Configuration of AzrWebAppTest

Azure App Service is a managed cloud service that allows you to deploy a web application and make it available to your customers on the Internet in a very short amount of time. Since such web applications are typically of a business-critical nature, customers insist on their continuous availability and peak performance at all times. To avoid customer complaints, cloud administrators should constantly check the availability, responsiveness, and resource utilization of every web application deployed on the Azure App Service, swiftly identify those applications that are experiencing availability, operational, or overall performance issues, and rapidly initiate measures to eliminate the bottleneck. The AzrWebAppTest helps administrators in this regard.

By continuously tracking the status of each web application deployed on the Azure App Service, this test points administrators to applications that are not running. Additionally, the test periodically checks the TCP connection to each web application, thereby alerting administrators to those applications that may be running, but are inaccessible over the network. HTTP responses sent by the application are also scrutinized, and HTTP errors promptly captured and reported, so that administrators can quickly figure out why an application is unavailable.

Also, by monitoring the responsiveness of applications to web requests, the test pinpoints applications that are responding slowly to these requests and why - is it because of a latent network connection? is it owing to a slow backend server? is it due to heavy request load on the application? or is poor application throughput the bottleneck? Furthermore, the test also measures the CPU usage of each web application, thus leading administrators to those applications that are hogging CPU and adversely impacting the performance of other web applications.

The default parameters associated with this test are as follows:

• The TEST PERIOD list box helps the user to decide how often this test needs to be executed.

• In the HOST text box, the host for which the test is to be configured has to be specified.

• In the TENANT ID text box, specify the Directory ID of the Azure Active Directory that is associated with the subscription of the target Microsoft Azure. To know how to determine the Directory ID, refer to the Determining the Tenant ID of the target Microsoft Azure of the Monitoring Microsoft Azure document.

• The eG agent communicates with the target Microsoft Azure using JAVA API calls. To collect the required metrics, the eG agent requires an Access token in the form of an Application ID and the key value. To know more about determining the Application ID and the key refer to the Broad Steps to Determine the Access Token section of the Monitoring Microsoft Azure document. Specify the Application ID of the created Web Application in the CLIENT ID text box and the key value in the CLIENT PASSWORD text box.

• To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, eG embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test, by default, for a particular server, choose the Onoption against DETAILED DIAGNOSIS. To disable the capability, click on the Off option.

  The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:

  • The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability.

  • Both the bad and normal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

• If multiple components of the same component type are awaiting configuration, then an APPLY TO OTHER COMPONENTS button will appear in this page. Clicking on this button will allow you to apply the configuration to all/selected components of that type.

• Once the necessary values have been provided, clicking on the UPDATE button will register the changes made.

When changing the configuration for specific servers, a “*” beside the text box corresponding to the parameter signifies that these values have to be manually configured by the user. The parameter values that require to be configured will typically be prefixed with a “$” or contain a series of “*”. A value of “none” in the parameter value indicates that the corresponding parameter value can be changed if required.