Instrumentation Tier

The Instrumentation Tier is responsible for collecting management metrics from the systems and applications supported by Geneos and executing management commands on them.

A daemon process called NetProbe typically runs locally on each managed node. NetProbe is a container and manager of plug-ins and it is the plug-ins that are responsible for collecting the actual data. Plug-ins sample management metrics in real-time or near-real time depending on the type of information collected. All the metric values are sent to the Analysis & Consolidation Tier and are also cached on the NetProbe.

NetProbe has low footprint in terms of the memory, CPU and the network bandwidth utilisation. Typical CPU used is less than 1%.

ITRS have developed nearly 100 plug-ins to address the wide ranging needs of the financial market. A plug-in API is also available to facilitate ITRS’ clients and third parties writing additional plug-ins.

Analysis and Consolidation Tier

This tier is responsible for:

• Consolidating management metrics from a number of NetProbes by managing a large-scale real-time Metrics Cache that is kept in–synch with the NetProbe caches. The caches are synchronized whilst keeping the network traffic to a minimum by only sending updates whenever they occur.
• Sending management commands to the NetProbes
• Distributing setup configuration to the NetProbes
• Value added processing of the monitored metrics

Value added processing is one of the key differentiating features of Geneos. It includes:

• Rules Engine – provides real-time rule evaluation. For example, “set severity to amber when latency becomes larger than 30 ms. during trading hours and call local support”. Can invoke automatic corrective actions.
• Database Engine – logs metrics and results of rules evaluation to a historical database.
• Notification Engine – sends notifications of severity changes via e-mail, pager, SMS or by calling custom scripts or custom code. Provides integration with other monitoring solutions such as Tivoli, HP Open View, BMC etc.

Visualisation Tier

Visualisation is provided by two components – Active Console and Webslinger.
ActiveConsole is a rich Java/C++ application, whilst the Webslinger provides simpler web-based views.  Although the Webslinger pages do not provide the same set of features offered by ActiveConsole, they are a useful mechanism for looking at the health of the systems and applications whilst on the move, especially from a PDA. 

The Visualisation Tier includes the following features:

• Hierarchical display of monitored metrics in real-time.
• Colour coded scheme to depict the health of systems and applications
• Displays events when monitored metrics exceed set thresholds
• Displays historical values and events stored in the database
• Provides real-time and historical graphing capability
• User authentication, including a  “single sign on” option
• GUI set up editor to edit Geneos configuration on the Gateways
• Enables users to invoke actions on the monitored nodes and optionally see the output from these actions.

Scalability

Geneos Architecture is highly scalable due to its 3 tier design. Gateways can be deployed at multiple geographic locations around the world. ActiveConsoles can connect to any number of the Gateways regardless of their location. The network traffic between the NetProbes, Gateways and ActiveConsole is kept to a minimum by design.