Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Administration Guide

Chapter 7 Monitoring Portal Server Activity

This chapter describes how to set up the Sun Java^TM System Portal Server monitoring.

This Chapter contains the following sections:

Understanding Portal Server Monitoring

Monitoring helps record runtime resource information about portal server. Desktop monitoring keeps record of information on requests received by portal server for content, edit, and process types. It also records information on the minimum, maximum and average response time for each type of request for the different channels of portal server.

Information gathered from monitoring portal activity is useful to optimize portal response time either by moving channels that need a higher response time to separate secondary tab, or by setting the time-out property for Desktop channels based on cache hits.

The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in a portal server collects monitoring data for the Desktop. Monitoring information can be viewed on portal server management console, or can be accessed using psadmin monitoring subcommands. See Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Command Line Reference.

Monitoring uses Java Management Extensions (JMX^TM technology) and registers Management Beans (MBeans) in the portal server instance's MBeansServer that represents portal server Desktop and portal Desktop channels. Each MBean attribute represents monitoring data collected for each resource. The portal management console and psadmin monitoring subcommands communicate with MBeans to collect and present monitoring data for a portal server instance.

Setting Up Portal Server Monitoring

Monitoring can be configured by accessing monitoring properties stored in /var/opt/SUNWportal/portals/portalID/config/instanceID/monitoring.properties file. Monitoring is enabled by default. To disable monitoring, set com.sun.portal.monitoring.MonitoringContext.monitoring.disable property to true. When the JVM restarts, monitoring is disabled.

You can also enable or disable monitoring from the portal management console.

To Enable or Disable Portal Monitoring

Select the Portals tab.

Select a portal server under Portals.

Click the Monitoring tab.

Click Settings submenu.

Select a portal server instance.

Click Enable Monitoring or Disable Monitoring button.

To View Desktop Statistics

Select the Portals tab.

Select a portal server under Portals.

Click the Monitoring tab.

Click Desktop Request/Response Statistics from the submenu.

To View Channel Statistics

Select the Portals tab.

Select a portal server under Portals.

Click the Monitoring tab.

Click Channel Action Statistics from the submenu.

From Select DN drop-down menu choose an organization.

Select the server from the Server Instance drop-down menu.

Collecting Portal Server Monitoring Data

Monitoring collects seven types of data requests received by the Desktop. Each type of request is represented as MBean with type DesktopRequestStatistic, and name MBean property as the request type. For example, type=DesktopRequestStatistics,name=Content name properties help identify Desktop content request statistics.

Desktop Statistics

The seven types of requests are explained in the following list:

Content: The number of times Desktop successfully served content requests, and the time taken for it.
Edit: The number of times Desktop successfully served edit requests , and the time taken for it.
Exception: The number of times Desktop could not serve a request due to some exception during request processing. Exception information is logged in portal server log files.
LocalAuth: The number of times Desktop responded to local authentication requests.
Logout: The number of times user logged out from portal server, and how long it took to log out
PreLogin: The number of times Desktop responded to pre-login requests.
Process: The number of times Desktop processed edit requests, and the time taken for it

You can view the Desktop statistics from the portal management console.

Channel Statistics

Each type of channel action is represented as MBean with type ChannelActionStatistic along with additional name properties that identify the channel. To know the full MBean name, use the command psadmin get-monitoring-mbean-names.

Portal Desktop presents cached content view for a channel based on time-out channel property

The types of channel actions that are monitored for each Desktop channel are explained in the following list:

Content: The number of times channel provider successfully generated the content view, and the response time for it.
Edit: The number of times channel provider successfully presented the edit view, and the response time for it.
Process: The number of times channel provider processed the edit view.

You can view the Desktop statistics from the portal management console.