Broadcom DX Application Performance Management Reviews

As a support engineer, the most valuable component was Customer Experience Manager (CEM). Being able to detect end user defects based HTTP response code and slow time, while differentiating between geographical locations or individual users was the biggest advantage to proactively managing root-cause analysis. And once integrated with the APM agents on those same applications, transaction tracing from end user to middleware/backend systems really did give that end-to-end view that organisations always get pitched when there is an open tender on any APM solution. From a Consulting aspect, this would have to be the new ABA (Application Behaviour Analytics) engine that is now available. It makes my job both easier and more efficient as well as clients. Being able to easily identify the end user transactions to low level internal java methods in the same screen automatically with bare minimal configuration is impressive.

Back in the support days, we were able to provide Business Service availability and performance statistics rather than just the number of P1 / P2 Incidents rose within the service desk each month. With the change of mentality to a Service Offering approach through CA APM, we first used the SLA numbers for each day to then determine which incidents where of most criticality to the business and technical support team. This meant that support resources where used more efficiently to resolve bottlenecks in load and performance during peak periods of the day.

The one thing that needs improving is the uplift of dashboards capabilities to HTML5 and flash based widgets. Some new vendors coming into the market have dashboarding capabilities that are flashier and shiny which can sometimes be a deterrent to CA APM’s proven track record to diagnostic triage.

I initially spent 2 years as a Web Application Support Analyst focused solely on using and administering the toolset for a large Victorian government department. Over the last 3 years, I have been working for a Professional Services Company implementing the CA APM solution for a number of different large companies.

Deployment of CA APM infrastructure and agents is quite easy and pain free. Issues do start to arise when you have a large enterprise environment comprising of multiple Pre-production environments and Production. The administration and configuration tasks involved to changing the configuration on agents and uplifting versions can be a long process without the use of a centralized management console for agent configuration purposes.

One of the biggest strengths with CA APM is that it is incredibly stable. In the 5 years I have used the toolset, I raised 2 support tickets about stability of which were resolved by configuration changes to suit the environment it was hosted in. The main deterrent of stability is whether it is designed to scale.

Scalability will only become a problem if your initial scope of deployment doesn't allow for the adopting of the solution in the wider business. Most solutions like CA APM are implemented in large commercial organisations that stem from siloed projects, which have an initial role of configuring, installing and providing a business benefits realization. Once this occurs and when done well, the solution needs to be able to grow and grow fast. The standalone or clustered architecture that CA APM adopts allows you to upscale and downscale your solution with minimal impact to the business, allowing for a solution that will fit all organisations deployment plans.

My experience with CA Customer Service, from Sales and Pre-Sales teams, has been of the highest standard. The team always frequently drops by to just say high and follow up any enquirers.

While working at different organisations I have overheard people talking about the lack of urgency and turnaround time when it comes to support. The CA Support team are very good at ensuring you know the progress of any given issues with constant updates.

At the end of the day, you should be selecting an APM tool that best suits your organisations requirements when it comes to Performance and Availability Management. I would recommend CA APM because I have used it both for Support and as a Consultant and seen that when done well, you can get instant quick wins straight out of the box.

A new concept (APM) to be introduced in our workplace which was never there before. Never had visibility into application (layer) performance. Prior to this our main focus was on server and network hardware monitoring. Having visibility into app performance and backend layer has been quite an eye opener in putting together the entire picture for management. We've put together a complete portrait from an ESM (Enterprise Systems Management) perspective with Broadcom/CA Tools.

We are introducing 10.1 in our dev environment and then prod down the road. APM is a new culture here so we are working with customers in getting them introduced to the product. Want to show them how deep dive provided by APM can help them with DevOps lifecycle as well as proactive monitoring. The previous version v9.5.3. we've had for about a year since we introduced a the product in our environment has been a good hands on experience for our users. Now looking forward to getting hands dirty with 10.1 and utilizing the additional capabilities. Will continue to show customers the usefulness of this tool and how they can use it to generate reports on performance of their app as well as the service it provides. There has also been reactionary situations where we have used APM and pin point the issue or able to narrow down the focus.

Updated - 08/29/2018

We now have v10.5.2 SP2 running in our Dev & Prod environment since June 2018. So, far we've had a really good reception for APM by our internal app owners. The key is now for ESM Tools to be adapted by app owners (physical, network and app layer).

Updated - 2/3/2020

We now have upgraded to v10.7.0_SP3 which has provided yet another set up stability and more capabilities for our app environment. APM Command Center (ACC) has a more features and stability from a admin and maintenance perspective.

