Admin and Monitoring Tools in NCache

NCache provides a variety of administrative tools for the management and monitoring of the cache cluster, nodes and clients. These include web-based apps, PowerShell tools and integrations with third party monitoring tools. It also offers logs and event viewers for viewing and monitoring runtime statistics of different components of NCache.

NCache Manager

The NCache Manager is a web-based application to perform all the managerial tasks smoothly. Multiple browsers support it such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. It has a very easy-to-understand interface for both Windows and Linux environments. You can access the NCache Manager locally as well as remotely. The operations performed using the NCache Manager include:

Cache/Cluster/Bridge Creation
Addition/Removal of Clients or Servers
Deployment of providers
General Cache Cluster Configurations
Security

NCache Monitor

The NCache Monitor is a web-based monitoring tool to monitor the cache's health and activities. It shows a report and graphical view for monitoring your client and server statistics. You can launch the NCache Monitor the same way as the NCache Manager for Windows and Linux, and it also monitors everything remotely. The core features of the NCache Monitor are:

Server dashboard to monitor counters for servers in the cache cluster.
Client dashboard to monitor counters for remote cache clients (web/app servers).
Custom dashboard to create and customize your dashboard.
Counters to monitor statistics such as cache health, operations per second, cache size and CPU usage, etc.

PowerShell Tools

The Windows PowerShell is a .NET-based management shell developed by Microsoft for automating tasks and configuration management. PowerShell includes a command-line shell and scripting languages. NCache has a set of PowerShell tools to automate cache management. Similarly, remote NCache tasks can be managed on the network through a single machine using PowerShell scripts for Windows and Linux. Please follow the steps to set up the PowerShell environment and successfully run NCache PowerShell cmdlets.

A few of the PowerShell modules provided by NCache include:

New-Cache/New-Bridge
Remove-Cache/Remove-Bridge
Clear-Caches
Install-Module

Windows Performance Monitor

The Windows Performance Monitor is a monitoring tool created by Microsoft for viewing real-time application statistics. NCache provides a list of performance monitoring counters, which you can select using the Windows PerfMon Tool Monitoring Window.

Following counters are provided by NCache:

Cache Server Counters like State Transfer/sec and Updates/sec, etc.
Cache Client Counters like fetches/sec and compression/sec, etc.
Bridge Counters like bridge cache count and bridge cache size, etc.

Windows Event Viewer

The Windows Event Viewer is a tool that shows a log of system messages - including errors, information messages, and warnings. NCache logs significant events in the Windows Event Viewer. It allows you to monitor the important events such as:

NCache installation events.
Errors encountered by NCache or Bridge services.
Service/Cache start and stop.
Cache server joining or leaving a cache cluster.
Cache size going above a configurable 80% threshold.

SNMP Monitoring Using NCache Counters

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a standard protocol through which different devices on a network communicate and share information. NCache supports monitoring this protocol's activity using its SNMP counters. You can read more about these SNMP Counters in the NCache Administrators Guide.

Email Notifications on NCache Events

Along with other third-party monitoring tools, NCache can notify users about relevant events through email alerts. These email notifications concern significant events such as:

Cache start or stop.
Cache server joining or leaving the cache cluster.
Cache state transfer start or completion.
Cache size going above a configurable 80% threshold.

NCache Log Viewer

The NCache Log Viewer is an interactive GUI tool to display logs in an organized manner. This log viewer lets you maintain logs categorically, i.e., it allows separate field identification and customizes the search entries in a manner convenient for you. These logs show necessary information such as:

Cache node where the operation takes place.
Timestamp of the log.
The process name and the name of the component.
Thread name and log types.
A message with detailed log information about the success/failure of operations.

Prometheus

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system that records real-time metrics in a time series database built using an HTTP pull model, with flexible queries and real-time alerting. NCache provides support for monitoring its performance counters through Prometheus. You can monitor Distributed Caches, Distributed Cache with Persistence, the Pub/Sub Messaging Store, Distributed Lucene, Clients, and Bridges through the extensive counters published by NCache.

Grafana

Grafana is an open-source analytics and monitoring tool. NCache provides a Grafana Application Plugin that collects and displays NCache metrics data from your cluster on several feature-rich metrics dashboard using Prometheus as a data source.

LINQPad Integration

LINQPad is a database querying software that employs LINQ, SQL, and other query languages without IDE's. NCache provides smooth integration with LINQPad, only requiring the addition of a reference to the NCache LINQPad provider and the custom objects you have stored in NCache. It lets you write your LINQ queries over the configured cache with LINQPad.

Management and Monitoring API & Events

NCache provides a set of methods to perform simple management and monitoring operations on the cache. It saves you from using the NCache Manager or NCache PowerShell tools by managing them using the API.

Management API

NCache provides the following API calls for management of NCache.

StartCache API: It lets you start the cache by providing the server cache name and node. It also allows you to enable security on the cache.
StopCache API: It lets you stop the cache by providing the server cache name and node. It also allows stopping a cache with security enabled.

Monitoring API

Similar to management, NCache provides a monitoring API for monitoring the cache. The list of monitoring APIs includes:

GetCacheHealth API: This method lets you view the connectivity status of cache server nodes by providing the cache name, server address, and port.
ClientInfo API: It contains the client information of each client, such as ClientID, processID, AppName, etc.
ConnectedClientList API: It gets you the list of all the clients connected to the cache.

Management Level Events

Management-level event notifications are events registered for management operations on the cache from your .NET or Java application. Notifications fire on the following management operations:

Cache Clear: Whenever a cache is cleared.
Cache Stop: Whenever a cache is stopped.
Member Join: Whenever a node joins the cache cluster.
Member Leave: Whenever a node leaves the cache cluster.

What to Do Next?

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