SCAPM – DW-Lab GmbH

Eight steps to migrate IBM Agent Builder solutions

With the introduction of IBM Monitoring V8 a complete new user interface has been introduced and the agents also changed in the way how communicating with the server.

That implies, that all existing Agent Builder solutions you created have also to change. Agents created for your ITM V6 deployment have also to be adopted.

In this article I want to give a sample for one of my agent builder solutions, I’ve created for OpenVPN. I extend the solution in that way, that I can use it under ITM V6 as well as under APM V8.

The work to be performed is pretty limited. The documentation describes a few major prerequisites, to successfully deploy your agent to a IBM Performance Management infrastructure:

A minimum of one attribute group to be used generate an agent status overview dashboard.
These single row attribute group (or groups) will be used to provide the four other required fields for this overview
- A status indicator for the overall service quality
- A port number, where the service is provided
- A host name where the agent service located
- An IP address where the monitored service resides

For more details, please consult the documentation.

In my situation, these attributes were not provided with my ITM V6 agent builder solution. So I expanded my existing solution:

Changing the version number of my agent builder solution (optional)
Create a new data source “openvpnstatus_sh”, which is a script data provider delivering one single line with all attributes defined to it.
The attribute “ReturnCode” will be used later on to describe the overall status of my OpenVPN server. So I have to define the good value and the bad value (see documentation for more details)
Make sure, that the check box under Self Describing Agent is activated.
Run the Dashboard Setup Wizard to produce the dashboard views

Please make sure, that you checked “Show agent components in the dashboard”! Otherwise…
Now you can select the different values:
1. Status
2. Additional attributes for the summary widget
3. Select the attribute groups to be displayed in the details view for the agent
4. Define the name of the monitored component
5. Define the hostname where the software is running
6. Define the IP address
7. Define the Port Number
8. Click “Finish”

Now your agent is almost ready. Start the Agent Builder generation process using the icon

You can generate ITM V6 and IPM V8 compatible agent packages in one step. If you do so, and you want to support Cognos Reporting, then leave “Cognos reporting” checked. While Cognos Reporting isn’t supported for new V8 agents at this time, leave it unchecked when you don’t want to support ITM V6. The agent package size will be much smaller without Cognos Report support.

After successful generating the agent package you will find the following files and directories:

smai-openvpnserver-08.13.00.00.tgz
subdirectory k00 containing fixlets for BixFix deployment of the new generated agent

After expanding the archive file you find a well known set of files:

The install routines are a now able to verify which kind of agent deployment (V6 or V8) is required. Depending on the given agent install directory, the routine determines automatically, which agent framework has to be installed.

Remark:

The Agent Builder agent has no info about where the monitoring infrastructure server is running. It will connect to the same server as the previously installed OS agent. In turn, any Agent Builder generated agent cannot run without a previously installed APM V8 agent.

Wrap-Up:

It is pretty simple to create agents for ITM V6 and APM V8 at the same time. The Agent Builder supports the two very different user interfaces in one generation process.

Only for the Dashboard definition new required data must be available, but it is simple to gather.

If you have any further questions regarding the IBM Agent Builder, drop me a message.

Implementing a 32-bit ITM Agent under Enterprise Linux 64-bit

Implementing the ISM Agent (and other 32-bit ITM Agents) under Linux 64-bit is a little bit tricky, because it requires a 32-bit framework for the ITM base libraries.

The documentation covers all required steps, but is a litlle bit spread across IBM’s website.

In the prerequisites documentation it is stated, that the Tivoli Agent Framework is required in 32-bit architecture.

The installation is a little bit more effort, because it requires the ITM base image to be mounted and the installation of the “Tivoli Enterprise Services User Interface Extensions” has to be performed. The following modules where required on the system I used:

yum install compat-libstdc++-33.i686

yum install libXp

yum install ksh

yum install libstdc++.i686

See the general support matrix for the ISM agent. In the footnote area the required modules are listed.

Because I already installed the OS agent before, the Korn Shell has been installed before.

From the ITM install image (here: ITM_V6.3.0.6_BASE_Linux_x64) I started install.sh:

I accepted the shutdown of any running ITM Agent, and requested to install products to the local host.

