Introduction

Analytics (also called Application Visibility and Reporting) is a module on the BIG-IP system that can be used to analyze the performance of web applications. It provides detailed metrics such as transactions per second, server and client latency, request and response throughput, and sessions. You can view metrics for applications, virtual servers, pool members, URLs, specific countries, and additional detailed statistics about application traffic running through the BIG-IP system.

Transaction counters for response codes, user agents, HTTP methods, countries, and IP addresses provide statistical analysis of the traffic that is going through the system. You can capture traffic for examination and have the system send alerts so you can troubleshoot problems and immediately react to sudden changes.

An Analytics profile is a set of definitions that determines the circumstances under which the system gathers, logs, notifies, and graphically displays information regarding traffic to an application. The Analytics module requires that you select an Analytics profile for each application you want to monitor. The Analytics profile is associated with one or more virtual servers used by the application or with an iApps application service. The BIG-IP system includes a default Analytics profile called analytics. It is a minimal profile that internally logs application statistics for server latency, throughput, response codes, and methods. If the analytics profile is enabled on the F5 traffic manager, then, administrators can figure out the traffic flow between each application load balanced by the F5 traffic manager and the users. These users may access the applications either through a launched application, or a client, or from a client subnet etc. To continuously monitor the traffic flow and figure out the user experience on the applications load balanced by the F5 traffic manager, it is imperative to monitor the F5 traffic manager with the analytics module enabled on it. the forthcoming chapter explains in details on how to monitor the Analytics module of the F5 traffic manager.