Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems QAD System Monitoring

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems QAD System Monitoring for Efficient Operations Derek Bradley – Performance Engineer, Architect, QAD

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Safe Harbor Statement The following is intended to outline QAD’s general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, functional capabilities, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functional capabilities described for QAD’s products remains at the sole discretion of QAD. 2

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Introduction • This breakout session introduces best practices in managing and monitoring QAD systems – and how QAD can help • Managing the technical infrastructure of complex computer systems is a challenge • The needs and expectations of the users need to be balanced against the resources and requirements of the IT management team 3

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Aim / Audience • • • Database administrators Systems administrators Technical project managers IT management Survey 4

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Best Practice Outcomes • Keep the users and sponsors of the QAD software installation happy and productive - Up and down the supply chain • • Reliability Performance Visibility Reporting 5

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Reliability 6

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Reliability • Use Highly Available Architecture - Along with well trained staff and good management systems • HA systems employ fault tolerance, automated failure detection, recovery, testing, problem and change management • Duplicate everything. - Eliminate single points of failure 7

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Reliability High Availability Guidelines • High Availability Systems have the following technical design requirements - Heartbeat monitoring - Scripts or tools to start / stop / failover and failback the QAD application - Shared storage (SAN) - Non−Corruption of data when the failover occurs • After imaging / replication 8

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Reliability Disaster Recovery Planning • Disaster recovery planning (DRP) is essential for any company • Of companies that have had a major loss of business data - approximately 40% never re-open - 50% close within 2 years - fewer than 10% survive long term (source : Hoffer, Jim. "Backing Up Business - Industry Trend or Event. " Health Management Technology, Jan 2001). 9

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Reliability The Seven Tiers of Disaster Recovery • Tier 0 : No offsite data • Tier 1: Offsite backup but no “hot” site • Tier 2: Offsite backup and “hot” site • Tier 3: Electronic vaulting • Tier 4: Point in time copies - After imaging, disk flash copy • Tier 5: transaction integrity - OE replication, disk replication • Tier 6: zero data loss • Tier 7: completely automated 10

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Reliability Disaster Recovery Objectives • Working with the business, decide upon the following objectives - Recovery Time Objective (RTO) • How long can you afford to be without your systems? - Recovery Point Objective (RPO) • When it is recovered, how much data can you afford to recreate? - Degraded Operations Objective (DOO) • What will be the impact on operations with fewer data centers? - Network Recovery Objective (NRO) • How long to switch over the network? 11

Performance Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems 12

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Performance A Commonly Misunderstood Subject: What is Performance? Low System Requirements? Responsiveness? High Capacity? 13

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Performance Roles and Responsibilities • Users and IT support = application responsiveness • Database administrators = database efficiency and potential bottlenecks • Systems administrators and engineers = server capacity and utilization • IT managers = user productivity, system availability, budgets and risk avoidance 14

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Performance Typical Performance Problems • • • Slow and unresponsive applications Unexplained / random application freezes Batch processes fail to complete (in time) Lack of scalability Lack of capacity 15

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Performance Impact of Poor Performance Forrester Research has reported that among companies with revenue > $100 billion, nearly 85% reported significant application performance degradation Best Practices in Problem Management Nearly 85% of applications are failing to meet and sustain their performance requirements over time and under increasing load 16

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems: Performance Impact of Poor Performance • Lost productivity • Lost confidence and credibility – Customers – End users • Lost revenue • Low morale • Financial penalties 17

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Performance Engineering Methodology 18

Performance Engineering Methodology How Do We Manage Performance? • Establish performance objectives • Identify critical requirements • Define abnormal and normal conditions – Service level agreements • Create a baseline • Continuous monitoring and alerting – QAD monitoring framework • Performance tuning • Capacity planning and re-sizing 19

Performance Engineering Methodology Performance Objectives • Unless performance is actively managed and benchmarked, user performance expectations are hard to quantify. “The system is running slow. ” “It takes too long to log in. ” What do these mean? Can we determine critical / objective requirements? 20

Performance Engineering Methodology Establish a Baseline • Using KPIs and performance requirements – Create a set of baseline measurements – Capacity requirements planning &trending • Load testing tools may help with creating a baseline – Apache Jmeter – HP Load. Runner • QAD Monitoring 21

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems QAD Monitoring 22

Monitoring QAD Systems QAD Monitoring 23

Monitoring QAD Systems QAD Monitoring Ad Hoc Monitoring lacks transparency and can lead to emergency performance escalations • Continuous monitoring allows - Advanced notice of developing problems Trending against the baseline Extra information to aid in problem solving The ability to deliver KPI information to management on demand 24

Monitoring QAD Systems Key Features • • Holistic system monitoring Visual correlation of data Visibility into system trends and usage Ability to deliver KPI information on demand Powerful warning and exception alerting Reporting framework Scalable / flexible 25

Monitoring QAD Systems Technical Features • Non−intrusive, lightweight monitoring • Technology agnostic - Can monitor any component in the QAD technology stack on any platform - Any supported database technology • In built wiki with full documentation • Industry standard open source components - Proprietary QAD integration pieces 26

Monitoring QAD Systems Graphing and Trending Features • Allows graphing of numerical data for trending and analysis - Helps identify usage patterns and trends • Enables visual correlation of data - Data stored in time series (RRD) database - Filter by time periods of 30 m to 1 year - Template driven deployment 27

Monitoring QAD Systems Alerting Features • Whenever a pre-defined condition is met, an alert can be sent to one or more contacts - Email / Pager / Twitter / Phone / Chat - Warning, critical and unknown alert levels • Recovery messages - Time zones, rosters • Escalation paths - Template driven definitions • Inheritance and overrides - Stores service level agreement data for reporting 28

Monitoring QAD Systems Reporting and Service Level Agreements (SLA) 29

Monitoring QAD Systems Mobile Device Support * 3 rd party apps ** webapp on appliance 30

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Technology & Architecture Te y g o l o n h c ture c e t i h c r A 31

Technology & Architecture Deployment • Deployed as a virtual appliance (Linux VMware image) - No Open Edge or commercially licensed components installed - ESX ready or VMware Server ready version • Security to monitored systems - Communicates with the monitored servers via trusted SSH relationships - Keys are stored on the VM and pushed to the remote servers 32

Technology & Architecture Integration • Technology agnostic: - it does not care what is being monitoring - the flexibility to monitor practically anything - version independent • Integration templates for: - mapping to the QAD Architecture - Tomcat, Open Edge / other databases, Connection Manager, QAD business logic - any supported Operating System* - (Windows Support Currently Limited) 33

Technology & Architecture Availability • On Demand customers • Now • 75 servers, 90+ environments, 2500+ services • Early adopters • June 2011 • General Release • September 2011 • Staged rollout 34

Technology & Architecture Availability • QAD Monitoring will be available to customers who - Are on current QAD Maintenance - Who agree to a technical Q-Scan • Establish baseline system health • Tailor QAD Monitoring to their needs • Training 35

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Metrics Affected • • Continued return on existing investment Faster response times Higher system availability Problem avoidance 37

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Next Steps • Stop by the EXPO to discuss what QAD System Monitoring can do for your company • Ask your account manager to arrange a Q−Scan 38

Managing and Monitoring QAD Systems Questions & Answers • Tony Winter (Chief Technology Officer): tww@qad. com • Paul Newton (Project Manager): pln@qad. com • Derek Bradley (Architect/Consultant): dbb@qad. com 39

www. qad. com © QAD Inc 40