Like taking responsibility of relationship after commitment is important, monitoring applications after they go live is important!!! Microsoft’s answer to this curious case is a cloud based service named Application Insights provided as part of Visual Studio Online. In this session, we will figure out how we can analyze whether our applications are living up to the expectations from Availability and Performance point of view, how we can drive our applications towards having long life and much more fun stuff!!

1. INSIGHTS AND MONITORING
OF SHAREPOINT
APPLICATIONS
By: Sharath Kumar
Shivarama
Technology Analyst

2. ABOUT ME
Sharath Kumar Shivarama
Technology Analyst – Infosys Ltd
fb.com/sharathshivarama
@shivaramasharat
http://tinyurl.com/o9p6ozg
http://sharathshivarama.net
sharath_shivarama@Infosys.com

3. CONTENTS
• Evolution
• Application Insights
• Setting up monitoring
• Monitoring Availability
• Monitoring Performance
• Monitoring Usage and using Diagnostics
• Managing Alerts
• Dashboards

4. EVOLUTION
• SCOM(System Center Operations Manager) - for
monitoring applications.
• GSM(Global Service Monitor) and APM(Application
Performance Monitoring) handled it all.
• APM and GSM facilitated extraction of complete
information related to application’s health and
performance.
• Enabled Outside-In monitoring of web applications.

5. EVOLUTION
• In SCOM 2012 R2, Operations Manager Agent(OMA) was replaced by Microsoft
Monitoring Agent(MMA).
• A standalone component running separately and not under SCOM, enabled .NET
APM by directly plugging into IIS and Visual Studio.
• Isolation of MMA from SCOM pushed AI-Application Insights into scene – A
complete cloud based monitoring solution.

6. APPLICATION INSIGHTS
• Cloud based monitoring solution which can be used for monitoring,
- Web Service or Web Application
- Web pages that use JavaScript
- Windows phone 8 App
- Windows Store App
• Capability to extract Availability, Performance, Usage and Diagnostic statistics of
applications and services.
• AI provides these benefits with the combination of APM, GSM and MMA.
• Can be used for monitoring both On-Premise and Cloud Based Applications.
• Supports both .NET and JAVA based applications.

7. APPLICATION INSIGHTS
• With AI, Microsoft has completely reduced the differences between their on-premise
and cloud based monitoring solutions.
• Reduced confusions between developers and operations team.
• To use AI, all you need to have is,
• An Active Microsoft Account
• Visual Studio Online Account linked to this Microsoft Account.

8. SETTING UP MONITORING
• Download and Install MMA(Microsoft Monitoring Agent).
• Download the ApplicationInsights.config file and save it in web application folder.
• Copy and Paste the Usage Insights code script into Master Page
Not applicable for Cloud Based Applications.
MMA provides a PowerShell based command prompt with different cmdlets for
interaction with the installed Monitoring component.
The steps for setting up monitoring differs based on the type of application as well.

9. MONITORING AVAILABILITY
• Monitor just Availability using the Usage Insights code script.
Steps:
- Add an application in AI
- Name the application
- Create URL ping test
- Generate the Usage Insights Code Script
- Plug-in Usage Script into application’s Master page and re-deploy the application.

10. MONITORING AVAILABILITY
• Create application in AI

11. CONTINUED…
• Enter other necessary details and
generate the Usage Insights Code
Script

12. CONTINUED…
• Include the Usage Insights Code Script in Master page and use the application.
• Set up Single Url test or Multistep web test to extract Availability details in AI

13. CONTINUED…

14. MONITORING PERFORMANCE
• The most informative section in
Application Insight
• Performance monitoring cannot be done
for Cloud based Applications and
Services.
• Installation of MMA on server and
presence of ApplicationInsights.config in
application folder root.

15. CONTINUED…
Performance monitoring provides details related to,
- Application scalability under different types of loads and dependencies.
- Exceptions Rate
- CPU, Network and Memory usage of the application.
- Top 10 slowest request by issue count

16. CONTINUED…
Response time and Load vs
Dependencies

17. CONTINUED…
Exceptions Rate
- Graphical as well as in-depth details of exceptions raised in the application.

18. CONTINUED…
CPU, Network and Memory usage of the application

19. CONTINUED…
Top 10 slowest request by issue count
- The most informative section of AI.
- Completely helpful in improving the
performance of the application.

20. MONITORING USAGE AND USING
DIAGNOSTICS
• Interesting section of AI
• Provides Key Indicators and Insights driving Operation’s decisions.
• Different Key Indicators,
• Top Page views
• Avg Daily Users
• Activities per session
• OS, Devices, Browsers and Languages used and many more…

21. CONTINUED…

22. CONTINUED…
Usage section of AI provides ample amount of environment related details as well!!

23. MANAGING ALERTS
Two different types of Alerts can be configured,
- Availability Alerts
- Performance Alerts

24. ALERTS - AVAILABILITY
• These can be configured from the
availability section
• Alerts will be triggered every time a
test fails

25. ALERTS - PERFORMANCE
• These alerts can be configured for any of the
Application Thresholds
• Alerts can be sent either to a set of audience
or single user

26. DASHBOARDS
• Flexibility to create completely custom dashboards
• Multiple Insights from all over the AI can be pinned to Dashboard
• Dashboards can be either private or can be shared with an audience
• Ability to create slideshow out of Dashboard

27. GET – SET - GO

29. REFERENCES
• http://kevingreeneitblog.blogspot.ie/
• MSDN articles

30. NEW JERSEY SHAREPOINT USER GROUP
• Different SharePoint discussions each
month on various topics. Announced on
meetup.com
• Meets 4th Tuesday of every month
• 6pm – 8pm
• Microsoft Office (MetroPark)
• 101 Wood Ave, Iselin, NJ 08830
• http://www.njspug.com

31. THANK YOU
EVENT SPONSORS
• Diamond & Platinum sponsors
have tables here in the Fireside
Lounge
• Please visit them and inquire
about their products & services
• Also to be eligible for prizes make
sure to get your bingo card
stamped