The next upgrade (v11) changes a lot of things as Broadcom has decided to go to Kubernetes platform as for as APM upgrade and/or rollout of v11 is concerned. It will be interesting to see how customers react to this and whether it pushes them to take a look at SaaS model.

Deep Dive and Transaction Analysis Triage capability. The AppMap feature is very very helpful in visualizing. Also ACC is a huge help with agent maintenance/management (life cycle).

User Experience is a BIG one. Integration of all of APM components into one swift deployment. Can't emphasis the above two more.

About 10 years.

On Windows Platform, it’s not great and/or stable (from previous experience). We had lots of challenges on that platform back then. But with the current employer we start things off the right foot with RHEL platform :)

Agent metric containment is a VERY BIG challenge for us. Constantly have to normalize the agents to reduce the number of metrics and/or metric explosion.

Customer Service:

4 out of 5

Technical Support:

4 out of 5

There was no application performance management solution prior to the introduction of CA APM. Thus, we are still in infancy from a culture perspective. Customers are still learning as they use it often as possible.

It was complex due to our network architecture. It tool much longer than anticipate with all the firewall hurdles and design iterations.

Implemented through CA (the vendor) with their Services Group.

not yet determined

If you can get a SME to architect and install then definitely go that route vs the vendor itself. There are upside to having the vendor due to the fact that they have access to unlimited resources for assistance.

N/A

It’s a great product and provides a lot of in-depth data. Focus and leverage this product as a deep dive one and have another layer above it (another high-level view product etc..)

The solution is primarily used for monitoring such as network monitoring, application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, et cetera. We also use it for the AI/ML to understand the kinds of effects that are coming from their different monitoring solutions. It can give a root cause analysis using multiple data points. It can monitor for and explain downtime and reduce the work of the ID operations team as it provides them with a root cause analysis for downtime events.

The different layers of monitoring helped to optimise the resource and reduce MTTR.If I found the issue in Infrastructure then team only focus in the infrastructure layer 

The solution has very good capacity and performance analytics. That is one section, which actually provides a lot of insights. I can see, for example, how my system is performing, and what kind of load is there in the systems. 

The dashboard is excellent and allows me to get quite granular, which I find quite helpful.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Technical support is good and the solution does offer pretty good documentation.

The AI/ML is still not quite giving the right results, the right root cause analysis. That needs to be improved. They claim that they give the root cause analysis in the exact right percentage, however, we find that usually whatever the root cause analysis it shows actually isn't the actual root cause. Therefore we've found that the AI/ML is actually not working properly. That needs to be improved a lot.

If I'm getting not the right root cause analysis, then definitively I have to go back and verify the different monitoring solutions to look for the root cause, which takes time.

The stability could be more reliable.

It would be ideal if correlations had their own dashboard. It would help to minimize the time gaps we create when we have to individually go back to check all the monitoring data points.

The pricing is high. We aren't getting the value we imagined out of the product.

I've used the solution for at least the last 12 months or so.

I don't find the reliability to be so good on the solution. The stability could be better. 

We have 50 users on the solution currently.

In terms of scalability, I would say it's good, however, it's definitely not perfect. If you aren't yet getting the right results, it doesn't make sense to scale it.

As of right now, we have no plans to increase usage.

We have found that both the documentation on offer and the technical support is quite good. there are no complaints in that regard. They are helpful and responsive and we're quite happy with the level of service we receive when we need it.

The real setup was straightforward, as all the monitoring solutions we were using were CA only. Due to that, there is a no-hassle login figure thing for the DX setup. Therefore, I wouldn't describe the process as overly complex or difficult. 

The solution uses a subscription-based model.

The pricing could be better. From the perspective of a value proposition, what I'm expecting from products that I'm not getting. That makes us assume that the pricing is high.

There aren't additional costs beyond the main licensing fee.

We are a customer and an end-users.

This solution does not have an on-premises deployment option. It is only available on the cloud.

I would advise a company looking for a solution such as this first start do a POC, and really look for the results on the raw data, your own broad data, rather than just going with a company that hasn't been tested. You should place your data into the system and see how the AI/ML is working. If the result is you can get 60, 70, 80% accuracy, you should go with it. 

I'd rate the solution at a four out of ten. There are many aspects of the solution that still need improvement.

Monitoring application performance.

As such, no improvement after using CA APM.

Regarding how we utilize CA APM for container monitoring, our implementation team is not able to this information. Our implementation team was not able to understand and share information regarding the impact CA APM has when attempting to triage complex application issues; and similarly regarding the visibility CA APM provides across complex application environments. We are not aware of how the solution allows you to monitor and gain performance insights into the various technologies across the application environment, like docker monitoring and the ability to see into the database. The same is true of how the solution helps monitor system changes, topological changes or code updates. We would like to receive documentation to understand the above features.

