Environment configuration

Environment defines all the configuration options for the agent. Each agent connected to the inspectIT CMR repository will use exactly one environment that defines all the needed configuration. Please read the basic concepts first in order to understand all the configuration elements in inspectIT.

Management

Environments are created and managed with the Configuration Interface view. By selecting the Environment radio button in the Configuration Interface view all the environments in the selected CMR repository will be displayed:

Creating new environment

New environment can be created by clicking on the Add → Create Environment action in the Configuration Interface view tool-bar. The name of the environment must be defined, while the description is optional.

Configuration

 To edit a environment double-click on the environment in the Configuration Interface view. The Environment Settings page displays all the possible configuration settings for an environment.

Agent restart required

 In order for changes in the settings to take effect on agents using the given environment, all agents must be restarted.

Profile selection

Profile selection part shows all existing profiles that can be included in the environment. Here it is important to know several things:

  • The profile [Common] Exclude rules should always be included in the selected profiles as the correct functioning of the agent depends on it. For more information read the  Exclude rules configuration.
  • Profiles that are not active will not be included in the environment even if they are selected for an environment. For more information read the Profile configuration.

This part enables easy filtering of the profiles based on their name. Furthermore, double-clicking on the profile opens Profile Editor where selected profiles can be changed.

Profile selection part with 4 selected profiles

Strategies

This configuration section defines the strategies that will be used on the agent. The following options apply:

Default strategies settings

Sending strategy

The agent has to know when to send its measurements to the CMR. For that purpose, sending strategies must be defined. There are two available options:

Sending strategy

Description

Option

Time Strategy

This strategy will cause the agent to send its measurements after a specific interval. This interval can be set by using the option text box.

time in milliseconds

List Size Strategy

This strategy will cause the agent to send its measurements after a specific size of value objects is reached. The size can be set by using the option text box.

size

Buffer strategy

The next important aspect to configure is how the agent should handle connection problems when they appear. One could imagine that there is no buffer at all, or a specified size etc. After a connection is reestablished, the buffer will return all the elements it contains and they will be send to the CMR.

Buffer strategy

Description

Options

Simple Buffer

The simplest version of a buffer is apparently no buffer at all. It contains exactly one element. This is useful if old data isn't necessary or maybe the memory of the application is very limited.

none

Size Buffer

This buffer strategy needs an additional size option to set the size of this buffer. This buffer works as a FILO stack, so last added elements will be sent first (as they are more important), and old ones are thrown away if this buffer is full.

size

Class loading delegation

Expert user option

If activated all sub-classes of java.lang.ClassLoader will be instrumented so that loading of the inspectIT classes is delegated to the inspectIT class loader. Should only be changed to false in rare cases. By default this setting is active.

Platform sensors selection

The platform sensor selection allows specification of which Platform sensors should be active on the agent. The selection is possible for all existing platform sensors. By default all sensors are active.

All platform sensors active

Sensor options

Sensor options part defines all possible general sensor options that can be configured.

Available sensor options

String length

All the method-sensor-types and the exception-sensor-type allow specification of the string length option. With this option a user can specify maximum length of Strings values collected by these sensors. What the String values are depend on the concrete sensor used. For example, database related sensors will decrease the size of the SQL statement strings if the length is higher than the specified one. On the other hand, the exception sensor will, for example, decrease the size of the exception stack trace and/or message.

This can be valuable in different situations. The application that has too many created exceptions, can try to send large amount of data to the CMR, because the stack traces of the exception can be long. This can create a very high overhead, that can influence the general performance of the monitored application. inspectIT team already had an opportunity to face the problems where 20,000+ exceptions are created in several seconds, making the network transfer of the data impossible.

This setting is available for following sensors:

  • Timer sensor
  • HTTP sensor
  • Exception sensor
  • JDBC Statement sensor
  • JDBC Prepared Statement sensor
  • Invocation Sequence sensor 

Enhanced Exception sensor

The exception sensor can be run in two modes: simple and enhanced. More information about these modes can be found on the Exception Sensor page. The simple mode is default one. When in doubt use the simple exception sensor. 

Logging sensor options

In this section it's possible to set the Minimum level parameter for all the logging sensors. This defines the minimum severity level a logging message must have to be captured by inspectIT. The default values are:

  • log4j: WARN

More information you can find on Logging Sensor page.