After agreeing to the license agreement, the challenge is, to pick the choice to install for another operating system. As you can see from the list of the already installed components, the “Tivoli Enterprise Services User Interface” is already installed. But it is the 64-bit version only. For the ISM agent the 32-bit version is required. So we pick the option 6.

I picked option 3, “Linux x86_64 R2.6, R3.0 (32 bit)” as the OS platform.

In the next step I picked option 2, “Tivoli Enterprise Services User Interface Extensions”.

I used the ITM provided prerequisite checker to verify the software requirements again, and then accepted the installation of the new component.

I accepted all subsequent default values for the setup process and ended with the installation of the 32-bit Tivoli Agent Framework.

After having this successfully installed, the subsequent ISM Agent works really straight forward.

After successfully executing the install.sh from the ISM install image, you simply could accept the default values, if no special requirements have to be met.

After a successful installation the cinfo output should look somehow like this:

If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to drop me a reply below. I will come back to you as soon as possible.

Follow me on Twitter @DetlefWolf to continue the conversation.

Sybase Monitoring

While we see big changes in the way we deliver monitoring services, the functionality of the tool is still a proof point when talking with subject matter experts.

The IBM Monitoring suite offers a huge coverage for a lot of systems, applications and containers. Find a list of supported agents on the IBM Service Engage website.

The Sybase ASE Agent enables the monitoring of SAP Sybase database servers. The agent fully integrates into the IBM Monitoring infrastructure.

The installation and configuration guide gives you insight how things fit together and how the product will be installed.

This agent is bundled with the IBM Application Performance Management suite.

The IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager Agent for Sybase ASE Reference Guidegives you detailed information about:

Attribute groups and attributes
Workspaces
Situations
Take Action commands
Event mapping
Workspaces workgroups mapped to tasks
Upgrading for warehouse summarization
Sybase agent data collection

The agent is currently supported on-premise only and still uses the IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6 infrastructure.

IT monitoring is out of style?

This blog has been also published on Service Management 360 on 09-Jul-2014.

A few weeks ago I read a blog entry written by Vinay Rajagopal on Service Management 360 with the headline “Still configuring thresholds to detect IT problems? Don’t just detect, predict!” I was wondering what that new big data approach will imply and what it means to my profession focusing on IT monitoring. Is IT monitoring old style now?

The IT service management discipline today is really a big data business. We have to take a lot of data under consideration if we want to understand the health of IT services. In today’s modern application architectures, with their multitier processing layers and the requirement that everything be available all the time and that performance remains at an acceptable level, IT management becomes a threat that often ends in critical situations.

The “old” approach, of monitoring a single resource or a dedicated response time of a single transaction doesn’t seem to be the way to succeed anymore. However, it is still essential to perform IT monitoring for multiple reasons:

IT monitoring helps to gather performance and availability data as well as log data from all involved systems.

This data may be used to understand and learn the “normal” behavior. Understanding this “normal behavior” is essential to predict upcoming situations and to send out alerts earlier.

The more data we gather from different source, the better our prediction accuracy gets.

With this early detection mechanism in place from so many different data sources, injected by the IT monitoring, operations teams can earn enough time before the real outage takes place, so that they can avoid this outage.
IT monitoring can help to identify very slow-growing misbehavior.

Gathering large amounts of data does not guarantee that all misbehavior can be identified. If the response time of a transaction server system increases over a long period of time and all other monitored metrics evolve accordingly, an anomaly detection system will fail. There are no anomalies. Because growing workload is nothing unexpected and the growth takes place over a long period of time, only distinct thresholds will help. This is classical IT monitoring.
IT monitoring helps subject matter experts to understand their silos.

Yes, we should no longer think in silos, but for good system performance it is essential to have a good understanding of key performance metrics in the different disciplines, like operating systems, databases and middleware layers. IT monitoring gives the experts the required detailed insight and enables the teams to adjust performance tasks as required.

So the conclusion is simple: monitoring is a kind of prerequisite for doing successful predictive analysis. Without monitoring you won’t have the required data to make the required decisions, whether manually or automatically, as described with IBM SmartCloud Analytics – Predictive Insights.

Prediction based on big data approaches is a great enhancement for IT monitoring and enables IT operation teams to identify system anomalies much earlier and thus to start reactive responses in time.

IBM SmartCloud Application Performance Management offers a suite of products to cover most monitoring requirements and gather the required data for predictive analysis.

