Jason here with Quest. I wanted to briefly opine on the newest features of the end-user solution within Foglight, the Foglight Experience Monitor version 5.3.2. Refer to the release notes on SupportLink for the full detail but here are the ones I found most noteworthy:
BACKUPS
Backups have often been a challenge with FxM because:
- the configuration was stored in an OpenLDAP (slapd) database, which is somewhat volatile; and
- there wasn't a way to get the backup file direct from the web interface like there is in FxV (the Viewer).
Now, there will be no more LDAP storing the configuration. All of the configuration of the FxM, such as servers, parameter information, sessionizing details, etc. will be stored in the underlying MySQL database, along with the captured performance data. Further, exporting the config through the GUI is now possible. This is great, since you may often want to quickly duplicate the configuration of one FxM to another for a large-scale rollout. Since the configuration data does not contain FxM-specific info (hostname, ip configs for example), you can quickly copy the guts of all monitoring setup across multiple instances. Obviously, there will still need to be minor tweaks since the servers you are monitoring may not be the same across the board, but you get the idea. The bulk of the time is usually spent getting the sessionization, parameters, and variable rules just right. This should take some of the human error out of the duplication process.
UPDATES
Updates to the FxM system itself have improved so that you can now use a USB Thumbdrive to update the FxM. Often, it's more convenient to pack updates on a USB key drive than to find a blank CD, burn it, or upload a 500MB file across slow connections using the GUI updater. With the USB key inserted directly into the FxM hardware, updates are now very easy to accomplish without the large data transfer.
SMALL (but significant) ENHANCEMENTS:
Getting to the command shell of the FxM was always regarded as a task that really shouldn't ever be needed by customers. FxM has consistently added features such as TCPDUMP through the GUI, network packet monitors, network testing, etc. to ensure that getting to the shell would really not be necessary. However, shell access is now available through the setup menus within FxM. There was always a "back door" method available by asking support, but there were so many requests for such access that it just made sense to allow it. Of course, only operators that are on the console with credentials, or those logged in via SSH with their credentials can get to the menus anyway.
Another new feature is around the TCP Protocol Monitoring. This feature was introduced recently and really takes our monitoring "up a level" (well, technically down a level if referring to the OSI model 
). FxM has been constantly refined as a workhorse for breaking open web conversations and understanding the associated performance and availability, but now with the TCP monitoring, you are no longer limited to HTTP/HTTPS. The 5.3.2 release now automatically inserts the most common TCP protocols for monitoring. This is great if you don't happen to recall what the port for, say, the RDP (terminal services) protocol is. Ok, it's 3389, but you knew that. Anyway, we have now included things like FTP, Telnet, Citrix, etc.
TTFN