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 Web Manager

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

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

NCache Web Monitor

NCache Web Monitor is a web-based monitoring tool to monitor the cache health and activities. It is also web-based and shows report view and graphical view for monitoring your client and server statistics. You can launch the NCache Web Monitor the same way as NCache Web Manager for both Windows and Linux and it also monitors everything remotely. Key features of NCache Web 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 your own dashboard
Counters to monitor statistics such as cache health, operations per second, cache size and CPU usage etc.

PowerShell Tools for Management and Monitoring

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

Few of the PowerShell tools provided by NCache include:

New-Cache/New-Bridge
Remove-Cache/Remove-Bridge
Clear-Caches
Install-Module and many others

The example below creates a new cache named demoClusteredCache on server 20.200.20.37 having the size of 1024 MB, topology as Partitioned, eviction policy set as priority based and priority set as high as well as eviction ratio set as 10%. The cleanup interval of the cache will be 20 seconds.

Performance Monitor Counters for Third-Party Tools (Windows)

Windows Performance Monitor is a monitoring tool created by Microsoft for viewing real-time statistics. NCache provides a list of performance monitoring counters which can be monitored using the Windows PerfMon Monitoring tool. You can select the particular counters to be displayed in your 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 Logging

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

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

Email Notifications on NCache Events

Along with the support of other third-party monitoring tools, another additional facility provided by NCache is notifying about the events through Email alerts. It notifies the user about any events invoked by NCache. Email notifications are received on important 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

NCache Log Viewer is an interactive GUI tool for the purpose of displaying logs in an organized manner. This log viewer lets you maintain your logs categorically into separate fields and customize the search entries conveniently. The 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
Message with detailed log information about success/failure of operations

LINQPad Integration

LINQPad is a software used to query databases using LINQ, SQL and other query languages without the need of IDE. NCache provides smooth integration with LINQPad which is a very simple process that only requires addition of a reference to the NCache LINQPad provider and the custom objects that you have stored in NCache. It lets you write your own LINQ queries over the configured cache with LINQPad.

Management and Monitoring API & Events

NCache provides a set of methods which lets you perform basic management and monitoring operations on the cache. It saves you from using NCache Web 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 the server node. It also lets you enable security on the cache
StopCache API: It lets you stop the cache by providing the server cache name and the server node. It also lets you stop a cache with enabled security.

Monitoring API

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

GetCacheHealth API: This method lets you view the connectivity status of cache server nodes by providing the cache name and the server address along with the 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 Events

Management level event notifications are the events registered for management operations on the cache from your .NET or Java application. Notifications are fired 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?

NCache Details
Download NCache
Edition Comparison