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This online tutorial is designed to help you understand the features and functionality of our new DesktopProfile product. The demo has been set-up to allow the user to click on toolbars and buttons to navigate through the application. This presents each topic through a series of dialogs and other visuals to help present the product. Placing your mouse cursor over a field (or a button) usually pops up a tool-tip to explain some of the feature. In most cases the 'ok' or 'cancel' buttons work to navigate to the next logical place in the DesktopProfile application otherwise the text accompanying the topic may present alternative options. |
The "Setup" toolbar provides access to features that manage the data collection process:
- Server configuration parameters
- Host and devices to be monitored
- Data to be collected
- Threshold alarms
- Data consolidation
Whilst the setup process is essential to the vale of the product it is the sophisticated reporting and analysis tools that deliver the value to the user. Future releases of DesktopProfile will provide access to a wide range of innovative reporting features.
The "Reporting" toolbar provides access to features that manage the reporting process:
- Table views
- Plots and Charts
- Export
- HTML reports
Click on a toolbar button or select an item above for further details.
DesktopProfile Setup Dialog 
The "Setup" Dialog configures a number of core server options.
This dialog is not used very often normally at the initial install time to define preferences for the server engine. For example the Web Port that that the HTTP server uses. Once the changes are made by the user clicking the "Save Changes" button stores the changes on the server. Place your mouse over the buttons and user edit fields for a brief description of the configuration options.
DesktopProfile Setup Dialog
DesktopProfile Configure Tests
A DesktopProfile Test is a small java class that provides the logic and functionality to gather performance metrics and measures. The "Configure Tests" dialog presents the process to select and target a Test to IP device(s). The number and variety of available data collection Tests will depend on what options have been purchased and licensed. Because DesktopProfile engine is Java extending the data collection options is as simple as downloading a new java 'plug-in' from the Visualware Web site.
The first dialog to appear will show the data collection tests already configured and the user can choose to Add, Edit or Delete a test
DesktopProfile Configure Tests
DesktopProfile Edit/Add a Test
The Add/Edit test presents a dialog for the user to define the 3 step process of WHAT (to collect), WHERE (to collect it from) and WHEN (to collect it). The only difference between an Add and an Edit is that the Add option allows the user to select a test from the available tests in a drop-down list box where as the Edit option only allows the test that has been selected for edit to be changed.
Click one of the buttons for further options.
DesktopProfile Edit Test
Available data collection plug-in options
There are two types of data collection plug-in. Those that collect metrics from an IP device such as a Cisco Router and those that conduct a service request and provide some measure statistics on the service request, for example measure the time it takes to read a Web page or Ping an IP device.
| Example Collection tests | Example Measure tests |
| Cisco Routers | HTTP measures Web Pages |
| Nokia Firewalls | FTP measures file transfers |
| Alteon Switches | Ping measures latency and packet loss |
| Win2K Network | SQL measures ODBC SELECT statements |
| Win2k Exchange | SMTP/POP3 email services |
| Solaris Operating System | DNS domain name lookups |
| Win2k Operating System | |
| Win2k IIS Web Servers | |
| Apache Web Servers |
DesktopProfile Configure Hosts and Groups
DesktopProfile "Groups" are folders into which a number of IP devices (Hosts) are placed. These Hosts can be a domain name or an |IP address. The "Hosts and Groups" dialog is the the user interface to define both the IP devices and/or the Group Folders as well providing the logic to place IP devices into the folders. The first dialog to appear will show any existing Groups or Hosts that have already been declared. The dialog is divided with Group Folders on the left hand side and Hosts (IP Addresses and Domain names) on the right.
Click one of the buttons for further options or Click here to return to the desktop.
Configure Hosts/Groups Dialog
DesktopProfile Add/Edit Groups
DesktopProfile "Groups" are folders into which a number of IP devices/Domain names (Hosts) are placed. These Hosts can be a domain name or an IP addresses. The "Group Editor" dialog is the the user interface to define either the Fixed Group or the Attribute Group and assign IP addresses and/or Domain names to them. A Fixed Group requires the user to manually assign the Hosts to the folder whereas the Attribute Group assigns the Hosts automatically based on the Attribute values provided. In other words any Host that has a label that matches a folder will automatically be placed in that folder. This allows the inventory of the Hosts to be tagged from an organisational point of view. For example (see below) an attribute of 'type' has been assigned a value of 'router' therefore all Hosts labelled as 'type=router' will be assigned to this folder.