CEM - We have to produce reports of defective URLs by selecting the client site IP group, which helps us to identify status code of IIS. This gives an idea regarding obtaining the defect and finally understanding the issue.

Tool is so complex to understand.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

It's average.

This is our application monitoring solution.

Complex.

A few 24/7 Web monitoring solutions were evaluated for comparison.

Its complex to understand.

Monitoring of our internal business applications completely, through all business processes.

As all of our applications are monitored by CA APM, it's now easy to analyze unusual behavior in a normalized way.

In terms of container monitoring, we are currently in the rollout phase. In the end, all containers will be instrumented by CA APM agents in order to have a complete view of the current operative status of the dynamic and volatile container world.

All application servers are instrumented to provide a standardized monitoring baseline for the given technology. We defined sets of base monitors in order to normalize analytics capabilities from a technology perspective. On top of this we monitor application specific classes.

As we are currently in rollout phase we can't yet report on the visibility CA APM provides across application environments, yet.

Regarding monitoring and performance insights into the various technologies across our application environment, it identifies the "worst" application in terms of which app has the highest number of errors, slowest SQL queries, etc.

System changes, topological changes, or code updates that are introduced into our environment are analyzed by our architecture team using CA APM.

1. Cross-VM transaction traces provide a complete "what happened where".
2. Proactive snapshots of transactions and all details of a transaction are saved in case of an error.
3. Attribute decoration is a unique and very powerful feature. We can add meaningful meta information based on our internal demand.

1. Integration of third-party content into app maps (e.g. data coming from beats/elastic platform).
2. Support of new application server technologies, time to adopt new versions of them.
3. Dashboarding capabilities (as with all other vendors).
4. Application architecture of the central Enterprise Manager should be developed into a cloud native architecture.
5. Mitigation of SPOF – PostgreSQL database, behind Team Center.

Yes, we enountered stability issues. They were mitigated by performance tuning within infrastructure.

Yes, we encountered issues with scalability inside Team Center, a massive amount of universes, perspectives, applications.

Good.

No previous solution.

Straightforward.

Back in 2009/2010: HPE Diagnostics, Dynatrace; 2016: AppDynamics.

My use case is that we have system called "Systemwalker", so we are trying to collaborate that product with APM. We are trying to use the triage of the APM, and we are still evaluating that system. 

It is performing okay. We are waiting for the new release. They have not released that yet. 

We want to sell the project in Japan. We have users in Japan. By combining the APM and our product, CA can sell it. 

We are a partner. We bring our customers to CA, and they can sell the product. Recently, CA is focusing on customers in Japan, the Fujitsu customers. 

The triage can find the root cause for pent up issues.

I created my own program to test the triage, and it works.

It should be easier to install or set everything up. 

I think that they are trying to add the artificial intelligence to the triage, so we are waiting for that. 

We are doing the PoC phase, so we have not done any of that kind of stability test. 

Not sure.

We have used the Japan CA team. They are helping us. They have been helpful and responsive.

We are also in contact with the people in Santa Clara, and they are also helpful.

We tried, but we could not do it ourselves. Japan CA did the initial setup themselves. They were helpful.

We have just so many settings. We could not figure out what were the right settings. We could not get the data fast in store. 

No. The president, my boss, told me to test APM, and find a solution with our product. 

If people are looking for the solutions from a big company, maybe I would recommend the CA. 

We are using multiple functions like monitoring applications, files, storage, and DBs.

Performance is very good.

It helps us change from being being reactive to proactive.

We're working in a huge environment. It enables me to cover all functionalities and monitor all selected elements over multiple servers, multiple applications, multiple IT resources, and to cover multiple users.

There are some issues, including required additional features. But we're not prepared to list them here.

It's stable, it's good enough.

It needs more features, more performance, especially in a huge environment.

We get support from Future Systems, a CA partner. The support is good. Sometimes the response is quick. We are working in a bank, a huge bank, with multiple branches related to the main center. When there is trouble, when there are problems, a business interruption, we need fast support, immediate support, strong support. Future Systems, in our opinion, covers this, but only somewhat. We would rate them "good" to "very good."

Our CA partner suggested we use this product.

Somewhat easy, but some steps were more difficult. It's easy if you install using the default settings. When customizing the installation, you need multiple scales and more knowledge.

When choosing a new vendor the important things for us are the product and the company's reputation.

It's not a 10 out of 10 because the list of features we need. We're always looking forward. But it does cover most of what we need.

We recommended this product to two other banks and both purchased it. We have also recommended it to several other banks.