • Adjust KeepAliveTimeout to match your production server’s experience.

Please consult the original document for the details.

Microsoft also gives us tips for configuring its web server:

  • Log only essential information or completely disable logging.
  • Disable ASP debugging in production environments.
  • Tune the value of the ASP Threads Per Processor Limit property.
  • Tune the value of the ASP Queue Length property.
  • Tune the MaxPoolThreads registry entry.
  • Disable WCF services tracing.
  • Configure ASP.NET MaxConcurrentRequests for IIS 7.5/7.0 Integrated mode.
  • Enable HTTP compression.

Please consult the original document for the details.

Here are a few tips found in various places around the web (see the references at the bottom of this article):

  • Disable reverse DNS lookups.
  • Disable logging (or keep it to a bare minimum).
  • Disable unused plugins, modules, options, features, etc.
  • Have the server automatically specify a character set in HTTP headers.
  • Limit the application pool queue length.
  • Periodically restart worker processes.
  • Recycle application pools.

The last few tips come to us courtesy of Mikayel Vardanyan’s IIS performance tips article, a must-read if you use IIS.

Web Server Usage

Consider all resources as precious (disregard opinions that say it doesn’t matter). Don’t let any process treat any resource as a commodity. Fix programs that spawn a large number of processes, don’t release connections, etc. Add more memory if you must, but it’s better to locate and fix the code that causes the problem.

Web-Server monitoring

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, what performs well today may not perform well tomorrow. Not surprisingly, continual monitoring is essential. The Monitis cloud-based monitoring system not only keeps an eye on our website, but also notifies us when measurements go outside the bounds we set.

Application performance monitoring and system performance monitoring are both important. The Application Performance monitoring Primer (part one, <a href="http://blog.monitor.us/2011/12/the-application-performance-monitoring-primer-part-2-of-3/”>part two, and <a href="http://blog.monitor.us/2011/12/the-application-performance-monitoring-primer-part-3-of-3/”>part three) talks about monitoring from the end-user’s viewpoint. See <a href="http://blog.monitor.us/2011/11/monitoring-wmi-data-with-vbscript/”>monitoring WMI Data With VbScript for information about monitoring system performance data in Windows. See Custom Monitors in Monitis with Python and M3 – Monitis Monitor Manager for information about monitoring the output of command-line tools, which is a handy way to monitor Unix system performance.

References

Apache Performance Tuning.  Published by Apache Software Foundation at httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/misc/perf-tuning.html.  Accessed 2012.01.31.

The Application Performance monitoring Primerby Warren Gaebel.

  • Part One published 2011.12.05 by Monitis at blog.mon.itor.us/2011/12/the-apm-primer-part-1-of-3.  Accessed 2012.01.13.
  • Part Two published 2011.12.12 by Monitis at <a href="http://blog.mon.itor.us/2011/12/the-application-performance-monitoring-primer-part-2-of-3/”>blog.mon.itor.us/2011/12/the-application-performance-monitoring-primer-part-2-of-3/.  Accessed 2012.01.13.
  • Part Three published by Monitis at <a href="http://blog.monitor.us/2011/12/the-application-performance-monitoring-primer-part-3-of-3/”>blog.monitor.us/2011/12/the-application-performance-monitoring-primer-part-3-of-3.  Accessed 2012.01.13.
 

Custom Monitors in Monitis with Python by Hovhannes Avoyan.  Published 2011.07.07 by Monitis at blog.monitis.com/index.php/2011/07/07/custom-monitors-in-monitis-with-python.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Diagnosing Slow Web Servers with Time to First Byte by Andy King.  Published 2011.12.10 by Website Optimization, LLC at websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/time-to-first-byte.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

The GitHub repository for Monitis’ Python scripts..  Accessed 2012.01.13.

