Vantage offers the deepest application analytics in the marketplace for addressing application transaction performance concerns. It helps find and fix application performance and infrastructure problems in production and pre-production. By providing detailed troubleshooting insight, Vantage pinpoints and corrects the causes of poor end-user response times wherever they reside—client workstations, the network, a server or even the application itself—thus, eliminating time-consuming guesswork. In addition, Vantage helps ensure new applications rollout successfully the first time around and provides crucial information for establishing and meeting service requirements.

For Java application performance management, click here. For .NET application performance management, click here.

Understand and easily communicate problems

With Vantage, it's easy to obtain the answers to key questions such as:

• What's causing poor performance? Is the desktop, network, server or application causing the slowdown?
• What changes will provide the most improvement to response times—more bandwidth, tuning the application or more CPU power?
• What kind of performance can I expect from the new application when it is put into production?
• How can I ensure new applications will meet service agreements and end-user needs?

To troubleshoot application performance problems effectively in today's complex distributed application environments, IT professionals need a complete picture of the problem so that business can be restored as quickly as possible. Vantage provides numerous analyses and reports to help network administrators and other IT professionals understand a distributed application's behavior and performance dependencies.

The application Thread Analysis, for example, provides an easy way to understand the files or commands an application sends over the network in a single transaction, such as Java commands, SQL statements or HTTP commands. It also provides insight into the time and duration of a thread and the relationships between threads. Optional decode modules analyze specific database and middleware commands to isolate performance problems.

Thread Analysis for Java, SOAP and Oracle

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Thread Analysis supports:

• Databases: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, Informix and IBM UDB (Version 8 and above). All databases require separate modules.
• Middleware: IBM WebSphere MQ
• Web-based applications: Web services using Java (RMI/IIOP) and Java scripts, SOAP, XML, HTTP, HTTPS, HTML, NNTP, JPEG/GIF files, SMTP and POP3.
• Others: DCOM, SSL, NTLM, Microsoft Networking (SMB), Citrix (packet-level decodes), Generic SQL, Novell NCP, NFSv2 and RPC.

Vantage's report templates allow users to summarize application performance problems and post reports to the web. This allows IT departments to communicate more effectively to address problems and issues.

Reports available with Vantage include:

• Performance Overview—provides a graphical overview of the transaction
• CNS Breakdown—provides a quick summary of transaction performance
• Thread Analysis—provides performance details of the components of a transaction
• Time Plot—aids in the understanding of the burstiness of an application
• Conversation Bounce—helps developers understand if the network is delaying delivery of the packets
• Error Analysis—shows how network errors affect performance.

Reports can be exported to Microsoft Word.

Performance Overview

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CNS Breakdown

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Error Analysis

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Pinpoint the reasons for application slowdowns

When slowdowns of mission-critical applications occur, functional groups within an IT department must work together to determine the cause. Vantage provides a unified view of network, application and systems behavior to clearly identify where performance problems are occurring. Once a problem is isolated, Vantage displays a visual representation of application transactions to reveal bottlenecks.

Vantage uses trace information to summarize problem transactions and determine how much time is spent on the client, network and server. With intuitive drill-down reports, the patented Thread Analysis and Conversation Bounce identify the timing and sequence of each component traversing the network. Combining the two graphical views with detailed backup tabular data provides information essential to resolve poor network and application performance quickly.

• Database administrators can see individual SQL statements, their duration and how long the server is spending on these commands.
• Webmasters can see how HTTP/HTTPS requests for page components including XML, Active Server Pages, CGI scripts, Java scripts, images and animations are affecting front-end performance.
• Network engineers can quickly see how the network's quality of service is affecting application response times.

Conversation Bounce

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Time Plot

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An easier path for troubleshooting

When you combine Vantage's thorough end-user experience monitoring and powerful application performance management features, it's easy to capture transaction paths as they execute and identify when service degrades—giving you a clear, definitive path to the problem. The result: You move from a reactive, firefighting mode into proactive, pre-emptive performance management. Having this type of data at your fingertips allows you to perform automatic, intelligent handoffs of problems to the most appropriate staff—applications, networks, servers or databases—without second-guessing or fingerpointing. Not only do you save the business time and money, but you also increase IT credibility with end users.

