This article covers questions that may arise about the EndpointThroughputCounter tool.
What does the tool do
The tool measures the number of endpoints used in a system, along with each endpoint's maximum daily throughout. After collecting this data, it produces a report in the directory where the tool was run.
Why should I run the tool
The tool assists in gathering the information needed for licensing NServiceBus and the Particular Service Platform as required for production systems. Particular Software also uses the information in aggregate to better serve customer needs.
Does the tool automatically submit the report to Particular Software
No, the tool does not automatically submit report data to Particular Software or any other party. The collected data is only used to generate a local report. That report can then be sent to Particular Software as needed.
How do I choose a data collection method from all of the options
The data collection method to use depends on the message transport of the system being measured. Refer to the documentation on Running the tool to learn more about the data collection methods for different message transport configurations.
Does the tool need to run on my production server
No, in most cases, the tool does not need to be run on a production server. Often, the tool can be run on a developer workstation that has access to a production environment. The ability to do this depends on the configuration of the production system.
See How does the tool measure throughput below for details on how the tool behaves when analyzing data from each collection method.
How do I decide which data collection option to use
Refer to the Running the tool section of the documentation to select the correct data collection option based on the message transport used by the system.
What if I have a hybrid system with multiple message transports
The tool should be run for each environment, using the data collection method appropriate for that environment.
How will running the tool affect my system
The tool was designed to be lightweight and non-intrusive. The load from running the tool on a production system is insignificant and unnoticeable. Even in system configurations that require a longer execution time, queries are infrequent and most of the tool runtime is spent waiting.
The technical details of how the tool will interact with a running system are documented on the respective pages for each data collection mechanism:
How long will it take to run the tool
When using Azure Service Bus or Amazon SQS, the tool will gather historical information from the cloud provider and then exit immediately.
When using any other data collection method, the query will run for approximately 24 hours in order to collect enough data to calculate the difference between initial and final readings.
How does the tool measure throughput
The answer depends on the data collection mechanism.
Azure Service Bus
The tool queries Azure Service Bus to get the queue names in the namespace. Then, for each queue, it queries the Azure Monitor Metrics endpoint to determine the maximum daily throughput from the previous 30 days for each queue.
The tool can be run from any workstation that can access the Azure Service Bus namespace.
See the technical details for more information.
Amazon SQS
The tool queries AWS using the ListQueues API to get the queue names in the namespace. Then, it queries the AWS Cloudwatch GetMetricStatistics API to gather daily throughput measurements for each queue.
The tool can be run from any workstation that can access AWS services.
See the technical details for more information.
RabbitMQ
The tool queries the Management API to get a list of queues. Then, for each queue, it queries the RabbitMQ monitoring queue metrics endpoint to retrieve the queue throughput at the beginning of the run. This query is repeated every 5 minutes (to guard against counter resets if the broker is restarted) for a period of 24 hours to determine daily throughput.
The tool can be run from any workstation that can access the RabbitMQ Management interface.
See the technical details for more information.
SQL Transport
The tool queries SQL Server to find tables that look like queues based on their column structure, and gathers the throughput for each table. This process happens once when first executing the tool then again after 24 hours. Measurements are based on the differences in throughput between these first and second data gathers.
The tool can be run from any workstation with access to the database containing the queue tables.
See the technical details for more information, including the exact SQL queries used by the tool.
ServiceControl
The tool requires a ServiceControl Monitoring instance to be used.
The tool queries the monitoring instance once every hour to get the per-endpoint throughput information for the last hour. It repeats this query 23 additional times to gather information for a 24-hour period.
For endpoints not configured to send metrics data to ServiceControl, the tool inspect Audit information to find how many messages have been successfully processed.
See the technical details for more information.
What if my system's queue names contain proprietary information I don't want on the report
System queue names can easily be masked on the report file. See Masking private data for details.
The report contains information that shouldn't be counted
The report generated by the tool may contain data for queues that should not be counted as part of a license with Particular Software. This is because naming conventions for queues vary quite a bit between different solutions, and it's better for the licensing specialists at Particular Software to have a complete picture of the entire system usage.
The raw report data will be processed by a tool that will ignore throughput caused, for example, by ServiceControl and related tools that should not be counted for licensing purposes.
If there is any question about the number of endpoints based on the report data, provide a list of queues that should not be counted as NServiceBus endpoints and the reason for each to the licensing specialist along with the report file.
Can I inspect the tool's source code
Yes, just like NServiceBus and all the Particular Service Platform tools, the EndpointThroughputCounter source code is available on GitHub.
The tool threw an error
Particular Software can help. Open a non-critical support case and include the output of the application as well as the stack trace for the exception.