WhatsUp Gold and its supporting reference content use the following terminology when discussing application monitoring:

• Application Type. Groups application profiles, instances, and components by the type of application (e.g., Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft IIS, Microsoft Windows). After profiles, instances, and components are configured for an application, you will begin monitoring information about application health.
• Application. An application is made up of one or more programs running on one or more monitored systems. There are three distinct application types leveraged by WhatsUp Gold:
  • 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 (e.g., WhatsUp Gold requires IIS and SQL Server).
  • Discrete application. A discrete application is an application upon which a complex application has a dependency. (e.g., 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.
• Application Profile. An application profile is a blueprint for monitoring a given type of application within WhatsUp Gold. It defines the collection of components and distinct applications that reflect the health and status of a specific type of application. An application instance is created from the application profile by associating it with the actual devices that host the components of the application as defined by the application profile. Changes to the application profile are inherited by all of the instances created from the profile. Changes in the profile are not inherited by overridden fields.
• Application Instance. An application instance is a running copy of an application profile that monitors the defined collection of components, distinct applications, and thresholds necessary to define the health and performance of a given type of application. An application instance can extend the application profile by adding components, component groups, or discrete applications. The application profile is not changed when an application instance is extended.
• Component. A component is a single data point collected as part of an application profile (e.g., CPU Utilization)
  • Critical component. A critical component is a component that impacts the status of an application instance. As a result, a critical component that goes into the down state, causes the application instance to go into the down state. However, if a non-critical component goes into a down state, the application instance goes into a warning state and only the component indicates being in the down state.
  • Critical component group. A critical component group is a grouping of components that contains specific logic to allow for complex evaluation of the up/down state of an application. For example, given four components A,B,C and D, the following logic can be applied, so that if A and B are down or C and D are down the application is placed into the down state. ((A and B) or (C and D)). Critical component groups are always considered "critical", in that if a critical component group is evaluated to be in the down state, the entire application is in the down state.

Configuring WhatsUp Gold to monitor an application is a simple process. It starts with selecting a profile that captures data points necessary to understand the performance, health, and status of a given type of application. The application profile groups the components, discrete applications, and associated thresholds necessary to capture the data points into a blueprint that can be used to create individual application instances. These instances actively monitor your applications.

Ipswitch provides a selection of profiles which are available upon successful WhatsUp Gold installation, or by download from the WUGSpace Community. You can also create your own application profiles which can be shared on the WUGSpace Community.

After you have the necessary profiles, you can automatically discover your applications and create instances for each discovered application, or you may choose to manually create and modify instances individually before you begin monitoring.

You can discover applications on and create application instances for devices monitored by WhatsUp Gold. To be discoverable, an application must have at least one discoverable service or process component associated with its profile. Ensure Use in discovery is enabled when adding or editing Windows service or process components within the application profile.

To discover applications:

1. Select SETTINGS > Application Monitoring > Application and Profile Setup from the top navigation menu.
2. Initiate application discovery by selecting one or more applications to discover, then click Discover Applications. Depending on your selection, this control is available within the For selected and Options menus as well as at the top of the application grid. A navigation tree appears mirroring your device list which displays dynamic groups and discovery scans. Please note, if a dialog appears indicating one or more of the application profiles selected does not have discoverable components and will not be included in the search.", click OK.
3. Select the groups and/or devices for which you want to discover applications by clicking the applicable check boxes in the navigation tree.
4. Click Discover applications. The Application Discovery: Discovery Results page appears.

After applications are discovered, use the list of newly discovered applications to select which ones to monitor and subsequently create application instances.

To monitor newly-discovered applications:

1. Identify an application on the list you want to begin monitoring and click Start monitoring. A Start Monitoring Application dialog appears and WhatsUp Gold automatically begins testing the application profile components.
2. Use the Start Monitoring Application dialog to make any desired changes to the instance you are creating. The dialog contains the following information:
   • Name. Use this box to modify the default name of the application instance.
   • Action Policy. Use this list to select an action policy to be applied to the application instance.
   • TEST Timeout. Use this box to indicate how long a component test should run prior to timeout.
   • Test Components. Use this button to immediately initiate component testing.
   • Enabled. Use these check boxes to enable or disable individual components for the Application instance.
   • Warning Threshold. Use this box to indicate when WhatsUp Gold reports the component is experiencing a problem.
   • Down Threshold. Use this box to indicate when WhatsUp Gold reports the component as 'Down'.
3. Click Finish to save the application instance.
4. Close the dialog to return to the Application Discovery: Discovery Results page.
5. Repeat these procedures as needed to create additional application instances.