Release Notes for Evident ClearStone Live (r4.5)

New features in this release:

• Memcached Management Pack
• Cassandra Management Pack
• New TreeMap Visualization
• New Dual-Axis History Chart Visualization
• New Collection Configuration Tool

Memcached Management Pack

The new Memcached Management Pack enables customers to use Evident ClearStone Live to monitor Memcached environments. ECSL collects statistical data from multiple Memcached instances. These performance metrics include the following:

• Cluster statistics
• Instance statistics
• Slab statistics
• Key Prefix Activity statistics

ECSL can group and aggregate the statistics from multiple instances into a logical cluster. This provides an aggregated view of specific Memcached clusters for a particular application. Users can utilize the pre-build perspectives in the Real-Time Dashboard to monitor the activity and performance characteristics of the Memcached environment. In addition, administrators can configure additional monitoring policies to alert operators whern there are performance or capacity issues with the Memcached environment.

For more information about Memcached, go to http://memcached.org

Cassandra Management Pack

The new Cassandra Management Pack enables customers to use Evident ClearStone Live to monitor Cassandra clusters. ECSL collects statistical data from all the JVMs in the cluster. The performance metrics include the following:

• Thread pool statistics
• Column Family Store statistics
• Commit Log statistics
• Storage Proxy statistics
• Storage Service statistics
• Streaming Service statistics
• JVM Statistics

ECSL can perform parallel JMX collections from all the Cassandra nodes in the cluster. The data from these nodes can be consolidate and aggregated into a logical cluster as define in the collection configuration. This provides an aggregated view of the Cassandra clusters. Users can utilize the pre-build persepectives in the Real-Time Dashboard to monitor the activity and performance characteristics of the Cassandra cluster. In addition, administrators can configure additional monitoring policies to alert operators when there are performance issues with the Cassandra JVMs, thread pools, column family stores, etc.

For more information about Cassandra, go to http://cassandra.apache.org

New tree map Visualization

A new generic tree map visualization was added to the ECSL Real-Time Dashboard. The tree map displays hierarchical (tree-structured) data as a set of nested rectangles. In ECSL, these rectangles can represent any metric data collected or computed by ECSL. Each branch of the tree is given a rectangle, which is then tiled with smaller rectangles representing sub-branches. A leaf node's rectangle has an area proportional to a specified dimension (i.e. JVM allocated max heap) on the data. This area dimension is configurable based on the record type selected by the user. The leaf nodes can be colored according to user specified dimensions of the data (i.e. JVM used heap). This color dimension is also configurable based on the record type selected by the user. When the color and size dimensions are correlated in some way with the tree structure, one can often easily see patterns that would be difficult to spot in other ways. In ECSL the area and color dimensions are fully configurable for each specific record type.

Beyond just visualizing the areas and colors in the tree map, users have the option to filter data and drill down into groups of cells in the tree map. As with any perspectives in the Real-Time Dashboard, users can save and share tree map perspectives with other users.

For more details, refer to the Real-Time Dashboard User Guide.

New Dual-Axis History Chart Visualization

A new generic time-series chart was added in this release to provide additional flexibility in creating composite charts that allow users to overlay disjointed data sets over a common time period. This feature is useful for analyzing performance data from disparate data sets of one or more resources. There are options apply filters for each of the data series to control the amount of data presented in the chart. Users can save and share these perspectives.

For more details, refer to the Real-Time Dashboard User Guide.

New Collection Configuration Tool

Collection configuration in ECSL has been greatly simplified via the new Collection Configuration utility in the ECSL Admin Console. This feature allows users to setup new collection targets and associate the types of datasets to be collected. The utility supports configuration for configuring Oracle Coherence clusters, Cassandra clusters, Memcached instances, and other custom JMX datasources. For each collection target, administrators can also assign security tags and additional static properties to be associated to the collection.

For more details, refer to the Setup and Configuration Guide.