<a href="https://github.com/monitisexchange/Windows-monitoring-Scripts/tree/master/vbscript/WMI”>The GitHub repository for Monitis’ WMI scripts written in VB Script.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

How to Monitor Windows Servers with VBScript, WMI, and Monitis by Hovhannes Avoyan.  Published 2011.06.14 by Monitis at blog.monitis.com/index.php/2011/06/14/how-to-monitor-windows-servers-with-vbscript-wmi-and-monitis.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

M3 – Monitis Monitor Manager by Dan Fruehauf.  Published 2011.07.21 by Monitis at blog.monitis.com/index.php/2011/07/21/m3-monitis-monitor-manager.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Monitis Open API.  Published by Monitis at portal.monitis.com/api.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Monitis Transaction monitoring.  Published by Monitis at <a href="http://portal.monitis.com/index.php/products/transactions-monitoring“>portal.monitis.com/index.php/products/transactions-monitoring.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

monitoring WMI Data With VbScript by Warren Gaebel.  Published 2011.11.30 by Monitis at <a href="http://blog.mon.itor.us/2011/11/monitoring-wmi-data-with-vbscript/”>blog.mon.itor.us/2011/11/monitoring-wmi-data-with-vbscript.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Optimizing IIS Performance.  Published by Microsoft at msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee377050.aspx  Accessed 2012.01.31.

Top 8 Application-Based IIS Server Performance Tips by Mikayel Vardanyan.  Published 2011.06.13 by Monitis at blog.monitis.com/index.php/2011/06/13/top-8-application-based-iis-server-performance-tips.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Website Performance: Taxonomy of Tips by Warren Gaebel.  Published 2011.12.29 by Monitis at blog.mon.itor.us/2011/12/website-performance-taxonomy-of-tips.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Try Monitis For Free.  A 15-day free trial.  Your opportunity to see how easy it is to use the Monitis cloud-based monitoring system.  Credit card not required.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

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Nokia and Symbian still on top of the mobile web, but for how long?

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 22-02-2012

<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-12389" title="shutterstock_34611619_small" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/75897_shutterstock_34611619_small.jpg” alt=”" width=”115″ height=”170″ />Perceptions matter, and the perception of Nokia in the news, on the web, and in the minds of many, is that things aren’t going that well. Even in the Pingdom office, we hear “Nokia is doomed,” but do the numbers support this belief?

Looking at the statistics, Symbian leads the mobile operating system race with just over 30% of web browsing traffic. That’s down slightly from late last year, when we noted that Symbian finished 2011 as the top mobile operating system, with almost 34% of the mobile OS market.

What is even more interesting, however, is that Nokia is also ahead when we look at figures for all the mobile handset vendors. In fact, Nokia is way ahead of Apple, and Android lags far behind.

Symbian still on top, but Android is growing fast

In the latest figures we looked at, covering the first three weeks of February 2012, we can see that Symbian is still the top mobile OS, with a 30.3% market share. Apple’s iOS come in just behind Symbian at 25.35%, and Android follows at 24.72%. BlackBerry OS has lost a lot of ground and lands at 6.8%, just ahead of Samsung at 5.06%. Samsung’s bada manages to gather up 0.52%, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone has a 0.4% share of the mobile OS market. What used to be HP’s webOS barely manages to score enough to get in the rankings with only 0.04%.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12387" title="symbian feb 2012.001" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/18dcb_symbian-feb-2012.001.jpg” alt=”" width=”580″ height=”340″ />

Nokia is top mobile handset vendor

If we instead look at the market share divided on vendor, Nokia manages to get a 36. 09% market share, ahead of Apple at 30.41%, and Samsung at 14.82%. RIM falls in at 8.19%, Sony Ericsson at 3.54%, and HTC at 3.52%.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12388" title="symbian feb 2012.002" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/2aecf_symbian-feb-2012.002.jpg” alt=”" width=”580″ height=”340″ />

Even if you make a rough estimate for how much of this that Android accounts for, by adding up the numbers for vendors playing in that space, like Samsung, HTC, and Motorola, Android only reaches about 25% (note the 24.72% market share for Android in the first chart). And that’s not taking into account that not all handsets from these vendors will run Android. Both Samsung and HTC, for example, also make Windows Phone handsets.

