Understanding applications

An application is made up of one or more programs running on one or more monitored systems. Applications can be one of three types:

• Simple Application. A simple application is an application that is not dependent on another application to run. Example: Microsoft Server 2008 R2.
• Complex Application. A complex application is an application configured to be dependent on one or more applications to run. Example: WhatsUp Gold (requires IIS and SQL Server).
• Discrete Application. A discrete application is an application upon which a complex application has a dependency. For example, IIS and SQL Server are discrete applications on which the complex application WhatsUp Gold is dependent. A discrete application is used when you are monitoring a complex application.

For example, if you want to use APM to monitor WhatsUp Gold, create an application instance of WhatsUp Gold and add applications that WhatsUp Gold uses, such as SQL Server and IIS as components to the application instance.

Note: Each application component (SQL Server and IIS) uses one license each since they are each individual components of an application instance (in this example, WhatsUp Gold).

Learn more about APM terminology

See Also APM configuration Viewing application performance configuration Discovering applications using application profiles Discovering applications by application type Discovering applications for multiple application profiles Monitoring newly-discovered applications Configuring APM to monitor applications Working with application profiles Working with components Working with application instances Working with critical component groups Working with discrete applications