Predictive analysis

Troubleshooting means not only identifying the cause of a problem, but also a recommendation on how to fix it. Vantage provides a predictive analysis feature that allows users to see the impact of various performance adjustments on a transaction's response time. In this way, the user can validate that performance will be improved, and by how much. Users can see the effects of varying the following metrics:

• Network: modifying bandwidth, latency and load
• Server: increasing/decreasing the power of a server
• Application: changing application turns for individual "thread" components, varying TCP window size

By adjusting these parameters one at a time, users can determine if the overall response time of the transaction is affected significantly. If it is, they can recommend a corrective course of action that will resolve the problem.

Predictive Analysis (Network Bandwidth)

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Predictive Analysis (Server Node)

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Predictive Analysis (Application Thread)

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Expert Analysis

You don't need a performance guru on your IT staff with the optional Vantage Expert Analysis on duty. This module uses a proven troubleshooting methodology to guide users through the problem resolution process so that problems are addressed quickly and accurately, often using less experienced personnel.

The Transaction Expert tool, which is part of the Expert Analysis module, provides fully automated task analysis and reporting via Microsoft Word. Reports include an Executive Summary that provides a short synopsis of the task's performance, a Conclusion and Recommendations section that identifies major bottlenecks and how to fix them, a Results and Discussion section that provides protocol summaries, detailed delay characteristics via an application bottleneck graphic as well as network characteristic sparklines. With the Transaction Expert, you get immediate troubleshooting insight into application performance problems and recommendations on how to correct them from a succinct report that's easy to communicate with management and colleagues.

The Expert Analysis also includes a Task Report Card, which summarizes transaction performance. A transaction that receives a low grade on the Task Report Card provides users with valuable insight that an investigation may be necessary.

Expert Analysis

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Transaction Expert

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Task Report Card

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Compare performance with an application baseline trace

The Comparison View allows users to compare the performance of a problem transaction with a user-designated application baseline trace. The Comparison View evaluates the most significant differences between the traces, and highlights them in order of priority. It also provides possible causes of problems and indicates the next troubleshooting steps IT teams should take.

Comparison View

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Extensive drill-down application support

Vantage troubleshoots performance problems of transactions supporting mission-critical distributed applications. This helps users understand why transactions are not meeting their expected SLAs by giving deep insight into their programming components. The Java decode can provide details about the RMI (Remote Method Invocation) and IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol) commands used across the network. Vantage also decodes SOAP, XML, HTTP/HTTPS and HTML applications. Built-in and optional decode modules provide analysis of specific database commands to isolate and pinpoint potential performance problems within a transaction. Vantage's decode support goes beyond the most common database commands such as Select, Insert and Update. Vantage supports the calls, commands and parameters between these common statements, recognizes that database commands behave differently in distributed environments, and supports the unique commands added by vendors for their specific implementations. All these powerful decoding capabilities provide complete visibility into application performance and identify which component needs to be tuned in order to meet business goals of mission-critical applications. In addition, since security is so important in today's business world, Vantage recognizes SSL and NTLM commands.

When Compuware's Vantage Analyzer product is installed in Java and .NET environments, ApplicationVantage presents a complete end-to-end view of the end user's transaction and pinpoints the component causing poor performance anywhere in the infrastructure. ApplicationVantage identifies the cause of problems in the first tier of a multi-tiered distributed application. If ApplicationVantage identifies that a problem is somewhere behind the first tier, and the environment is Java or .NET, Vantage Analyzer pinpoints the cause of the problem anywhere in the back-end.

Payload Views

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Oracle Decodes

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Java and .NET Environments

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Manage performance of .NET applications

When it comes to .NET applications, Vantage is the administrator's first line of defense for isolating performance breakdowns in production. With the ability to capture and merge transactions from two points to identify performance delays on the client, network or server, Vantage plays a critical role for troubleshooting .NET performance issues when reported by end users. The ability to pinpoint performance delays down to the SOAP and XML payloads within Web services makes Vantage the premier .NET production-troubleshooting tool on the market. These capabilities, coupled with Vantage's deep penetration into decoding database traffic, help IT professionals resolve almost any application performance problem quickly and effectively.

