Sometimes we are asked “If I have the Adobe ColdFusion Server Monitor, do I need or want to use the FusionReactor server monitor?” The answer is definitely "Yes!”
Below you can find 25 valuable features of FusionReactor. This list is taken from the FusionReactor Google Group post by Charlie Arehart, ColdFusion Community Professional and veteran troubleshooter, when someone asked, as they sometimes do, "If I have the Adobe ColdFusion Server Monitor, do I need or want to use the FusionReactor server monitor?" The
answer is definitely "Yes!" And whether you use ColdFusion or another CFML or Java application server, the features below should prove very valuable to you.
25 Defining Features of FusionReactor
- Tremendous logging. These extensive log files are critical to troubleshoot server issues.
- Virtually NO overhead. FusionReactor is light-weight and built to be run continuously in production environments. FusionReactor allows you to do all the following monitoring activities with virtually NO overhead.
- Track every request
- Track the queries run by every request
- View Stack Traces of running requests or any thread at anytime
- Receive automatic alerts to changes in server status
- FusionReactor monitoring requests do not contend with application requests. For example, if your application server is dying under heavy load and starts queuing requests, your monitoring requests can still be answered immediately - no need to wait for a slot in the queue due to FusionReactor's own built-in web server.
- Information to manage your heap memory. Get stats and graph metrics on the amount of heap - used, allocated and configured max.
- Detailed request information including URL and query strings.
- Request History Page. See all the requests that have recently run.
- Details about Flash Remoting AMF requests.
- Unique Request Details page (for running and recent requests) shows details of request, including start/stop time, ip address, return code,headers like user agent and cookies, as well as any queries run in the request.
- System Metrics graphs allow you to view data from the last minute to an hour, as well as link to graphs showing up to 12 hours.
- View application server CPU and system CPU usage in FusionReactor metric graphs and logs.
- Server UP time. Know how long the server has been up and running.
- Get a report of requests by request return/status codes.
- User friendly Enterprise Dashboard (in FusionReactor Enterprise Edition) allows you to easily monitor all your servers from one view.
- Group servers together to better organize your dashboard
- Configurable heartbeat check for monitored servers
- Be notified of changes in your server status directly from your desktop with the FusionReactor AIR Enterprise Dashboard extension (sold separately) OR from the FREE FusionReactor Mobile App, for iOS / Android platforms, which is available for users who have FusionReactor Enterprise Edition (version 4 or above).
- Simple configuration lets you control which requests you want to monitor.
- Options to limit which queries are tracked (eg: only track those x queries in a request taking more than y ms, and separately, only track in the logs those queries taking longer than y ms).
- Monitors requests that are being made to CF in either the CF Admin or from the ColdFusion Server Monitor itself. (The ColdFusion Server Monitor hides these by default).
- Choose to list all running threads including page requests, scheduler and other important threads. This is helpful for locating issues, as many issues can be found in mail spool processing or client variable purge processing.
- Adds compression support. Optionally compress page content between the server and the client if the client supports compression.
- Use the content filter feature to alter a page's generated content on the fly as the response is sent to the browser (whether for all or some URLs).
- Access FusionReactor optionally from an external web server (like IIS or Apache) and/or through its own built in web server.
- Define access levels. FusionReactor lets you define 3 levels of user access: observer, manager and administrator with successively more power to use and configure FusionReactor.
- Run a customizable shell scriptsif a monitored server becomes unavailable and when it become available again
- Monitor both the Standard and Enterprise versions of ColdFusion 6, 7, 8, 9. View system requirements.
- Monitor ColdFusion, Railo, Open BlueDragon, BlueDragon Server JX 7.1, and any Servlet/J2EE/JEE server (including Tomcat, JRun, JBoss, WebSphere). If you have a FusionReactor license, you can use it to monitor multiple app engines on a server. View the licensing policy.
Based on the additional capabilities above as well as some more not even mentioned, FusionReactor adds significant value to help you professionally and accurately monitor your servers. So, as we mentioned in the beginning the answer to "Do I have any reason to consider using FusionReactor if I have the ColdFusion Enterprise Server Monitor?" is definitely "Yes!”