Click one of the buttons for further options or click here to return to the Hosts & Groups page
Add/Edit Groups
DesktopProfile Add/Edit Hosts
DesktopProfile "Hosts" are IP Devices that represent the inventory available for DesktopProfile to manage. These Hosts can be a domain name or an IP addresses e.g. 192.168.0.8 or visualroute.visualware.com. The "Host Editor" dialog is the the user interface to define IP addresses and/or Domain names. "Hosts" are added in one of two ways. 1.) By entering the Domain Name/ IP Address in the New Host edit box and clicking the 'Add' button (i.e. one at a time), or 2.) By clicking the 'Bulk Edit' button located at the bottom of the dialog to add (or cut and paste) a number of IP Addresses/ Domain Names and clicking the "Save Changes" button.
Click one of the buttons for further options or click here to return to the Hosts & Groups page
Add/Edit Hosts
Host Text Editor
DesktopProfile Configure Database
DesktopProfile database consists on a series of tables for each granulation level, i.e. 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day etc. The aggregation of the different tiers of granulation are rolled-up automatically and the only configuration options are for the retention and disk space consumed. The spaced being used by these tables is displayed to the right hand side of the table item.
Click one of the buttons for further options or Click button or click here to return to the desktop.
Database Configuration Dialog
DesktopProfile Configure Thresholds
DesktopProfile threshold configuration consists on a series of tables for each granulation level, i.e. 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day etc. The aggregation of the different tiers of granulation are rolled-up automatically and the only configuration options are for the retention and disk space consumed. The spaced being used by these tables is displayed to the right hand side of the table item.
Click one of the buttons for further options or Click a dialog button or click here to return to the desktop.
Configure Thresholds
DesktopProfile Threshold Alert Definition
A DesktopProfile Alert defines the action to be taken when either a critical or a warning threshold is violated. DesktopProfile Alerts dialog presents a list of the existing defined alerts and the user can choose to add a new Alert ('add' and 'copy'), change an existing Alert ('edit') or remove and Alert ('delete').
Click one of the buttons for further options or Click a dialog button or click here to return to the Threshold dialog.
Alerts Dialog
Alerts Editor Dialog
Alert Action Dialog
DesktopProfile Configure Alerts
The DesktopProfile Alerts feature is an extension of the Threshold Subsystem to allow more than one alert trigger to be specified for a particular metric. The Threshold system for alerting differs only in that they drive the color coding of reports (Red for critical, Yellow for warning and Green for good).
Click one of the buttons for further options or Click button or click here to return to the desktop.
Alert Configuration Dialog
DesktopProfile Configure Consolidator
DesktopProfile consolidation functionality allows collected data from remote DesktopProfile servers to consolidate to a local server. There are many reasons that the user will want to use this feature. Firstly it allows network performance measures from two different world geographies to be easily compared. This helps solve where the problem resides. More importantly it allows data collection to take place behind a firewall, say in a customers premises, but deliver that data to a public server for corporate reporting. Having a consolidated set of performance measures for an entire enterprise regardless where collected from also allows the DesktopProfile analysis tools such as AutoCorrelate to find cause and effect problems for the enterprise.
Click one of the buttons for further options or Click a button or click here to return to the desktop.
Consolidated Servers Dilaog
Edit Consolidator Dialog
DesktopProfile Configure Settings
DesktopProfile has a special floating toolbar to present a number of global configuration preference options. The number of buttons on this toolbar will depend on the options installed.
