How to Monitor IBM WebSphere using Application Manager?

There are multiple ways to monitor application infrastructure but using right tools are essential for quick troubleshooting and problem-solving.

If you are a WebSphere administrator and supporting production environment, then one of the challenging tasks is to monitor the important metrics for better control.

You can use any monitoring tools which fit your requirement. Here, I will explain how to use Application Manager by Manage Engine for in-depth IBM WebSphere Application Server monitoring.

Application Manager is not just for IBM WAS, but it supports many other technologies from a different stream. Ex:

• WebLogic/Tomcat/GlassFish/.NET
• Sybase/Oracle/MongoDB
• Apache/Nginx/PHP/IIS/URL
• EC2/Azure/OpenStack
• Linux/Windows/IBM AIX

With the help of Application Manager, you can monitor various critical metrics to detect and quickly fix the issues.

Application Manager Features

• Availability monitoring
• Track user experience
• Detect leaks
• Real-time alerting
• Actionable report & dashboard
• Root cause analysis

The good thing is, Manage Engine provide a FREE version for forever to monitor up to 5 application or servers.

How to install Application Manager?

You can either install it on Windows or Linux. The following installation instruction is based on Linux.

• Download the software binary from Manage Engine
• Execute the downloaded bin file to start the installation wizard

[root@localhost Downloads]# ./ManageEngine_ApplicationsManager_64bit.bin
InstallShield Wizard
Initializing InstallShield Wizard...

• You will get the wizard GUI popup, click Next

• Accept the license agreement, click next
• You get 30 days trial of professional or enterprise edition so you may try else choose “Free Edition.”

• Select the language
• By default, it will listen on 9090 port, change if you need to

• You can either use PostgresSQL or Microsoft SQL as a database. PostgresSQL is bundled with the product so no need to install it additionally

Change the installation directory if needed. By default, it will install on /opt/ME/

Register the product if you need the technical support else skip and confirm to begin the installation

It will take few minutes, and upon completion, you will get success message

Well done! You’ve installed Application Manager successfully.

How to start WebSphere Monitoring?

First, you got to launch the Application Manager.

Go to the path where you’ve installed (default location – /opt/ME/AppManager13/AppManager13

Execute the following

./startApplicationsManager.sh

It will take few seconds, and you will get a confirmation that necessary process modules are started, and you can connect to console at port 9090

Process : AMDataArchiverProcess          [ Started ]
Process : EventFE                        [ Started ]
Process : AlertFE                        [ Started ]
Process : NmsMainFE                      [ Started ]
Verifying connection with web server... verified
Applications Manager started successfully.
Please connect your client to the web server on port: 9090

Let’s access the console in the browser with default credential (user – admin, password – admin)

http://localhost:9090/index.do

Once logged in, it will prompt to configure SMTP for emails. You may do it or skip if you want to do it later.

Let’s add a WebSphere Application Server

• Click New Monitor >> Add New Monitor and select “WebSphere Server” from the list
• Enter the WebSphere details and click “Add Monitors.”

Now, we should see the newly added WebSphere in the monitoring.

• Go to Monitors >> WebSphere Server
• You should see the health & availability of JVM

You can create an alarm to notify if JVM is not healthy or unavailable. Once you’ve added all the necessary monitoring, you can view them in multiple views.

At any point in time, you need to get the report for historical data; you can go to Reports and select the type of reports you need.

Application Manager looks promising to monitor Middleware technologies like Application Server, Web Server, Messaging, etc.

You can also take Application Manager one level ahead of application performance monitoring by integrating APM Insight Agent.

APM Insight monitors the application performance at the transactional level.

So go ahead and play around with Application Manager by Manage Engine and see it it works for you.