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APM Blog: Another Look at APM System Admin Philosophies

By Hallett German posted Oct 07, 2014 09:08 AM

  

Introduction

Since 2009, I have been writing on APM system administration philosophy. This includes a Tuesday Tip, a recent Knowledgebase Article, and a section in an unpublished book. Why do I keep returning to this? Because I do not like seeing APM Clusters looking like below:

 

House.jpg

Frequently, support cases are opened where APM clusters are sluggish, inoperable, underpowered, and not providing full advantage of the solution. This is often the result of doing too little maintenance until it is too late.

 

System Administration Levels

The level of APM system administration is a continuum from minimal/as-needed operations to being proactive. This “choice” is often made simply due to workload rather than active deliberation. But this decision is an important one. The amount of attention provided to an APM Cluster impacts system stability, monitoring quality, frequency of upgrades, number of support cases, degree of false positive metrics, etc.

 

Once the System Administration approach is decided, then the associated efforts can be scheduled, planned, and staffed. One can evaluate periodically proactively or after outages if additional APM system resources and practices will help alleviate outages, improve system optimization and maintenance, and other benefits. As one progresses to the next stage of the System Administration continuum, additional tasks may be initiated. This may include creation of operational run books. monitoring strategies, associated project management, and more.

There is a common saying -- “cheap is expensive.” The same thing can be said of system administration inattention and benign neglect. It is my wish that this blog convinces at least one APM administrator to be more proactive as to the caretaking of their APM cluster by checking logs more frequently, upgrading to more current releases, and immediately eradicating found issues. A well-maintained house and APM cluster brings typically peace of mind. Here is hoping that the same happens for you.

 

References

Photo is courtesy of Karen Apricot and Wikimedia Commons.

 

Knowledgebase Article - https://comm.support.ca.com/?legacyid=TEC617154

 

Tuesday Tip - https://communities.ca.com/message/98086748#98086748

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