Technical Papers

DesktopProfile Architecture Overview

On Box Agent Model

DesktopProfile is fast to deploy because it supports an 'on box' agent model. This means that all the collection intelligence remains on the management server and there is no time or cost overhead required to deploy remote agents. The requirement to deploy remote agents is a major weakness of enterprise performance management products as it radically increases time to benefit, has a high cost of ownership, is difficult to troubleshoot when errors occur and complicates version and inventory management.

Stateless Connection

DesktopProfile uses HTTP as the communications gateway. As a stateless connection protocol this provides many benefits: the ability to operate any number of server engines throughout the enterprise which is very useful to provide geographic network anomalies; low network overhead and resource consumption; and finally universal compatibility through the standard browser.

The support of a stateless architecture also supports a very thin desktop agent technology enabling a fast and seamless deployment model to the customer's desktop that requires little or no customer involvement in the deployment process.

Extensible Functional Plug-in (EFP)

Change is rapid in the Internet era and any system management product must be able to adapt and adapt quickly -- aAdapt to new hardware devices, adapt to new applications and of course then there is the issue of scale. Today's enterprises are extremely large embracing many hundreds and thousands of computers and devices.

One of the significant architectural components of DesktopProfile is the EFP (Extensible Functional Plug-in). The DesktopProfile Server Engine Framework (SEF) essentially presents a featureless but abstract API environment that allows small pieces of Java code (classes) to extend the functionality of the DesktopProfile Application at run-time. EFPs are powerful and flexible as they can deliver any element of product functionality whether it be server side logic such as a Cisco Router collection EFP or client side processing such as graphic views or analysis tools regardless of the platform type. For example it could be a Sun Solaris server with an Apple Mac workstation or a Windows 2000 server with a Windows 98 workstation.

EFPs are a significant part of the DesktopProfile architecture because EFPs extend the power of DesktopProfile by delivering functionality to any part of the DesktopProfile application especially data collection functionality. This allows us to support the many changes in the enterprise IT environment quickly and effectively.

There are two types of EFP, Sever Side EFP and Client Side EFP. Server Side EFPs deliver functionality to the server, for example Consolidator is a Server Side EFP. Client Side EFPs perform no processing directly on the server but deliver functionality to the client, for example Line Plots and Table Views and analysis tools.

Major Server Side Agent EFPs

Consolidator: The Consolidation Agent is a privileged server side plug-in, which operates by registering with the Live Data Feed API as a “client”. The Consolidator only operates through a Live Data Feed which means history cannot be consolidated. More importantly if consolidation is stopped for any reason then the data cannot be consolidated later. Historical data is available through Proxy (see below). Several consolidation processes can be operating at any time. These can be for a single DesktopProfile engine or multiple DesktopProfile engines or a combination of both.

Proxy: Proxy is another privileged server side plug-in and provides remote-engine clients with access (via iDataset) to any historical data for reporting purposes. This module is only available in the reporting subsystem (plots and tables, etc). For security reasons access to remote engines must be configured to be available otherwise only the local engine is available. Proxy does not support the iLivefeed API.

Export: Export interfaces to the iDataset API to provide the data export capability. Currently the only formats supported are Text, ‘Comma Delimited’ and XML. Export supports a Plug-in Test filter.

Collection: Collection EFPs are the most powerful as it relates to the DesktopProfile functionality because these are the functional code components that collect all the metric data elements for the enterprise. For example, Cisco Router to collect data from Cisco Routers, Windows 2000 Exchange to collect data from mail servers, HTTP to measure the performance of Web pages. SMTP for mail traffic etc. This type of EFP is significant as it allows us to easily add support for any aspect of the enterprise IT environment.

Event: Event EFPs provide functionality for the Alert Manager, for example email for Alert action.

Client Side Agent EFPs

Client plug-ins such as ‘plot’, ‘table view’, etc. do not operate as part of the core engine and are not documented as a part of this architecture review. However it should be understood that client side EFPs present themselves to iDataset and iLivefeed as user clients.

The DesktopProfile Server Engine Framework (SEF) is made up of the core framework API and a number of EFPs. The Management Server is the heart of DesktopProfile and consists some mandatory EFPs, namely GUI Manager, Data Manager, Plug-in Manager, Threshold Manager, Alert/Event Manager, Live Feed Manager, Test Executive, and the GUI Executive.

In addition to the mandatory EFPs that make up the Management Server there are 3 optional server side EFPs that deliver other items of DesktopProfile server functionality. These are:

Publishing Server: The publishing Server is a separate management engine which is responsible for the publishing of the scheduled HTML pages from any DesktopProfile engine. The publishing server requires an HTTP server component to be present which means that the publishing server is normally an Intranet Server of some description.

Consolidation Server: The Consolidation Server is an optional server component contained within the Management Server. The Consolidation Server if present allows data from one or more DesktopProfile engines to be consolidated on the server. The sending and receiving DesktopProfile engine must have the Consolidator Server component. Unlike Proxy (see below) Consolidator data is persistent and retained.

Proxy Server: The Proxy Server is an optional component which allows the data from remote DesktopProfile engine to be retrieved and viewed by users attached to a local DesktopProfile engine. Proxy is different from Consolidator because the data retrieved is not kept and when the user closes the client GUI, the data that is cached is destroyed. The advantage of Proxy over Consolidator is that it scales well as only the data that is viewed is moved.

The diagram below shows the relationship between the clients of a remote/local DesktopProfile Server and the Proxy/Consolidator EFPs.