Global Settings Dialog
DesktopProfile Grid View
DesktopProfile provides a wide range of reporting views from plots to tables. The DesktopProfile Grid View is a spreadsheet table view that allows the user to select the data items to be shown. Because a spreadsheet is 2 dimensional and there are 4 actual elements of data (Device, Test, Time, Metric) that can be viewed, the Grid View provides 4 list controls (2 pairs) to allow the data to be filtered as follows:
The first list box in a group selects a category type, this dictates what is listed in second list box. For example if 'test' is chosen in the first box then the second list contains a list of all the tests.
The second list box works in the same way as the first except that it will only contain the 3 remaining selections (1 having been chosen in the first).
Whatever is chosen list boxes is the filter selection for the report. For example the Grid View below shows the test "Web Server Response" has been selected in the first list box group and the metric "Latency" has been selected in the second list box group. By making this selection Test and Metric then Time and Host remain so the report shows Time vs. Host. The numbers in the example report are the latency for each device/domain.
The color coding (Red, Yellow, Green) is driven by the threshold system. Red=exceeded critical, yellow=exceed warning and Green=okay value. If a cell has no color then it means that there is no set threshold for the metric.
The Grid View also allows a number of other tools and views to be launched directly from the Grid View by using a right mouse click to bring up a context menu.
Grid View
DesktopProfile HTML System Reports
DesktopProfile provides a wide range of reporting views from plots to tables. The DesktopProfile HTML System Reports is a series of table reports that are delivered via a Web HTML page. The advantage of a Web HTML page is that it does not require any code to be loaded and it is easily delivered via a browser to any user with access rights. This report type duplicates the same functionality that is found in VisualPulse and is only available for Packet Loss and Latency data elements provided by the Ping plug-in.
Click one of the buttons for further options or click here to return to the Desktop.
HTML Reports
Report
DesktopProfile HTML Custom Reports
DesktopProfile provides a wide range of reporting views from plots to tables. The DesktopProfile HTML Custom Reports is user definable table report that is delivered via a Web HTML page. The advantage of a Web HTML page is that it does not require any code to be loaded and it is easily delivered via a browser to any user with access rights. This report type greatly extends the functionality that is found in System HTML Reports and VisualPulse which is limited to only Packet Loss and Latency data elements provided by the Ping plug-in.
Click one of the buttons for further options or click to return to the Desktop.
DesktopProfile HTML Web Page Publishing
DesktopProfile provides a facility to allow the user to publish reports to a Web Server as HTML pages. This reporting process is designed to allow performance measures and metrics to be presented to the users of the service whilst also allowing data to be available outside a firewall.
Click one of the buttons for further options or click to return to the Desktop.
DesktopProfile Correlation Analysis Toolset
DesktopProfile provides Extensional Functional Plugins (EFP) to deliver a number of analysis features. Monitoring the health of the enterprise is of little use unless you are able to resolve the performance/service delivery problem and the analysis tools are designed to assist this process. The AutoCorrelate analysis tool helps to solve performance and service deliver problems by finding common patterns in the metric data. This is done by allowing the user to choose a metric that has a problem (like a high response time of a web page) and then correlating the selected metric against all the collected data (for the time interval) to see if any other resources are also have unacceptable values. The correlation tool provides a short list of metrics in sorted order of correlation value. (1.00= Best correlation, 0.01=Worst correlation). The short list provided allows the user to visually see the correlation results by allowing the the user to select any number of metrics from the short list.
As an example the user may select Latency from a test that is measuring Web Page Response Time as it is excessively high. Because the correlation engine analyses this selected metric against all the collected metrics it may find that a certain Cisco route is 100% busy each and every time the response is too high. This would indicate that bandwidth consumption is the cause.
Auto Correlate Dialog
DesktopProfile Investigation Analysis Toolset
DesktopProfile provides Extensional Functional Plugins (EFP) to deliver a number of analysis features. The Investigation EFP provides a tool to analyse all the collected metrics in order to produce a short list of where all metrics deviated from normal values. For example if a Web Page response time was normally 10-15 seconds but suddenly recorded 45 seconds (3 times normal) then AutoInvestigate would short list the test and the metric for review. This feature allows the user to zoom in on problematic time periods quickly or indeed analyse large time periods (weeks) to find if problems exist.
Select Investigation Results Dialog