Additional updates in this release:

• Production installation comes with default 15-day license
• Upgraded to Java Version 6 update 20 for Unix and update 21 for Windows
• Updated Oracle Coherence Management Pack with various fixes including improved data integrity detection
• Enhanced the OpCache Manager for recovering Coherence services

Release Notes for Evident ClearStone Live (r4.4)

This latest release makes it simpler for users to incorporate the monitoring and management functionality of third party or custom Java applications. It give users customizable real-time visibility and control across multiple applications from a  single tool.

New features in this release:

• Information Model Builder
• New Management Framework
• Enhanced Role Based Security with LDAP Authentication
• Enhanced Oracle Coherence Management Pack

Information Model Builder

The Evident ClearStone Information Model Builder is a configuration tool that is used by administrators and developers to manufacture and manage the Information Models for ECSL. Customers can configure ECSL to monitor any JMX enable application or third party system. This enables ECSL to monitor new applications with little or no additional coding effort.

Management Framework

Beyond monitoring, Evident has introduced an extensible Management Framework that exposes management operations for remote applications/systems. This provides the ability for customers to access management operations from the same monitoring tool for multiple applications. The Management Framework supports the execution of existing JMX operations, custom scripts, custom test code, operating system tools, and much more that can be easily extended via Management Plugin POJOs. For generalized application management, the standard Management Pack supports SSH, remote shell execution, and POJO support for custom operations.

Enhanced Role Based Security with LDAP Authentication

The product supports role based accessed to the product features and data. ECSL allows customers to restrict functionality and data to authenticated users. Authentication is performed via an embedded LDAP server in the product. Making it possible to support external customer LDAP directory servers.

Enhanced Oracle Coherence Management Pack

The updated Oracle Coherence Management Pack includes new management features such as: cache browsing, cluster-wide thread dumps, loading data into caches, removing caches, spin up clients and nodes, cache backup and restore, and much more. There are a few new metrics that are now produced in the product, such as correlated metrics for storage metrics for named caches, storage filled % for named caches, request and task failure ratios, etc.

Release Notes for Evident ClearStone Live (r4.3)

New features in this release:

• Generic JMX Monitoring
• Real-Time Dashboard
• Monitoring Policies with Customizable Alerts
• Oracle Coherence Management Pack
• Multi-Cluster Monitoring
• Coherence Health Summary Dashboard
  

Generic JMX Monitoring

ECSL 4.3 is now supports the monitoring of custom Mbeans. ECSL includes options for JMX Remote collection or via the EvidentJMXProxy for JMX over HTTP. With the aid of Evident's professional services, additional information models can be constructed to support custom or product-specific Mbeans.

Real-Time Dashboard

The new web application (http://localhost:8080/rtdashboard) is an additional user interface that enables users to build customized real-time dashboards based on any Mbean metrics collected by ECSL. Each dashboard supports heterogeneous data types across one or more monitored environments. This is useful for monitoring custom application mbeans from custom built applications.

Monitoring Policies with Customizable Alerts

Users can customize monitoring policies based on any collected data types and metrics. The monitoring policy can be comprised of advanced threshold settings that include filtering, sustained rate, descriptions, and customized resolutions, etc. Users can define the custom alerts via simple scripting.

Oracle Coherence Management Pack

Users of ECSL for Java (r4.3) can deploy the Oracle Coherence Management to support real-time monitoring of Oracle Coherence clusters. The pack includes the pre-built Real-Time Console for Oracle Coherence, for example configurations for Coherence collection and ChronoGraphs for Oracle Coherence.

Multi-Cluster Monitoring

Previous versions of ECSL were limited to monitoring one Oracle Coherence cluster per instance of ECSL. With ECSL 4.3, the product supports concurrent monitoring of multiple clusters with a single ECSL installation. This includes support for monitoring clusters purely using JMX Remote.

Coherence Health Summary Dashboard

This feature provides comprehensive bird's eye view of multi-cluster health. The intent is to provide the grid operations team or production support staff
a single dashboard that identifies potential health, performance, and capacity issues with the cluster nodes, caches, and services across multiple clusters. Coherence health monitoring policies are defined using the new Monitoring Policy feature.