List of available KACs:
Retrieving health data from IT assets is called Signal Collection in Kashef terminology. The mechanism for collecting this data is agent-less for the most part which means that agents do not have to be deployed on the target monitored server.
The following table provides a list of KACs (Kashef building block components) that support the signal collection process:
| KAC | Status | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Performance Counter Reader | Available |
Converts information from local or remote Windows Performance Counter into signals. All Microsoft applications in addition to majority of commercial Windows based applications publish critical health data using performance counters. This means that Kashef users can tap into a wealth of application vitals simply with this KAC. For example See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc728167(WS.10).aspx for inventory of possible Windows 2003 performance counters. |
| Http Reader | Available | Used for "URL Ping" type monitoring to examine the availability and performance of web site health check pages. In a similar manner to hardware load balancers, this KAC allows a regular heart-beating check to be performed against a health check URL. Any URL available on the target application can be used. For simple applications, typically the default or login page is usually used. Health-check URLs available with advanced application provide a comprehensive means of detecting health as well. |
| File Reader | Available | Used to monitor log entries in any structured text file. Whether on the local server or through a UNC path, the File Reader can continuously log files and digesting any new content. Matched content is converted to Kashef signals for downstream analysis. Matching is based on the very flexible regular expression syntax. Example of files that can be monitored in this manner are IIS or apache Log files. |
| WMI Query Reader | Available | Provides the ability to execute a Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) query and converts the results into Kashef signals. WMI queries can retrieve a wealth of information from Windows based systems. One example of a critical sub-system that can be queried using WMI is the Windows Event Log. |
| COM Plus Reader | Available | Many industry applications still depend on COM+ technology for hosting critical business logic. This KAC can enumerator local COM+ objects and provide real-time throughput and latency statistics. |
| LDAP Reader | Planned | Used to convert LDAP queries into Kashef signals in a similar manner to the WMI Query Reader. |
| SQL Reader | Available | Provides SQL source health checks and actual SQL data access. Able to retrieve data from any source with provider including OLEDB, ODBC, SQL, Oracle, DB2 and mySQL. |
| PowerShell Reader | Planned | Used to execute Powershell CMDLets and transform data into Kashef signals. |
| JMX Reader | Planned | Used to integrate with JMX capable J2EE containers to extract Java application availability and performance data. |
| Transformer | Available | A general purpose KAC capable of executing C# code at runtime This provides a powerful component for extracting information using any of the available .Net framework libraries. An example use of such scripts is for simulating end user transactions to a web application. |