Quest Foglight for APM Review

In Foglight we like the ability to log-on and review the history, as well as receive notifications when certain monitored agents notice issues.

We have been better able to respond to issues before they become a big issue.

The upgrade process could use some fine tuning. I have done an upgrade of the system as well as added\updated agents, and sometimes that process is a bit cumbersome, and does not go as planned. The JAVA monitor agent also definitely could be more streamlined in terms of monitoring and updating. Also they could use an easier method of 'archiving' data that you do not need necessarily as well as updating agent monitor thresholds.

As an update to this, we recently went through an upgrade and went to a newer version (Foglight 5.6.11.3). I would have to say the upgrade process was much better more seamless than previous upgrades. The only item\s that were an issue were the Java EE cartridges for monitoring our Java Weblogic instance. But even that was more straight forward than previous upgrades.

Since we will be upgrading to a newer ERP version next year, I will review and update this post to see what if any changes were needed (Cartridge, FMS, Agents) to continue monitoring our new ERP version/release.

Foglight 5.6.3 Foglight Experience Monitor 5.6.2

With the original deployment there was a learning curve as well as a understanding of how Foglight all came together. Again, when we originally deployed we deployed on a much earlier version which was much more cumbersome to implement.

We had some initial issues with stability as the initial deployment was on 32bit architecture. With the next release we were able to go to 64bit which helped a lot with stability of the system (memory usage, CPU).

In terms of scalability we have so far not encountered any issues. We are running on the delivered MySQL database (stand alone). We are currently up to about 80GB of data, and it is performing fine with no major issues to date.

The level of customer service has been great to date. Response time and the ability understand the issue and assist\pass on to the right person\group to respond has been very good. I have not had too much of a need for customer service since Dell purchased them so it will be interesting to see if the same level of customer service is maintained.

Technical support has been pretty good at responding\resolving issues. They have a fairly good understanding of the issue at hand and seem pretty good at providing solutions.

The initial setup was a bit complex due to the need to fine tune the monitor thresholds as well as make sure all the agents are monitoring. We also had a bit of a curve on the PeopleSoft monitoring (tuxedo, weblogic, application server, process scheduler) due to not too much documentation available when we first setup.

We initially implemented through a vendor team and then took on the responsibilities in-house after getting some knowledge transfer. The initial level of expertise left a bit to be desired as it didn't go as planned. However, upon expressing our concerns\issues to them they brought in a senior implementer who got things on track.

We have no hard figures on the ROI on this product, however having the system has saved us time in terms of debugging and getting to the root cause of issues. Instead of discussing with the OS\Network\Hardware\DBA teams, we have the ability to pin point the issue a lot quicker and determine which if any teams to involve for issue resolution. This can save minutes to hours per incident, which in turn allows us to focus more on other aspects of the system.

Our initial setup cost was the licensing\implementation\knowledge transfer\hardware gear. Unsure about the final setup cost. The day to day cost of using this product is minimal. Once the system is up and running it requires very little maintenance (once you get the hardware specs\system tuning\configuration as you need\want).

We did evaluate other options. One option that was evaluated was BMC.

I would recommend having an expert do the initial installation and then do a thorough knowledge transfer (shadowing them is also a good idea).