End-to-end performance monitoring is very important for an application; it keeps tabs on the experience of the end-user, including whether the application or device works properly and how fast or slow it is. An end-to-end system consists of individual components, and so a component monitoring system keeps all individual components in check. For a mobile or web application, this includes the application server, the web server, the operating system, the physical and virtual machine, storage, and networking.

A component monitoring system detects and notifies applications and other components of a system that is either performing strangely or not performing at all. One excellent example of a product that does component-level monitoring is Anturis. Anturis works for in-house data centers and can also operate on the cloud. It detects anything out of the ordinary and alerts the web server by entering transactions similar to those of the user and testing the working and efficiency of the components that constitute any particular application. It measures disk I/O, CPU utilization, processes and threads, memory utilization, swap space, caching, storage, response time, and working efficiency.

Essentially, component-level monitoring is a thorough check of each component that makes up an application. It checks the performance of an application, keeps tabs on the working parts, detects abnormal behavior, checks the speed of components that make up an application, and ensures that the system runs smoothly.

The component-monitoring tool lets you dig down into your system's components and inspect issues that are related to performance. Sometimes, an external agent is required to keep tabs on the application's performance. So that the tool can decide what is normal, you need to enter cut-offs and set benchmarks in the application. When the response time surpasses set values, the dashboard raises red flags, but bear in mind that it's easier if limitations are set based on statistics and analysis rather than estimates. Monitoring is an important tool in application tuning; it could help, for example, to determine the storage space needed for data-hungry applications by monitoring their active hours.