Is the Web Adaptor capable of recording service usage and distinct users?

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12-02-2013 11:37 AM
JoeTosoni
New Contributor
I currently have Microsoft Forefont TMG (which has been discontinued) on our DMZ Web Server and it acts like a reverse proxy. It also records all traffic (distinct IP addresses and Service usage in MBs) to help us bill our clients appropriately -we are a State gov't agency. Anyway, just wondering if the Web Adaptor has this capability as we would like to just get rid of the Microsoft TMG software and go with the Web Adaptor only  - as opposed to having both and trying to get them to interact effectively. Thinking that the Web Adaptor cannot do this, does anyone have any other ideas on software that could record traffic as TMG does?
Thanks.
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7 Replies
LeoDonahue
Occasional Contributor III
http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/0154/01540000028p000000.htm
The Web Adaptor is an application that runs in your existing website and forwards requests to your GIS servers.

The only thing it does is poll your ArcGIS Servers to determine where to send the requests.

If you want a log of requests, IPs, etc, then you would configure that at the web server level.
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JoeTosoni
New Contributor
Thanks for the reply Leo,  that is what I figured. I'm also hoping to get some recommendations on similar products to Forefront TMG in this thread.

-Joe
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LeoDonahue
Occasional Contributor III
I'm also hoping to get some recommendations on similar products to Forefront TMG in this thread.

You got me on that one... we use Tomcat as our web server.
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WilliamCraft
MVP Regular Contributor
In 10.1 or higher, usage statistics for ArcGIS Server services can be derived via the ArcGIS Server Administrator API.  This site contains a sample script on how to parse the AGS logs to get the stats you might want: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//0154000005vw000000

I'm not sure what you mean by accounts; are you talking about database accounts or AGS accounts? 

One product I'd recommend checking out is GeoSystems Monitor from Vestra.  It's a sysadmin tool that monitors your environment and alerts you when issues arise; additionally, it also records the status of web applications, GIS services, web services, databases, etc.  We'll be testing it in early 2014 to understand the full scope of capabilities.  What I liked about the demo of the software is that it's GIS-focused.  They showed us charts, graphs, and tabular views of usage stats for individual services and were able to generate reports.  Give them a call or send them an email to ask you specific questions... their product may provide what you need and then some.  The person you should talk to at Vestra is Heather Croom.  I'm not 100% sure how it all behaves, but it looked promising from the demo.  Here's a direct link for some basic product info:

http://www.vestra.com/products/software/geosystems-monitor.html
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JoeTosoni
New Contributor
Nice, thanks William for the reply and links - I'll read more up on them. As far as accounts, I believe you're referring to my "traffic" question on our need for distinct IP addresses and MB Service usage or transfer to help us bill our clients appropriately. I'm not sure this tool is capable of this but I'll research more. -joe
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LeoDonahue
Occasional Contributor III
Tomcat web server logs show distinct IP requests, date, time, request size and http response code among other nice things you can add.  Personally, I don't know why more people aren't using the Java version of ArcGIS Server.
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WilliamCraft
MVP Regular Contributor
Joe, how about using a Python script to parse your W3SVC1 logs?  They are usually located at C:/WINDOWS/system32/LogFiles/W3SVC1 on the machine. Your script could run once per day, once per week, etc. as a scheduled task.  I do this daily to parse out GET requests for requests to a particular web application and I record the requester IP along with the size of the response, the return code, and the client application making the request.  You could also parse the logs for POST requests if you need to capture more.  One the data is parsed, you can write it to a log file or insert the data into a database for reporting and record keeping purposes.  Maybe a solution like this is a bit too custom for your liking, but you may already have the tools you need to do this without buying a COTS solution.

EDIT: W3SVC1 logs are those for the Default Website #1 in IIS.  W3SVC2 would be for the next website created, should one exist, and so forth.
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