Merged services

A merged service is a service that aggregates multiple web-request services of the same process group that perform identical functions across separate cluster nodes. Service merging is available only for web-request services that perform the same function within the same process group, and so are effectively identical from a performance-monitoring perspective. A merged service appears in DESK as a single service that contains all the data of all aggregated services.

Say you have an Apache web server with several virtual host definitions (for example, desk.com, desk.at, and desk.pl). From the Apache perspective, these are independent virtual hosts. Therefore DESK detects them as separate services. For your monitoring purposes however, you might want to view these services as a single merged service called DESK web page.

To take the guess work out of knowing which of your services are eligible for service merging, DESK automatically identifies mergeable services for you and displays them on the Merged service monitoring page (Settings > Server-side service monitoring > Merged service monitoring). Only services included in this list can be merged.

Considerations for service merging

• Once merged, the data of individual merged services can no longer be distinguished—monitoring data is then only available in aggregate for all the merged services.

• Once you merge a service, that service is no longer updated as a data source. While historical data remains available (for example, for charting), no new data is tracked for the original service. All new aggregated data will be assigned to and associated with the new merged service.

• If you split a service from a merged service (i.e., "unmerge" the service), the historic data will be available only for the merged service. All newly captured data will be associated with the newly removed, standalone service.

• Only services of the same type can be merged. Mergeable services must, for example, belong to the same process group, share the same underlying technology, and follow the same naming pattern. Multiple virtual hosts, context roots, or listen ports that represent the same logical entity are often candidates for service merging.

• A merged service can't be merged into another merged service. Only near-identical, standalone web-request services of the same process group can be merged.

Create merged service

To create a merged service:

1. From the navigation menu, go to Settings > Server-side service monitoring > Merged service monitoring.
2. Click the Create merged service button.
3. Select one of the mergeable services on the Mergeable services page.
4. Click + for each listed services you want to merge with the selected service.
5. Type a Name of merged serice.
6. Click the Create button.

Split merged services

You can remove a service from a merged service so that the service is again monitored as a standalone service.

To split a service from a merged service:

1. From the navigation menu, go to Settings > Server-side service monitoring > Merged service monitoring.
2. Click the Edit button (pencil icon) of the merged service you want to split.
3. Click the Remove button of the service you want to remove.
4. Click the Update button.

Delete merged service

If you delete a merged service, all individual merged services will be split and once again treated as standalone services.

To delete a merged service:

1. From the navigation menu, go to Settings > Server-side service monitoring > Merged service monitoring.
2. Click the Delete button of the merged service you want to delete.