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Slow Applications Are Criminal

Larry Dragich

In the world of Application Performance Management (APM) it is always better to enlist more than one entity to help solve the mystery of performance problems.

It's kind of like arriving at the scene of the crime on foreign soil, being blindfolded, shoved out the door, and then asked to help solve the injustice without any insight. All you can do is begin by asking people in the vicinity, providing you speak their language, for information on what they have seen (i.e. end-user-experience).

Gathering facts related to a crime is essential, and can be likened to utilizing an APM solution for solving application performance problems. The more information about an application’s behavior that you can obtain, along with understanding its idiosyncrasies within the environment, the more likely you will be able to pinpoint root causes of performance issues.

The Three People You Need

Wouldn't it be helpful if there was an eye witness you could interview, a watchman who was on duty during the time of the incident, and an agent you could hire to translate the native tongue and provide insight into the culture?

In much the same way, a smart APM strategy enlists the help from these three entities: the Witness, the Watchman, and the Agent. You start by listening to the testimony from the eye witness (aka. wire data), collecting the observations from the watchman (aka. web robots), and analyzing details from the agent (aka. code level instrumentation).

The Witness

Passive monitoring, wire-data analytics

The Witness reports what they see within their field of vision, (aka. passive monitoring, wire-data analytics). The Witness is watching everything in their purview and sees things as they happen, which corresponds to what is coming across "the wire" in front of them.

The Witness will tell you how many people were involved, if anyone was injured, and what time the event occurred, (e.g. user names, packet loss, timelines, etc.). She can tell you what doors the people went through, how wide the aisles were, and how fast people were traveling, (e.g. network port listeners, realized bandwidth, round-trip-time, etc.).

The Watchman

Active monitoring - synthetic transactions

The Watchman (aka. web robot) is actively checking and is always on patrol, methodically taking the same path every time. He will tell you what doors are locked and monitor the ones that are open, collecting measurements along the way on how long it takes to complete his rounds, (i.e. synthetic transactions).

The Watchman will report the status of the rooms and buildings on his patrol and will note if anything happens to him along the way, (e.g. application availability, transaction errors, timeouts, etc.).

The Agent

Application code instrumentation

The Agent you hire is critical for solving the crime within the territory you're operating in. The Agent will watch activity from specific vantage points throughout the environment and report back his findings. It's crucial he speaks the local language, (e.g. Java, .Net, PHP) and can easily translate for you.

His approach will be to deploy probes on rooftops and inside the buildings for monitoring all conversations and actions in the environment, (aka. application code instrumentation). He will also tap the communication systems, (i.e. script injection) when appropriate and capture specific measurements from each conversation and record them.   

Going from Red to Green

Identifying an application that has gone catatonic is one thing, but assessing the insidious slow performance of a complex multi-tiered application and fixing it, can be very time consuming and costly. Enlisting all three entities described above to assist is a thoughtful strategy for any IT Leader to consider.

Based on eye witness testimony, the forensics collected, and the conversations recorded, you will be well on your way to providing an accurate account of what has transpired and why, (i.e. root cause analysis).

Conclusion

Remember, the end-user is the supreme judge in this case and if performance is chronically slow, your sentence could be harsh. Either directly by inundating you with complaints creating bad press or indirectly by abandoning your site in favor of one that is much faster and more intuitive to use.

Embracing a smart but simple APM Methodology within your environment may be the only thing that exonerates you when the verdict for your slow application is "guilty as charged."

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Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

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Slow Applications Are Criminal

Larry Dragich

In the world of Application Performance Management (APM) it is always better to enlist more than one entity to help solve the mystery of performance problems.

It's kind of like arriving at the scene of the crime on foreign soil, being blindfolded, shoved out the door, and then asked to help solve the injustice without any insight. All you can do is begin by asking people in the vicinity, providing you speak their language, for information on what they have seen (i.e. end-user-experience).

Gathering facts related to a crime is essential, and can be likened to utilizing an APM solution for solving application performance problems. The more information about an application’s behavior that you can obtain, along with understanding its idiosyncrasies within the environment, the more likely you will be able to pinpoint root causes of performance issues.

The Three People You Need

Wouldn't it be helpful if there was an eye witness you could interview, a watchman who was on duty during the time of the incident, and an agent you could hire to translate the native tongue and provide insight into the culture?

In much the same way, a smart APM strategy enlists the help from these three entities: the Witness, the Watchman, and the Agent. You start by listening to the testimony from the eye witness (aka. wire data), collecting the observations from the watchman (aka. web robots), and analyzing details from the agent (aka. code level instrumentation).

The Witness

Passive monitoring, wire-data analytics

The Witness reports what they see within their field of vision, (aka. passive monitoring, wire-data analytics). The Witness is watching everything in their purview and sees things as they happen, which corresponds to what is coming across "the wire" in front of them.

The Witness will tell you how many people were involved, if anyone was injured, and what time the event occurred, (e.g. user names, packet loss, timelines, etc.). She can tell you what doors the people went through, how wide the aisles were, and how fast people were traveling, (e.g. network port listeners, realized bandwidth, round-trip-time, etc.).

The Watchman

Active monitoring - synthetic transactions

The Watchman (aka. web robot) is actively checking and is always on patrol, methodically taking the same path every time. He will tell you what doors are locked and monitor the ones that are open, collecting measurements along the way on how long it takes to complete his rounds, (i.e. synthetic transactions).

The Watchman will report the status of the rooms and buildings on his patrol and will note if anything happens to him along the way, (e.g. application availability, transaction errors, timeouts, etc.).

The Agent

Application code instrumentation

The Agent you hire is critical for solving the crime within the territory you're operating in. The Agent will watch activity from specific vantage points throughout the environment and report back his findings. It's crucial he speaks the local language, (e.g. Java, .Net, PHP) and can easily translate for you.

His approach will be to deploy probes on rooftops and inside the buildings for monitoring all conversations and actions in the environment, (aka. application code instrumentation). He will also tap the communication systems, (i.e. script injection) when appropriate and capture specific measurements from each conversation and record them.   

Going from Red to Green

Identifying an application that has gone catatonic is one thing, but assessing the insidious slow performance of a complex multi-tiered application and fixing it, can be very time consuming and costly. Enlisting all three entities described above to assist is a thoughtful strategy for any IT Leader to consider.

Based on eye witness testimony, the forensics collected, and the conversations recorded, you will be well on your way to providing an accurate account of what has transpired and why, (i.e. root cause analysis).

Conclusion

Remember, the end-user is the supreme judge in this case and if performance is chronically slow, your sentence could be harsh. Either directly by inundating you with complaints creating bad press or indirectly by abandoning your site in favor of one that is much faster and more intuitive to use.

Embracing a smart but simple APM Methodology within your environment may be the only thing that exonerates you when the verdict for your slow application is "guilty as charged."

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...