So what is your impression? Is monitoring yesterday’s discipline?

Follow me on Twitter @DetlefWolf, or drop me a discussion point below to continue the conversation.

IT Monitoring: Necessary, or just “nice to have”?

This blog was first published on Service Management 360 on 30-Oct-2013.

http://www.servicemanagement360.com/2013/10/30/it-monitoring-necessary-or-just-nice-to-have/

Why do I so often see poorly managed system environments in small and medium businesses?

Well, there are multiple reasons for that:

They are not aware that they deeply depend on reliable IT services.
IT is not their core business.
They don’t know what to take care of, and how to do it.

Monitoring is often seen as a nice-to-have discipline as long as IT service outages do not cause any business-relevant losses. This is often achieved by minimizing the dependencies on IT services even if this “backup scenario” is inefficient and cost intensive.

I’ve seen businesses who print every incoming email. The reason for that? Well, the email system might go down, which would prevent the company from getting any work done. Having every communication outside the IT systems protects them in the event of an outage, or so they believe. The vision of the paper-free office – forget about it!

Why don’t they introduce a monitoring solution to achieve more reliable IT services? Let’s do a quick review of the main reasons:

Complexity
Monitoring requires a complex infrastructure, which has to be maintained. It requires deep knowledge of the monitoring mechanisms and the monitored applications, and the achieved results have to be frequently reviewed and amended.
Lack of knowledge
What should be monitored? Which components should be under investigation? What thresholds should be set? All of these questions are absolutely valid and require time-consuming answers. And there are no “correct” answers. But there is experience in the market, and it is ready to be used.
Time consumption
Small IT departments are not able to dedicate a team of people to perform professional IT monitoring. There are lots of things to do in such small operation centers, and watching a monitor wall all day is completely illusive. And to be honest, it is not a full-time job, because the number of systems is not large enough.
Monitoring is too expensive
Well, cost is really the killer in every discussion. The ramp-up costs are too high. The products are too expensive. The implementation effort at the beginning is unaffordable.

But having said all that, is it now time to leave the room and tell my customers: “Yes, you are right, IT monitoring is for large businesses only”?

I think we have to address the above inhibitors very carefully and show up with alternatives for the small and medium business. Our customers’ businesses are too valuable, and unreliable IT services should not be allowed to set these services at risk.

Monitoring as a Service

As mentioned in the blog post linked above, I see the Monitoring as a Service delivery model as the best choice to cover all these challenges. But what should it look like?

First of all, we have to keep all the complexity out of sight of the service requester (that is, from you as the customer). The monitoring should just happen. The customer requests monitoring for its business services (emailing, customer portal and so on) and the service provider has to deal with it. The service provider has to have the knowledge, not the business owner.

Second, the service provider has to take care of the customer’s systems during business off-hours, to prevent system outages during normal operations, when the systems are being used frequently. This has been often seen in the past as one of the main inhibitors for small businesses. Even the system are not actively used, they still are doing background work, like database reorganizations, data backup and other administration stuff.

And now the third aspect, the investment. Customers expect to have managed availability and performance with low ramp-up costs and a quick initial implementation phase. This is only possible with service providers who have real solutions available that focus on their customers’ needs and the services these customers use. That means that industry-specific solutions are required to cover the different markets.

Below I’ll present an example scenario to illustrate these ideas.

Sample from the car manufacturing industry

A supplier in the car manufacturing industry is tightly connected to its main customer sharing IT services with him. To get connected to the principal customer’s systems this supplier has to have its own IT systems. Additionally, other specialized IT systems are on premise to serve the daily business processes, including:

Accounting (for example, SAP)
Billing (for example, SAP)
Emailing (for example, Lotus Notes)
Phone systems (for example, Ericson)
IT network (for example, CISCO)

The supplier’s IT systems are essential to deliver all required parts to its principal customer in the required just-in-time chain. Any failure in this process might lead to significant penalties to the supplier. The Monitoring as a Service provider should have artifacts available to quickly monitor the health and availability of theses infrastructure components and the IT services implemented on top of it:

Infrastructure monitoring
- SAP monitoring

Lotus Notes monitoring
Network monitoring

Service monitoring
- Accounting
- Billing
- Phone line availability
- Applications on the principal customer’s systems

All these monitors require specialized, industry-specific know-how but are similar for all suppliers in this industry. The solutions could be provided in monitoring packages, including technical resource monitoring, process monitoring and availability tracking. Additionally, these packages should include reporting features for reviewing the achieved results.

