BMC - Black Box Technology

Like a “black box” flight recorder for your software. BMC’s patented Black Box software is analogous to a black box flight recorder on an aircraft. Deployed on servers (BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Apache Tomcat, Microsoft Windows and .NET) and the Windows-based clients that access them, BMC Black Boxes capture application execution at multiple, synchronized levels, based on a dynamic, user-defined recording profile.

Eliminate the need to recreate problems and end user environments
Just as you wouldn’t re-crash a plane to determine the root cause of a problem during a flight, with BMC Black Box, IT teams don’t have to recreate end user environments or attempt to reproduce a reported error or defect in order to fix it, which provides a significant efficiency gain. It also eliminates the wasteful ping-pong communication that often occurs among end users, support staff, and developers or between developers and testers when trying to gather information about the defect or reported issue.

In effect, Black Box logs provide a “digital documentary” of application execution that provides all of the information needed for diagnosing the root cause of any unexpected application behavior. A Black Box log can be stored in a centralized repository or saved as a highly-compressed file that can be e-mailed or attached to defect tracking, systems management, or service desk for seamless integration with problem resolution processes in phase in the application lifecycle.

Gather the information you need without compromising performance or privacy
BMC Black Box does not require any source code instrumentation or modification of executables, and can be controlled and analyzed while applications are running in production. You can fine-tune Black Box recording profiles (RPRs) on-the-fly during run time, in order to ensure the right balance between the depth of information captured and overhead. For added privacy and security in regulated environments, BMC Black Box recording profiles can be encrypted and set to eliminate sensitive data before being sent for analysis.

Flexible deployment options for proactive monitoring or reactive capture of problem information
Black Boxes can be run continuously or just when problems occur and can be embedded into software that is delivered to end-users. There are four common deployment schemes:

• Distributed: In a distributed mode, Black Boxes run on clients and/or servers connected to one or more BMC Application Problem Resolution repositories. The distributed mode is typically used to monitor and capture problems in a LAN/WAN environment, either in the test lab or production environment.
• Standalone: When servers or clients are not accessible via a network (e.g., in a remote, isolated environment or in highly secured environments), BMC Black Box can be used in a standalone mode. In this mode, it runs as an independent application and is operated by an end-user. When application recording is completed, the log is saved as a file and can be sent by e-mail or FTP for root cause analysis.
• On-demand, Web-based: BMC offers a customizable Web portal module that automates the process of installing Black Boxes and recording a problem scenario at remote end-user sites. When using the portal, the end user visits a Web page that automatically installs, configures, and activates the BMC Black Box seamlessly.
• Embedded: Organizations that wish to automate support for their applications can use a COM version of the BMC Black Box. This object exposes all necessary APIs to set a recording profile, record problems, and save logs. This option can provide ISVs with a significant competitive differentiator for their support organizations and allow in-house application developers to deliver applications with enhanced supportability.

What Information can the BMC Black Box Capture?

	Microsoft Windows/.NET	Java EE
User experience	Client side: Video-like capture of the end-user’s screen, keystrokes, and mouse clicks. Server side: User sessions, ASP.NET Web pages and services accessed by each user.	BMC Application Problem Resolution can synchronize the Windows-based client user experience view with the server side application execution details.
System configuration	CPU type, display resolution, installed RAM, Windows version, Swap file size, .NET Framework version, connected drives, system environment variables, regional settings, services, drivers, and more.	OS type and version, JDK type and version, Application Server type and version, server resources (JDBC, Threads, Memory), server parameters (class path, JVM), and more.
Application configuration	All system resources touched by the recorded application, including files, registry keys, modules and COM/COM+ objects, running processes, and .NET configuration. When present, IIS and IE configuration are also captured.	Configuration of application components, deployment structure and times, JNDI info, URL mappings, implementation structure down to class and method level detail.
System performance	Values of selected performance counters, such as memory usage, CPU utilization, GC, connection pools, and ASP error rate are recorded over time.	Alerts of application and application server problems, metrics of application server and application components performance. Application server and host, virtual and physical memory, JDBC, JTA, JMS, thread pools, execute queues, EJB, servlets and JSP.
Application/Component/Transaction performance	Execution duration, Web page hits and errors (ASP and ASP.NET), COM/COM+ objects, database calls (direct and stored procedures), Web services calls, function calls, and more.	Execution duration, Web page hits and errors, database calls (direct and stored procedures), Web services calls, and more. Transaction performance data, enabling you to quickly detect performance degradation, isolate slow-performing tiers, and drill-down to analyze individual instances of problematic transactions for root cause determination.
System-level execution	All application calls made during recording, including database calls, Web services calls, IIS operations, .NET Remoting calls, .NET garbage collection, network events, component invocations, Active Directory calls, file accesses, registry accesses, process start and exit, and more.	All application calls made during recording, including database calls, Web services calls, network events, component invocations, and more.
Code-level execution	.NET Tracing calls; full trace of Visual Basic and C++ function calls, arguments, return values, variables, exceptions, stack, and more.	Complete code execution including: method calls, object state at each method call, arguments, return values, and stack. It also captures exceptions, which may indicate a code problem. BMC Black Box does not require any change in the application and runs against optimized production applications.
Internal logging events	When applications already have some type of internal logging (either by using the .NET Trace object or by simply writing to a text file), the Black Box can record logging events and embed them into the log.	The Black Box can trace calls to logging frameworks and other logging calls and make the data available as part of the ongoing recording (embedded in the log).
Other custom events	Black Box can attach other files (e.g., configuration files) to its log, to include any data point needed for root cause determination. Users can also add custom events to the log through a documented API.	The Black Box can trigger custom actions that can perform arbitrary functions (e.g.. send e-mail with file attachments). An API is available for users to implement their own actions.
Component execution	BMC Application Problem Resolution can synchronize the Windows-based client view with the server side component execution details.	Any Java class (e.g., POJO, custom exceptions, custom MVC frameworks), Servlets, JSPs, EJBs, JDBC, JNDI, JMS, JTA, JCA and networking. BMC Application Problem Resolution presents component invocations on a timeline as well as performance data for each invocation.