How OneAgent works

OneAgent is essentially a set of specialized processes that run on each monitored host. OneAgent collects metrics from the operating system it runs on and compares the metrics to performance metrics. The most important metrics are then reported to DESK.

Additionally, OneAgent detects which processes run on each host and collects performance metrics for the most important processes. OneAgent can also monitor specific technologies (Java, Node.js, .NET, and more) in greater detail by injecting itself into those processes and monitoring their performance from within. This provides you with code-level insights into the services that your applications rely on.

To deliver Real User Monitoring, OneAgent injects a JavaScript tag into the HTML of each application page that is rendered by your web servers. With these JavaScript tags in place—along with a corresponding module that is automatically installed on your web server and requires no configuration—OneAgent is able to monitor the response times and performance experienced by your customers in their mobile and desktop browsers.

OneAgent is also capable of monitoring the log files of a specific host or process group. It can discover and analyze a default system or process created logs. Depending on your configuration, you can store these log files, which makes the log data available independently of the log files themselves. This can be beneficial in the following situations:

• Short log-retention periods
• Volatile log storage
• Legal requirements for keeping logs archived centrally for long time periods

OneAgent can dig deeper and get network metrics at the process level. Through our process-to-process monitoring of network communications DESK can:

• Ensure high-quality process communications over networks.
• Understand your network topology in dynamic environments.
• Process-level network capacity monitoring.
• See integrated network health monitoring.

Communication from OneAgent to DESK is outbound only; DESK never initiates communication with OneAgent. So there's no need to open ports for inbound communication when using DESK. OneAgent can communicate directly to DESK or it can communicate via a DESK ActiveGate.