Remote Monitoring of Cache Clusters with NCache

The need for keeping a check on things or to simply put it, monitoring things is essential. This isn’t limited to just computers or software, but can be applied to any kind of situation. For example, a guard can’t monitor a five-story building by himself easily, but with the help of CCTV cameras he can.

The Problem of Monitoring a Distributed Environment

In the case of a distributed environment where an application is deployed across multiple servers, monitoring is essential. But monitoring the application and the servers locally becomes more and more difficult till it becomes almost impossible with the addition of new servers.

The same can be applied to a distributed cache cluster, which means there will be many cache nodes. This cluster can be easily monitored, if done so remotely. This is easily achieved via NCache.

Monitoring Your Cache Cluster Remotely with NCache

Remote cache clusters can be monitored easily with the tools provided by NCache. You don’t even need NCache to be installed on your systems in order to perform remote monitoring of cache clusters. This is done via the NCache Web Monitor and the Windows PowerShell.

The NCache Web Monitor is a web-based interactive tool that can run on your internet browser.You can access the NCache Web Monitor through the NCache Web Manager. The NCache Web Manager runs on the port 8251. So, to access it you have to go to https://mahcine-ip-address:8251 on your web browser (provided the cache service is running). There you will find the option to access the NCache Web Monitor via the Monitor button. This button is enabled once you select a cache cluster you wish to monitor.

NCache also provides integration with Windows PowerShell to easily automate its administrative process. This can be accessed by running the PowerShell and then issuing the supported commands. Both of these tools (NCache Web Monitor and Windows PowerShell) are very robust. Using them you can monitor your cache clusters, individual cache nodes, and their respective resources both locally and remotely.

 

NCache Web Manager                                 NCache PowerShell Tool                 NCache Web Monitor

One Window Monitoring

You can monitor cache clusters and their nodes from a single web window remotely and locally using the NCache Web Monitor. It doesn’t matter how big the cache cluster is, the monitoring can be done from a single window which makes it all the more convenient.

The NCache Web Monitor gives you the option to monitor various statistics of the cache cluster in the form of graphs and charts. The NCache Web Monitor provides you with three dashboards to choose from namely the,

• Server Dashboard: Shows you the statistics in graphical form originating from the server end
• Client Dashboard: Shows you the statistics in graphical form originating from the client end
• Report Dashboard: Shows you statistics in tabular form for both the server end and client end.

The NCache Web Monitor also gives you the option to add your own custom dashboard.

The following statistics are displayed to the user in the NCache Web Monitor,

• Health of the cache cluster
• Requests per second on the cache cluster
• CPU usage of the cache cluster and client
• Memory usage of the cache cluster and client
• NCache Event Logs and much more

 

Cache Counters                                   NCache Web Management                             Monitor Caches

NCache Perfrmon Counters

Performance Monitor (PerfMon) is a tool that comes built-in with Windows and allows you to look into the performance of your system and the applications that are running on it. Cache cluster performance can be monitored using this tool as well, because NCache provides numerous counters to Windows Performance Monitor. The best part is that you can perform remote monitoring as well by entering the IP address of the remote machine while adding counters to monitor.

The following are some of the counters provided by NCache for the client and server side for monitoring latency.

• Average μs/add
• Average μs/addbulk
• Average μs/remove
• Average μs/insertbulk and much more.

 

Remote Monitoring of the Cache Cluster with Windows PowerShell

The PowerShell is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows, this makes it very versatile. There are scenarios where the OS that is being used doesn’t support a GUI. In these kinds of scenarios, the NCache Web Monitor becomes unusable. That is where Windows PowerShell becomes your first choice. This is because it can be used in both GUI and non-GUI based operating systems.

Using Windows PowerShell, you can monitor and manage cache clusters remotely with ease by issuing the supported commands. For the supported commands you can go to PowerShell reference.The results returned to you on the issuing of these commands will be in textual form.

This figure shows how you can monitor your cache cluster health with Windows PowerShell.

This figure shows how you can monitor your cache server statistics with Windows PowerShell.

Monitoring Multiple Deployments of NCache Remotely

Through the NCache Web Monitor or Windows PowerShell, you can monitor multiple deployments of the NCache cache clusters remotely. Meaning that as long as you can access either one of these tools it doesn’t matter where the cache cluster is deployed. The cache cluster can be deployed inside a containerized application, the cloud, or any other operating system, it can be monitored remotely with NCache.

Kubernetes Deployment of NCache                       Docker Deployment of NCache

Conclusion

NCache makes it very convenient and easy to monitor your cache clusters with the NCache Web Monitor and Windows PowerShell. Remote monitoring is an essential need of the 21^st century because it makes everything fast and easy. This become even more evident with everyday increase in the usage of cloud-based technologies where resources are present in remote locations.

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