Working with Silk Performer

The integration of Silk Performance Manager and Silk Performer allows users to re-purpose Silk Performer scripts as real-time transaction monitors. This means that test cases developed during pre-production using Silk Performer can be re-used as real-time monitors of business transactions in production environments.

This guide assumes that readers are familiar with Silk Performer's features. See the Silk Performer documentation for detailed information regarding Silk Performer.

Project attributes

Performance Manager project attributes are drawn directly from uploaded Silk Performer project attributes (those attributes that are entered on Silk Performer's Project Attributes Configuration page). These attributes act as customizable variables for Performance Manager projects.

See Setting up Monitors for information regarding configuring Performance Manager project attributes and uploading Silk Performer projects to Performance Manager.

Note: Neither Silk Performer nor Performance Manager projects must have attributes configured for them. In such instances monitors do not have Configure Monitor - Configure Project Attributes pages.

TrueLog files

TrueLog files track complete transaction histories. When Performance Manager detects a problem with an application's health, the corresponding TrueLog can be used to detect the root cause of the problem. When uploading a monitor to Performance Manager you specify under which conditions Performance Manager should generate TrueLogs for that monitor.

See Setting up Monitors for information regarding how TrueLog should be generated for newly configured monitors.

See the Silk Performer documentation for general information regarding TrueLog technology.

MeasureSetBound functions

Performance Manager offers two methods of calculating performance ratings for transactions. The first method uses dynamically calculated boundaries that are based on historic performance values. With this approach it is not required that you define boundaries for performance values in Silk Performer scripts, as they are calculated automatically by Performance Manager.

The second method uses two static boundaries for performance values. Outside these boundaries performance ratings are considered to be either 100% or 0%. Between these boundaries performance ratings are calculated using a logarithmic function.

With Performance Manager's Boundary Editor, administrators can adjust the static boundaries that are used for health calculation and specify which dimension each specific result is to influence. It is not necessary to define performance boundaries by manually editing Silk Performer MeasureSetBound script functions.

See Boundary Editor and Calculating Health for further details.

Uploading Silk Performer projects

Silk Performer projects must be uploaded to Performance Manager before they can be utilized as monitors.

Uploading a Silk Performer project to Performance Manager from Silk Performer:
  1. From Silk Performer, open the project to be uploaded and select File > Upload Project or select the Deploy Monitor workflow button and choose Upload to Silk Performance Manager.
  2. Specify the Performance Manager address.
Uploading a Silk Performer project from Performance Manager:
  1. Create a zip archive of a project (either manually or via File > Export Project from Silk Performer).
  2. From Performance Manager, select Administration > Files > File Pool.
  3. Click the Upload from Browser link. Browse to the zip archive to be uploaded and click the Upload link.

Monitoring scripts

For scripting guidelines related to monitoring scripts, refer to Creating Scripts for Silk Performance Manager.