eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by WebSiteTrafficTest

The WEB_SITE layer executes a WebSiteTest that interfaces with the eG web adapter to collect statistics related to the usage of every web site configured on a web server. One of the key constraints of this test is that three critical usage metrics, namely, Pct_aborts, Pct_300s, Pct_500_errors, will not be available for web servers executing on Windows environments. Therefore, for an IIS web server naturally, the eG agent will not be able to report these measures. In order to fill this vacuum, eG Enterprise offers a separate WebSiteTrafficTest, which executes only on IIS/IIS SSL web servers, to monitor the traffic to and from each of the web sites on these servers, the errors that occurred during web site accesses, etc. This test reads the log files on the monitored IIS/IIS SSL web servers to extract important metrics pertaining to the web site usage. These log files are created only if logging is explicity enabled on the monitored IIS/IIS SSL web server. To enable logging, do the following:

  1. Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager using the following sequence of steps: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

  2. In the tree-structure in the left pane of the IIS console that appears, expand the node representing the local host, and then, the Web Sites node within; the complete list of web sites configured on the IIS web server will appear here.

  3. To enable logging for a particular web site, select that web site from under the Web Sites node, right-click on it, and then, select the Properties option from the shortcut menu.

  4. In the Web Site tab of the Properties dialog box that appears, ensure that the Enable Logging check box is selected. Also, make sure that W3C Extented Log File Format is chosen as the Active log format.

  5. Next, click on the Properties button adjacent to the Active log format chosen. The General settings of the W3C Extented Log File Format will then appear. In the Log file directory text box here, specify the directory to which the log file should be written; the LOGFILEPATH parameter should contain the same path specified in the Log file directory text box.

  6. Next, click on the Advanced tab to indicate the type of statistics to be logged into the log file. Here, ensure that the Win32 Status, Bytes Sent, and Bytes Received check boxes are selected.

  7. Finally, click the Apply and OK buttons to register the changes.

  8. Repeat this procedure for every web site to be monitored.

The measures reported by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Requests_handled The number of requests currently received by this web site Number  
Data_transmitted The amount of data currently sent by this web site MB A large increase in the data transmission can be indicative of an increase in the popularity of one or more web sites hosted on the server.
Data_received The amount of data transmitted by the web site in response to user requests MB An increase in this value is indicative of an increase in user requests to the server.
Pct_200s The percentage of responses with the status code 200-299 during the last measurement period Percent Typically, successful requests are indicated using the response code 200 - 299.
Pct_300s The percentage of responses with a status code in the 300-399 range during the last measurement period Percent 300 responses could indicate page caching on the client browsers. Alternatively 300 responses could also indicate redirection of requests. A sudden change in this value could indicate a problem condition.
Pct_400_errors Percentage of responses with a status code in the range 400-500. Percent An unexpected increase in the percentage of responses with status codes in the range 400-499 can indicate a sudden problem at the server.
Pct_500_errors Percentage of responses with a status code in the range 500-600. Percent Responses in the range 500-599 are caused by server-side errors (e.g., because of failures in the server side processing logic).