Main Features

Web Timer for Google Chrome

It is now possible to measure web page load times in Chrome in the same way, it has been possible with Internet Explorer. The end user can view the measured time directly in the browser – the browser view can be disabled in the configuration if you don’t want the end users to be distracted by this feature.

In PerformanceGuard this new feature allows you to compare response times from a website accessed with Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.

A web page has been loaded, and the Chrome Extension, shows the load and rendering time respectively.

Performance Index

It is often difficult to remember what good response times are for every application.

With the new Performance Index, the response times are indexed against the normal behavior calculated with the same AI engine that delivers the Adaptive Baselines introduced in PerformanceGuard 7.4.

An index value at 100 indicates normal behavior – with the index being a number for the performance, a higher value means better performance, lower values indicates poor performance when comparing to normal.

You can combine indexes from multiple applications into one overall index, as well as view the index on a per application basis.

Again the Infrastructure-Application (All) has been selected and shows a combined Overall index and its nested application indexes.

Other new features

Application Grouping

It is now possible to group applications. This is useful in various scenarios like e.g. if a Microsoft SQL Server is running multiple named instances, each instance can be configured as an individual application or they can then be grouped to provide performance for the server a whole.

Another example is Office 365 which for users in the European Union is hosted in one of hosting centers - each hosting center can be configured and then grouped. If you experience issues with Office 365, you will know if performance is bad in all hosting centers or only in a single one.

AutoSteps and Windows Performance Counter clean up

When defining scripts for AutoSteps, you will sometimes end up with test activities in the list of available activities - it is now possible to clean up the list of activities.

If you make changes to which Windows Performance Counters you collect, you have counters in the selection list that no longer has any data - it is now possible to clean up the list of Windows Performance Counters

Distributed DNS lookup

It is not always you have the option to make reverse DNS lookups, especially on internal addresses. It is now possible to configure the agent to listen in on all the responses to the DNS requests made by the computer. This way the agent can now report the DNS name used in the forward lookup back to the PerformanceGuard Server.

This is also very useful if the PerformanceGuard server is placed in a hosted environment as this eliminates the need for a tunnel back into the DNS servers.

Faster navigation in the administration section

The navigation in the administration section has been made more intuitive. 

• Default starting point
• Return to last used menu when coming from outside the administration section
• Web application filters are enabled automatically, no need to go into the agent configuration and click save for all configuration groups

Widgets Changes from version 7.4

Some Widgets have been renamed to be better represent the visualization, some have been discontinued and some have been merged.

Application Sunburst

PerformanceGuard 7.4 introduced the Affected Location (now: Location Sunburst) – used to monitor activity and performance impact for all locations for a selected application.

In PerformanceGuard 7.5 the opposite widget is introduced – the Application Sunburst – Shows activity and performance impact for all applications used from the selected location. The widget supports the new feature where you can group applications.

The applications DC, DNS and File are members of a group called Infrastructure.

Guest access to dashboards

It is now possible to grant guest access to a single dashboard with denying access to all other dashboards or functionalities. The guest access is provided with a link to the dashboard and an access token specific for that dashboard

This is useful when e.g. Application owners wish to share a view of the performance on their applications but should not have access to view other possibly sensitive data in PerformanceGuard.

Guest access can be revoked quickly by disabling the guest access – upon re-enabling the guest access a new token is generated and the old token is no longer valid

The Dashboard with ID, 64 has been enabled for Guest Access, the URL can now be copied and share to anyone.

Miscellaneous Improvements

Agent CPU usage 

We have been tuning the agent to me less CPU-intensive. In most cases it will operate on around 0-1 %CPU.

BTM > AutoSteps

BTM as a concept has been replaced by AutoSteps.

Browser Support

This PG-version is supported in newest versions of both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

We recommend using Google Chrome when accessing PerformanceGuard because this browser is much faster than Internet Explorer 11