Thorough network data collection and analysis

With Vantage, many of the functions that are provided with other vendors' packet capture and analysis solutions can be performed from a single console location. This allows the Vantage user to perform transaction analysis without switching products.

Extended Merge

To pinpoint specific problems identified by users, IT professionals need to obtain transaction-specific data. The optional Extended Merge module provides remote capture capabilities for specific problem transactions. Users can set up filters to obtain only the relevant data and perform the start and stop of the capture in a controlled environment. From there, they can retrieve and merge any number of traces to obtain a realistic view of the transaction and determine the source of the problem.

Extended Merge

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Unattended Capture Manager

The optional Unattended Capture Manager (UCM) module allows administrators to manage the capture of network traffic at strategic points in the network and retrieve the captured data on an "as needed" basis. When collecting the data from remote agents, a time filter for a specific period can be selected to limit the amount of data captured. For example, agents can be set up to capture data for three hours. If a problem occurs during that period, the administrator may decide to retrieve data five minutes before and after the event so only the relevant data necessary to troubleshoot the problem is collected.

Unattended Capture Manager (UCM)

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Detailed packet analysis

To help resolve problems more quickly, it is important to obtain packet details at the ISO layers 2 through 4. In Vantage, the protocol detail breakout and packet detail are available as split windows under the Packet Trace Analysis Report. Protocol detail is shown in the packet trace as a tree structure for each of the decoded layers. This allows the analyst to quickly identify problems and restore application and infrastructure performance to its optimal levels.

Packet Trace Analysis Report

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Data sources supported by Vantage

• Direct network capture from Vantage agents on the following platforms: Windows XP, 2000, NT, 98; Solaris, HP-UX, Linux and AIX
• Industry-standard trace formats, including those from Finisar, Novell, HP, NetScout, NAI and Acterna
• Trace file formats supported by Wildpackets' ProConvert utility
• Trace files captured using UNIX TCPDMP and Sun/Solaris SNOOPOther RMON, RMON II probes and protocol analyzers supporting industry-standard .ENC, .TRC, .FDC and .CAP capture-file formats.

Application production certification

With today's shortened development cycles, many new applications are passed to operations groups with little validation as to their impact on the enterprise. All too often, distributed applications that "worked well in the lab" fail to work in a complex WAN environment. As hundreds of end users begin using the new application, they don't get the performance they expect. In the meantime, other applications are severely impacted by the overhead of the new application. This can cause a complete breakdown on the infrastructure, resulting in lost revenue. In addition, resources often become over-taxed and it's difficult to bring the environment back to normal.

Vantage provides an easy-to-use certification process for the rollout of new or modified applications. This application profiling approach allows users to capture specific application transactions for in-depth analysis of behavior across multiple tiers of a network in controlled environments. Individual mission-critical transactions can be analyzed and fine-tuned to ensure they are working optimally before the application is put into production.

Response Time Predictor

With the emergence of Service Level Management (SLM), application performance must be measurable, as IT managers are now fiscally responsible for guaranteeing that applications and networks provide optimal performance. In addition, the IT department is often tasked with setting up SLAs, but has little data on which to establish realistic and attainable performance goals for business-critical transactions.

The Vantage Response Time Predictor (RTP) helps you establish realistic and attainable end-user response times and service-level goals, as well as make cost-effective decisions concerning WAN provisioning. And, by using the Sweep feature, you can determine at what point adding bandwidth will not improve performance.

Response Time Predictor

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Response Time Predictor Sweep

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WAN provisioning

Vantage tells you how the production network will affect your new application. But what will happen to the performance of your network when the application is deployed to possibly hundreds of end users at a remote office?

The optional WAN Deployment Expert (WDE) module focuses on the dominant network budget metric: WAN bandwidth. It allows users to determine what impact hundreds of users will have on their infrastructure before rolling out a new application. With WDE, users can use the previously captured tasks in Vantage to quickly build typical workload scenarios of users at remote branch offices. From there, they can help ensure application deployment success.

WDE - Deploy User Profile

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WDE - Response Times

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WDE - Access Links

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