Nokia may be on top, but for how long?

It seems like we keep hearing bad news concerning Nokia; that its financial results aren’t that good and that sales are dwindling. And we think most would agree that the Finnish mobile giant squandered the strong grip it had on the market before Apple came along with the first iPhone.

Although Nokia and Symbian still come out on top according to these numbers, the company must be looking hard and fast at how it can get back to its former glory. It’s too early to tell what effect, if any, Nokia’s launch into Windows Phone territory has had. Although Windows Phone’s part of the mobile OS market is a minuscule 0.4%, we also don’t know how much of that is Nokia. But obviously, with that small market share, that doesn’t matter much.

Nokia phone picture via Shutterstock.

This was a post from the guys at Pingdom, a site monitoring service that makes sure you’re the first to know when your site is down. Check it out for free.

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BerkeleyDB Monitoring with Monitis Custom Monitors

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 22-02-2012

<a href="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/7c3d3_Berkeleydb.gif”><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2865" title="Berkeleydb" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/7c3d3_Berkeleydb.gif” alt=”" width=”129″ height=”39″ />In a previous post we discussed how to improve the performance of BerkeleyDB by tuning the cache size. Let’s see how Monitis can help you keep tabs on the cache hit rate and other critical database metrics. We use a custom monitor created by a perl script, monitor_bdb.pl, which can be downloaded from our repository on GitHub. To familiarize yourself with its parameters, run ‘moniror_dbd --help‘. As always, we encourage you to look at the source code to understand its inner workings.

Before we start collecting data, we need to register the new monitor. To do that, invoke the script with the --register option. You have to specify the path to your BerkeleyDB environment and your Monitis-assigned apiKey and secretKey (To find out your specific keys, go to “Tools -> API -> API Keys” menu in the Monitis console): Read the rest of this entry »

Website Performance: Client to Server Wrapup

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 20-02-2012

<img style="margin: 10px; float: right; width: 150px;" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/c842f_gift.wrapped.jpg” alt=”" />Website Performance: Taxonomy of Tips introduced a classification scheme to help us organize the many performance tips found on the Internet.  Today’s article wraps up the discussion about the journey-from-the-client-to-the-server category by outlining a few tips that weren’t discussed in previous articles.

Minimize the Number of Connections

Establishing connections is relatively costly, so it is no surprise that performance is better with a smaller number of connections. One way to accomplish this is to combine multiple components into a single download. This eliminates all but one of those connections. Example: If we combine our play, pause, stop, forward, and backward images into one sprite, we can eliminate four of the five connections.

Scripts, images, and style sheets are great candidates for this tip. They can be combined and the number of connections can be reduced. However, keep in mind the needed-now, needed-soon, and maybe-needed-later categories described in Website Performance: Downloading JavaScript.

Keep It Short & Simple

Perhaps the easiest way to eliminate connections is to eliminate components. This is an example of the age-old KISS principle, which says to keep it short and simple.

There is a trade-off between simplicity and functionality, though. The more functionality we offer on a page, the bigger and more complex that page will be. This most likely means an increase in the number of components. KISS reduces complexity, but it can also reduce functionality.

There will be some resistance to the idea of reducing functionality because increased functionality is believed to provide more benefit to the user. However, keep in mind that it may just as easily confuse and irritate the user. Consider reducing functionality by splitting complex web pages into two. That approach may (or may not) be suitable for your application. Going to the extreme in either direction is not recommended.

IMHO, designing with human factors in mind and applying useability testing seem to have fallen by the wayside over the last few years. I am suggesting that there may be ways of offering more meaningful interactions by reducing the complexity and clutter on our web pages.

Fit the Request Into a Single Packet

Ideally the request sent from the client to the server should fit into a single IP packet. If it goes over this limit by even one byte, a second packet is required. Every packet used affects performance.

