PremiTech bridges the client gap

Today’s distributed application platforms obscure the underlying architecture, making it difficult to pinpoint the source of a performance problem. With so many servers in the loop, maintaining a consistent user experience can be a real nightmare, especially when coupled with the pressure of the nearly ubiquitous SLA (service-level agreement).

Many IT vendors have attempted to address this issue. However, only a handful — Reflectent Software   being the most notable — have attempted the difficult task of measuring performance from the client’s perspective. And while these tools can tell you much about the health and reliability of client-side processes, they do a less thorough job of exposing the underlying network and transaction-related issues that so often plague enterprise application performance.

Enter PremiTech, a Denmark-based vendor of a client-side performance monitoring suite that fills in the missing pieces of the management puzzle. The company’s Performance Guard software accomplishes this by tracking network and transaction data for each running process and then correlating the data to paint a clear, end-to-end view of how the application environment is performing.

With Performance Guard, you’ll know how much time each network operation is taking and why. Collected data is broken down by target host and/or transaction type, and you can define a wide range of alarms and thresholds (including baseline values) to alert you to specific trouble spots. Proactive ping and trace route functions make it easy to confirm SLA compliance, while custom transaction filters allow you to tailor this aspect of the product to suit your specific Web application requirements.

In addition to basic process tracking in the core product, PremiTech also offers a number of specialized add-on modules for specific runtime environments. For example, the Business Transaction Monitor Module lets you create and expose internal transaction counters for custom applications. A Citrix Module keeps track of remote ICA (Independent Communications Architecture) connection performance (including log-in time and overall traffic) and provides metrics for both internal Citrix server health and back-end connection performance to supporting services.

Other modules include Network Analysis, for monitoring all network routes accessed by the client, and Data Mining, pre-configured reports designed by PremiTech experts. 

I installed Version 4.1 of Performance Guard into a Windows Server 2003 environment with SQL Server 2000 as the back-end data store. (The product also supports Oracle.) Setup of the server components was straightforward. The installation wizard provides plenty of intelligent defaults and will even install a small local Web server in lieu of running Microsoft Internet Information Services.

Client agent deployment was equally smooth, requiring only a quick modification to a configuration text file before rollout. The Performance Guard agent installs as a local Windows service and intercepts all network traffic flowing to and from the instrumented system. Communication between the agent and back-end server repository (for uploading collected data) happens over generic Web protocols, so deploying across firewalls and proxy servers shouldn’t be an issue.

In exploring the product, I found the overall management and reporting interface to be quite intuitive. Most options are self-explanatory, and each page includes a context-sensitive Quick Help tab to explain the various options and functions. I was particularly impressed with the Help Desk page, which ties together various Performance Guard metrics — network access/ping results, process/system statistics, and hardware/software disclosure information — into a single, integrated view of a monitored system’s health and behavior.

Other reports show various metrics (transactions, traffic, loading) over time, trending for metrics (including comparison to baseline values) and various port-specific charts/graphs. Performance Guard can also pass critical events to upstream management consoles (via SNMP traps) and has the ability to send real-time alerts via e-mail.

If there’s one flaw with Performance Guard, it’s the sheer number of available analysis modes. With dozens of reporting options covering myriad collected metrics, it’s difficult to know where to start. PremiTech tries to address this by including links to a number of common reporting tasks as part of the default start page. However, veteran IT pros will want to dig deeper, and after spending the prerequisite day or two mastering the UI, their efforts will be rewarded in the form of a better understanding of how their enterprise applications are performing in the real world.

Pricing for Performance Guard is surprisingly aggressive. PremiTech uses a simple, concurrent license model for both stand-alone clients and virtualized sessions (Citrix, VMWare, etc.). Cost is a very reasonable $100 per license, and this includes access to all of the aforementioned add-on modules. There are no server licenses or other infrastructure-related requirements (outside of your Windows Server and SQL database costs). Compared to some recent products we’ve looked at, which can run $50,000 or more before you deploy the first seat, this is an absolute bargain.

Overall, Performance Guard targets a poorly understood link in the application chain: network transactions at the client. In doing so, it fills a major void in coverage for enterprise IT shops and support organizations. Further refinement to the product’s management UI (to better expose the underlying depth) will help to make Performance Guard even more accessible to the less technical, while expansion into emerging platforms (such as hardware and software virtualization) should keep the company at the forefront of the technology curve.