Apache Monitoring Tool for Server Performance

What is Apache monitoring?

Apache monitoring consists of tracking key metrics associated with the functioning of Apache HTTP Server. 

Apache HTTP Server is a popular open-source web server platform. Apache builds a bridge between the server and the user of the website running on it to deliver files back and forth between them. Every time a user makes a request on a website, Apache takes the request to the website, fulfills it, and returns a response. 

Apache monitoring can offer you insight into how well this critical process is running. Apache monitoring proactively measures key web server performance metrics, such as server uptime, idle workers, traffic, and server requests per second. With this information, you can more quickly pinpoint and troubleshoot issues capable of affecting system functioning or end-user experience.

How does Apache monitoring work?

Admins can monitor all activities in Apache by digging into key metrics made available through status modules and server access logs. For monitoring purposes, Apache breaks down its most relevant metrics into two broad categories:

Metrics you can access using access logs:

• Work metrics, like latency and bytes, that successfully make it to their destinations
• Error rates

Metrics you can access through status modules:

• Work metrics, like rate of requests and bytes, that should have made it to their destinations but didn’t
• Resource utilization, capacity, and activity

If you look into these sources, you’ll be able to pinpoint slowdowns and troubleshoot performance issues. The exact process for enabling Apache mod_status and customizing Apache access logs will differ based on your operating system. You can also gather information about server traffic in real time with command line tools.

There are open-source Apache server monitoring tools available, but a paid Apache monitoring solution is the best option for comprehensive performance monitoring.

Why is Apache performance monitoring important?

Apache performance monitoring is important to help ensure your business doesn’t experience slowdowns, especially for critical customer-facing functions. 

Web servers like Apache may not scale well beyond a few thousand requests at a time, making them prone to bottlenecks and other performance issues when used in large enterprises. Performance bottlenecks in web servers can cause websites to load webpages (HTML, CSS, rich snippets) more slowly, negatively impacting end-user experience. 

It can also be difficult to see the number of web server requests and traffic spikes, which can affect server capacity management. If you don’t know when your web server is running out of capacity, you won’t be able to anticipate performance issues before they occur or stop them quickly when they do. 

Web servers are also vulnerable to many of the same performance issues plaguing the associated IT infrastructure—operating systems, databases, virtual machines, and hardware—and these issues can cause website downtime. It’s important to monitor a range of Apache metrics on a regular basis to ensure you can avoid these issues as much as possible. 

What are the differences between monitoring performance for Apache and IIS?

Apache is often confused with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) because they both feature a similar modular structure, but the two are compatible with different systems.

Apache is most compatible with Linux systems, as it frequently appears in a bundle of services called “LAMP”—Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. However, Apache can still be used with Unix and Windows systems. IIS, however, is only compatible with Windows. For monitoring purposes, IIS breaks down its most relevant metrics into two broad categories:

Metrics you can access using performance counters:

• Availability metrics such as elapsed time and service uptime
• Resource metrics such as percent processor time

Metrics you can access using web service logs:

• HTTP request metrics such as total method requests per second or current queue size
• HTTP response metrics such as time taken or 5xx server errors

What does an Apache monitor do?

An Apache monitor automatically collects and displays the Apache statistics most relevant to web server performance. There are many ways admins can use an Apache monitor, but the best practice is to use an Apache server monitoring tool designed to measure the following metrics:

1. Request processing time: How long it takes for a request to be successfully completed
2. Bytes (per second and per request): How many bytes are transferred to and from a server per second or how many bytes are sent through a server per request
3. Worker metrics: How efficiently the server is using resources
4. Network bandwidth: How effectively the server is negotiating throughput needs and handling latency
5. CPU usage: An indicator of whether Apache has enough hardware processing power to handle requests
6. Memory usage: How much memory is being used on a server
7. Uptime: How long a server has been up and running, down to the second
8. Disk usage: How much disk space is devoted to Apache logging and other temporary files

How does Apache monitoring work in SAM?

SolarWinds^® Server & Application Monitor Apache server monitor is designed to be an easy-to-use, powerful solution to manage your Apache environment and underlying server infrastructure. 

With sophisticated, out-of-the-box templates, SAM can help you keep track of Apache performance across key metrics like total request count, server uptime, and idle workers. You can also use SAM to monitor key processes in your Tomcat server by retrieving data on website performance, availability, and usage statistics. 

In addition, you can easily monitor the IT components in your Apache web server environment, like Linux and MySQL. SolarWinds SAM can provide detailed data on the performance of multi-vendor applications like Microsoft IIS, JBoss, NGINX, Oracle WebLogic, and more.

Try SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor free for 30 days and see what a difference it can make in your Apache monitoring.