Packets are typically 1,500 bytes long, but other things need to fit in that 1,500 bytes, too. Packet overhead and browser-added headers are not under the webapp’s control, but they occupy space in the packet nevertheless and we cannot predict how many bytes they will use. Our goal, then, is not to limit our request to 1,500 bytes, but to make it as small as we can and hope that everything fits into one packet.

Since cookies and get/post data occupy packet space, our goal should be to minimize their size as much as we can. Consider using server-side state data (e.g., session variables, databases) instead of client-side state data.

Avoid SSL

HTTPS (HTTP with SSL) requires handshaking and negotiation that HTTP does not use, which means HTTP performs better than HTTPS. If the page doesn’t need HTTPS’s encryption, use HTTP instead.

This applies to individual components, too. If a component doesn’t need encryption, don’t use encryption. [I wonder how many companies are encrypting their logos?]

Avoid Redirects

Redirects occur when a page or component is specified by an outdated URL. The client sends a request to the server. The server sees that the resource has been moved. Rather than returning the resource from its new location, the server sends a response back to the client to tell it where the resource is now located. Having learned that the page or component has been moved, the client then starts the whole process all over again by issuing yet another request.

If this situation is caused by a URL written into one of our web pages, we must take responsibility for the performance degradation that results from the extra request. We could have resolved the problem when we moved the component to its new location by correcting the URL in all our web pages at that time. Clearly there is no excuse for the extra request.

We can’t stop users from typing a URL into the location field of the browser, but we may be able to send them to the correct place with an internal rewrite instead of an external redirect. The server fixes the problem instead of telling the browser to. The extra trip is thereby avoided.

Some websites make a point of listing their public-access URL’s and then never changing them. This gives the users a consistent list of entry points into the system. The designers then make sure those URL’s are always valid, so well-behaved users never suffer from redirects.

Add the Backslash

It’s simple, and it’s been said often enough: When we specify a directory’s URL, we should always append the backslash. If we don’t, the server has to fix the problem or ask the browser to fix it. The latter is much more costly than the former, but both are unnecessary. All we have to do is always add the backslash to a directory’s URL.

References

Analysis of HTTP Performance Problems by Simon E Spero. Republished 1995.06.02 by ibiblio at http://www.ibiblio.org/mdma-release/http-prob.html. Accessed 2012.01.25. This article is ancient by Internet standards. It is included here because it helps us understand foundational concepts that are still relevant today.

Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site by Yahoo’s Exceptional Performance Team.  Published by Yahoo at developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Diagnosing Slow Web Servers with Time to First Byte by Andy King.  Published 2011.12.10 by Website Optimization, LLC at websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/time-to-first-byte.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

High Performance Web Sites – 14 Rules for Faster-Loading Web Sites by Steve Souders.  Published by Steve Souders at SteveSouders.com/hpws/rules.php.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Minimize Request Overhead. Published by google at <a href="http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/request.html”>http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/request.html.  Accessed 2012.01.21.

Minimize Round-Trip Times.  Published by google at <a href="http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rtt.html”>code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rtt.html.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Monitis Free Page Load Testing Tool.  Published by Monitis at pageload.monitis.com.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Web Performance Best Practices.  Published by google at <a href="http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rules_intro.html”>code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rules_intro.html.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Website Performance: Taxonomy of Tips by Warren Gaebel.  Published 2011.12.29 by Monitis at blog.monitor.us/2011/12/website-performance-taxonomy-of-tips.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Try Monitis For Free.  A 15-day free trial.  Your opportunity to see how easy it is to use the Monitis cloud-based monitoring system.  Credit card not required.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

The Monitis Exchange at GitHub.  This is the official repository for scripts, plugins, and SDKs that make it a breeze to use the Monitis system to its full potential.  Accessed 2012.01.13.

Go to Source

New! Cloud-based MySQL Database Monitoring from Monitis

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 20-02-2012

New feature provides significantly faster insight and root cause analysis

SAN JOSE, Calif., February, 15, 2012Monitis, the leading cloud and web application monitoring software provider, today announces that it has added comprehensive MySQL database monitoring to its award-winning Application Performance Management & monitoring platform. The robust Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tool enables users to gain significantly faster insight when conducting root cause analysis.

