Internet services and servers like file, mail or web servers are frequently and directly used by end users or mission-critical applications. The respective services are based upon standardized protocols that control data exchange across networks (WAN and LAN).

End-to-end availability and performance of these services are key criteria for their business value.

Web server:

Web servers communicate via standard Internet protocols http and https on the basis of TCP/IP. The protocol is stateless - a new connection is established for every enquiry. Possible error situations and causes are diverse and often times connected with the availability, configuration or scaling of the web server or of the applications based upon it. As a result, an enquiry can for example be rather time-consuming causing a time out or the enquiry refers to a file that is no longer existent.

File server:

File server communicate via the standard Internet protocol FTP on the basis of TCP/IP. A dedicated connection is established for each data transfer. Here too, error causes are diverse and start with the availability of the FTP service or with erroneous data transfer.

Mail server:
Many applications use SMTP protocol on the basis of TCP/IP for mail communication with a mail server. In addition to regular SMTP servers there are SMTP server that allow a secure and encrypted connection with SSL (secure SMTP server). The dispatch of a mail is compromised of connection establishment between mail client and SMTP server, login, authentication and finally of the successful mail dispatch. And at each step of this chain there is potential for disruptions and bottlenecks.

All of the above mentioned protocols pose the challenge of measuring overall availability and performance of the services adressed. Another challenge is the root cause analysis, e.g. in order to seperate errors and performance bottlenecks within applications, servers or the surrounding network.

theGuard! ApplicationManager monitors these Internet services without agents through simulation of user and application behavior realized by probes.

This allows for the monitoring and analysis of web, file and mail servers on Windows, UNIX or Linux on the basis of the protocols http, https, FTP and SMTP without having to apply changes to the actual server.

Monitoring and performance analysis exhibit the following characteristics:

Web server:

• categorization of the various error statuses
• testing of the web server and of specific web sites
• testing of web site contents
• measurement of response times and of other performance indicators

File server:

• categorization of the various error statuses
• testing of the file server and of specific files
• checksum to protect data integrity
• measurement of response times and of other performance indicators

Mail server:

• categorization of the various error statuses
• testing of the mail server and of mail dispatch
• measurement of response times and of other performance indicators
  

Placing one or several Net Service data collectors at various points within the network permits comparison and analysis of varying results which then serve as a basis for potentially necessary network redesign activities.

You can call upon all the advantages a theGuard! ApplicationManager data collector has to offer - from simple configuration and alarming to analyses and reports.

The Net Service data collector itself runs on a Windows platform.

• availability and performance of Internet services for web, file and mail servers on Windows, UNIX and Linux
• performance analyses for tuning and monitoring of tuning activities
• network optimization for these access types