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We are running an Apache/Tomcat/Railo (Coldfusion) web server stack. We are looking at ways to monitor the average page load times for all web servers as well as look at the page load times for specific pages in our application. If possible I would like to do this via the Apache server logs.

Any thoughts on software or approaches I can use? (I am fairly new to the Web Server Monitoring World).

Thanks!

kilmore
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2 Answers2

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in your apache httpd.conf, track down the <IfModule log_config_module> section.

Add %D to the common logformat:

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b %D" common

%D is time taken to serve the page in Microseconds

beware that a number of tools cannot parse the apache logs when they have extra columns. It's probably safer to add 

LogFormat "%h,%l,%u,%t,\"%r\",%>s,%b,%D" performance
CustomLog "logs/performance.log" performance

to create a second log in CSV format. From there, I normally use LogParser (very old but very useful) to analyse the data. You can also add %{CFID}C,%{CFTOKEN}C to your LogFormat to track individual sessions around your site, which can be very handy

barnyr
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Perhaps what you should look into is something called RUM(Real User Monitoring) and APM(Application Performance Management/Monitoring). When it comes to the web, the concept behind such a solution is javascript code is loaded/injected into your pages and it then reports back real user's experience of your site/application. Better yet, if your users are using decently up-to-date browsers then you can also get even more detailed performance metrics from their browsers' navigation timing api.

There are numerous 3rd party services and commercial and open-source products that provide RUM/APM.

Some of the better solutions can even combine RUM and APM and allow you to correlate end-user's experience with what's been happening on your servers at that point in time.

Mxx
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