Conclusion

By ordering Monitoring as a Service, small and medium businesses might overcome today’s existing inhibitors for implementing a strong control of their IT systems. With SmarCloud Application Performance Management the required products are there. Within IBM’s business partner organization and service providers, the infrastructure to deliver these services is also available. It is now your turn to act. What stops you from doing so?

Is IT monitoring for large businesses only?

This blog was first published on Service Management 360 on 13-Aug-2013.

http://www.servicemanagement360.com/2013/08/13/is-it-monitoring-for-large-businesses-only/

Could you imagine any large company leaving their IT systems unmanaged? I can’t.

These major companies have dedicated departments in place, responsible for monitoring IT system availability and performance. They are in charge of detecting issues before the business processes are affected. They also have to measure the fulfillment of service level agreements and deliver input for capacity planning on IT resources. Often they have to provide metrics to bill delivered services to the different business units.

Repeatable processes are in place to deliver these services:

Sense
First you must sense the user experience or the service quality (like sending email). If problems are detected go to phase 2.
Isolate
In multiple tier architecture application environments the isolation of the problem source is the key factor for a quick problem resolution. By having all resources under control and having transaction tracking mechanisms in place, you can quickly identify the failing resource.
Diagnose
After you identified the bottleneck, you need to perform a detailed diagnosis. You must investigate the system and its applications and make the right conclusions.
Take action
With the results from the previous step, you can then take the required actions.
Evaluate
By doing a re-evaluation you go back to step 1 and make sure that the alerted situation no longer exists and the applied action was successful.

The frequent measurement of key metrics is also used to earn data for historical analysis. Service-level measurement and capacity planning become actionable with this data.

And what about small and medium businesses?

Here I often see very limited attention given to system monitoring. In small and medium businesses often a kind of system availability monitoring with a very limited scope is performed. In some cases, the sensibility for that IT discipline doesn’t exist at all.

But what does it mean if IT systems are not available? Today, most kinds of businesses rely on IT services somehow. Any production facility, medical service, office, modern garage and so on is almost incapacitated when the IT systems are down. That means that staff can’t perform their core business roles, can’t earn money, can’t provide the services to their customers. This leads to a massive loss of revenue and reputation.

Additionally, a lot of these small and medium businesses are suppliers in a just-in-time supply chain for the large businesses (for example, a car manufacturer) and penalties apply if the delivery and production process is interrupted.

So the need for enterprise class monitoring systems exists. But why don’t they do it?

It is too expensive!
It is too complex!
It is too time consuming!

These are the three favorite reasons I often hear. And all of them are partially true. Monitoring is a very special subject matter expert discipline. It requires detailed understanding of the monitored systems, applications and services as well as knowledge of the monitoring product used.

The purchase of an enterprise-class monitoring system might require a huge amount of money and a remarkable education effort. And it requires a kind of sustainability small IT departments can’t dedicate to monitoring. Monitoring requires repeated reviews to enhance quality, but it is not possible to keep two or three persons focused on monitoring questions because the workload for this discipline is not high enough in a small IT department and they have responsibility for lot of other things. In consequence, the skill level for this discipline declines and the results no longer justify the investment in enterprise-class monitoring.

So what now?

Is the answer “yes” on my initial question? No, it isn’t. A new delivery model is required. Enterprise-class monitoring is needed in all businesses relying on stable IT services.

The answer might be a Monitoring as a Service model. A trusted service provider could deliver such a monitoring service and overcome the above inhibitors. Because he delivers this service to multiple clients he can lower the ramp up costs for the software purchase, offer the required sustainability and bring in the expertise for monitoring systems, applications and services.

In my blog series “Monitoring as a Service” (see parts 1, 2, 3 and 4) I described a business model for using IBM monitoring solutions to set up such a service.

IBM SmartCloud Application Performance Management offers a suite of products to cover the above described five-step monitoring process, including reporting features for historical reviews and projections to the future.

So what is your impression? Are we covering the right markets? How could we enhance? Please share your thoughts below.