Internet Stack Map Overview

Overview

Customer-facing digital services are composed of a complex and layered mesh of internal and external services and applications, and all of these components can be referred to collectively as the system "stack." Catchpoint's Stack Map is a special type of Custom Dashboard which provides a topological view of a system's architecture. It uses Layers and Services to represent the various components of the system, and Service Associations which illustrate how data flows among them. Data and alerts from your tests and Catchpoint's Internet Sonar service automatically feed into Stack Map, helping you see when specific components have issues that affect application performance.

Stack Map Dashboard Layout

Timeline

The timeline displays recent performance trends and alerts, and enables you to select a specific timeframe to analyze.

You can adjust the timeframe selection using the fields at the upper left, or simply by dragging the edges of the shaded area to the desired points along the timeline.

By default, the line graph in in the Timeline represents Service Time, which is the amount of time that the primary service was in use during each test run. You can use the drop down to switch the view to % Packet Loss.

Any red bars along the top of the timeline represent periods when there was an active Critical Alert for the test, based on the test's Alert configuration.

Any gray bars along the top represent an incident detected by Catchpoint's Internet Sonar service which impacted a service used in the Stack Map.

To the right of the Timeline you will see Availability and Service Time metrics. The values displayed here are based on the primary service URL, and represent the average value for all test runs that occurred within the selected timeframe.

Stack Map Panel

The Stack Map Panel displays a representation of your system stack using Layers, Services, and Service Associations (arrows) to indicate how data flows through the system. You can click on any Service in the Stack Map to view its performance during the selected timeframe, as well as links to any alerts, incidents, and associated tests.

• Services which have generated any alerts during the selected timeframe are marked with this red bell icon:
• Services for which an Internet Sonar incident was detected are marked with this sonar icon:
• Services are shaded orange or red if their average Service Time or % Packet Loss falls within the warning (orange) or critical (red) range configured in the service's properties.

The Panel to the right lets you view a list of all services in your Stack Map, grouped by Layer. You can also see lists of any Incidents or Alerts generated during the selected timeframe.

Layers

Layers are organizing containers which visually house one or more services that are logically related or serve a similar function. For example, all third-party tag services that your application uses may be grouped together in a "Third Party Tag" layer. Layers help organize your stack map visually, and you can also view performance trends and alerts by Layer.

When creating or editing a stack map, you can assign a custom color to each layer. This can make your stack map more visually appealing and help with quickly distinguishing layers when viewing the stack map.

Stack Map Components

Services

Services represent the individual functional components of your application stack. A service may represent a database, API, or other logical component internal to your system, or it could represent a 3rd-party component such as a DNS provider, CDN, tag manager, etc.

There are two main types of services: Custom Services and System Services

• Custom Services are user-defined.
• System Services are pre-defined by Catchpoint.

Each Service, may be associated with one or more Catchpoint Tests, which will provide the performance and alert data for that service. Services may also automatically receive performance and incident data from Catchpoint's Internet Sonar.

Service Associations

Service Associations show how data flows through your application stack using arrows connecting services to each other. Any service may be logically connected to one or more other services.

• The direction of each arrow indicates the direction of dataflow.
• The color of the line matches the color of the Layer that the originating service is located within, if any.
• The color of the triangle matches the color of the Layer that the destination service is located within, if any.

Service Details

You can click the Service Details button to view details for all services in the Stack Map, or you can click on an individual Service in the Stack Map to view that service's details.

The Service Details blade displays a performance timeline for the selected service with Service Time and Ping RTT metrics. You can also view an Alert Log, a log of any Incidents detected by Internet Sonar, and links to associated tests (for Custom Services).