The <a href="http://portal.monitis.com/index.php/products/mysql-monitoring“>MySQL monitoring feature includes 246 monitoring variables and more than 21 different metrics to provide one of the easiest to use, yet comprehensive database monitoring tools available. It was first introduced into the free Monitor.Us platform back in June last year and has seen the code battle hardened by many hundred free users over the last 8 months.

Hovhannes Avoyan, founder and General Manager at Monitis commented “This feature makes it easy for systems administrators and web developers to measure and monitor the performance of their php environments such as joomla and wordpress, from multiple locations around the world. It gives them a true picture of application performance from where ever in the world the user is. Because the Monitis MySQL monitor is part of the Monitis platform it provides an unprecedented holistic view of software, database and underlying hardware, giving pressured techs the ability to quickly and easily diagnose the root cause of slow application performance.”

The service uses a small Linux agent that can monitor inside an organization’s firewall and distributed systems. The Monitis agent connects to a local or remote database and collects a variety of health and performance metrics that are graphically displayed in real-time on a web-based dashboard. Users can also set up notifications (should their database go down or pass a certain level of access volume) based on client-defined thresholds and rules.

Some metrics tracked and reported on by Monitis — which can be set up in minutes — include:

<a href="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/20537_MySQL.png”><img class="alignnone wp-image-5739" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/20537_MySQL.png” alt=”MySQL monitoring Metrics” width=”305″ height=”304″ />

  • Database size
  • Resource utilization
  • Analysis of responsiveness/latency
  • Analysis of throughput
  • Database usage
  • Scalability

“Monitis’ SaaS delivery and pay as you go pricing mean it’s easy to get going and has low set up and running costs. It puts the power of MySQL monitoring in the reach of techs who otherwise wouldn’t have had the time to set up or budget to afford such a comprehensive solution.” adds Avoyan

Monitis MySQL monitoring provides much greater check-in frequency, as low as every 5 minutes, and the ability to check the performance of the database from multiple locations around the world.

 

About Monitis

Monitis is the leading provider of Cloud-based Application Performance Management & monitoring solutions for System Admins and Web Developers. Over 80,000 users worldwide have chosen Monitis to increase uptime and user experience of their services and products.

Monitis’ core product offerings include website monitoring, website full page load testing, transaction monitoring, application and database monitoring, cloud resource monitoring, and server and internal network monitoring. What makes Monitis’ software different is how fast it is to deploy, its flexible pricing and feature-rich technology that provides a comprehensive single-pane view of on-premise and off-premise infrastructure and applications.

More information on <a href="http://portal.monitis.com/index.php/products/mysql-monitoring“>Monitis MySQL monitoring is available on our website.

<a href="http://blog.monitor.us/2012/02/new-cloud-based-mysql-database-monitoring-from-monitis/” rel=”nofollow”>Go to Source

Pingdom Podcast #9 – DDoS attacks

Filed Under (Website Monitoring) by admin on 19-02-2012

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12378" title="shutterstock_53154916" src="http://www.website-monitoring.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/5eef6_shutterstock_53154916.jpeg” alt=”" width=”580″ height=”161″ />

Pingdom’s Podcast is a weekly show about Internet, web, security, and mobile stuff. In this show we covered the following topics:

About the show

The show is hosted by Magnus Nystedt at Pingdom. For this show <a href="http://<a href="http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/05/04/twitter-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/”>twitter.com/nsolling”>Nicolai Solling, Director of Technology Services help AG, is the cohost. help AG is a strategic information security consulting company.

Join us

We are always looking for interesting guests. If you want to join us, get in touch.

Listen to the show

Subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Listen using the SoundCloud player:

Pingdom Podcast by Pingdom

Security image via Shutterstock.

This was a post from the guys at Pingdom, a site monitoring service that makes sure you’re the first to know when your site is down. Check it out for free.

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