Sysload Architecture Overview

At the heart of all Sysload solutions lies a unique and powerful metric collection technology that provides the level of detailed information required by today’s IT professionals.

Sysload is based on a unique and powerful 3-tier architecture
that can be quickly deployed in any large and/or complex environment

Sysload User Interfaces:

SP Analyst, dedicated to server performance and capacity management

SP Monitor, dedicated to event and service monitoring

SP Portal, dedicated to server performance and capacity reporting

Sysload Management Modules

Sysload Management Server

Sysload Management Server is the module used by the Sysload client applications (Observer console, consolidation modules):

to communicate with the Sysload collection agents and send them requests
to forward the alerts sent by the agents to the consoles

The module manages a local database containing:

List of analysis modules (Agents)
User and user group lists with attached rights
Objects: Observer console workspaces, enterprise event and entity models, period models

The management Server is installed and runs as a service on Windows and Linux.

Sysload Token Server is a client/server application (protocol TCP/IP) designed to ensure protection of the Sysload modules active on a network. Each Sysload module requires a certain number of tokens to run and has to request them from the Token Server.

If the Token Server is in a secured area, and some modules are within a DMZ, the Token Server can be deployed using a gateway architecture thus ensuring a reliable and secure connection between the server and the modules.

Sysload Collection and Analysis Modules

The Sysload solution supports two collection mechanisms. The first is based on dedicated platform-specific distributed agents. These agents provide the highest quality data needed for capacity and performance management while having minimal impact on IT systems. The second collection mechanism is agentless. Agentless monitoring is useful when only basic monitoring of services and devices is required. Data collected via these two mechanisms are correlated and shared by the SP Analyst, SP Monitor and SP Portal solutions. Sharing this data between applications makes it possible for IT departments to effectively manage server capacity and performance.

Targeted systems

Operating Systems: Windows, Citrix, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, i5/OS, NetWare, VMware VI
Databases: Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL Server, Informix, DB2
Applications: MS IIS, MS Exchange, MS Active Directory, Lotus Domino, DNS
Availability and Response Time: Services, Network, SNMP, Web, Mail, etc.

Sysload agent characteristics

1 module dedicated to each platform monitored
Monitoring of IT resources including hardware resources, processes, users and response times

Precise and discreet collection

Light footprint on servers (< 1% CPU)

More than 300 metrics collected every 5 seconds

Data pulled directly from the Kernel of the system

History Database

Can keep server operations data for several years

Stored locally on each server (central database optional)

Light disk use (15 Mb/month)

Support for virtualization technologies

Virtualization offers new flexibility in terms of infrastructure capacity management. In order to fully capitalize on the benefits offered by virtualization, Sysload solutions support the virtualization project's full life cycle, from conception to completion as well as measuring its impact on the information system's capacity and performance. Sysload solutions support the market leading virtualized environments: VMzare VI, AIX 5.3, Solaris 10, i5/OS, etc.