IBM Tivoli Monitoring: Implementation and Performance Optimization for Large Scale Environments

Book description

The IBM Tivoli Monitoring solution is the next generation of the IBM Tivoli family of products that help monitor and manage critical hardware and software in distributed environments. This IBM Redbooks publication provides a practical guide to implementing, using and optimizing IBM Tivoli Monitoring, including best practices for performance tuning, sizing, high availability, scalability, reporting, IBM Change and Configuration Management Database integration and firewall considerations.
You will find a great deal of information about IBM Tivoli Universal Agents, including versioning, remote deployment and management, and meta servers.
We also delve into details of IBM Tivoli Monitoring of the components, such as how these components interact, what is the underlying technology, details of configuration files, and where to check in case of problems.
This book is a reference for IT professionals who implement and use the IBM Tivoli Monitoring solution in large scale environments.

Table of contents

  1. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  2. Preface
    1. The team that wrote this book
    2. Become a published author
    3. Comments welcome
  3. Chapter 1: Introduction to IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.1
    1. IBM Tivoli at a glance
    2. IBM Service Management
      1. IBM Process Management products
      2. IBM Operational Management products
      3. IBM Service Management platform
    3. Enterprise management challenges
      1. Business driving forces
    4. IBM Tivoli Monitoring solutions
    5. IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.1 components
      1. Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server (monitoring server)
      2. Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server (portal server)
      3. Tivoli Enterprise Portal (portal or portal client)
      4. Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring agent (monitoring agent)
      5. Warehouse Proxy agent
      6. Warehouse Summarization and Pruning agent
    6. IBM Tivoli Open Process Automation Library
    7. What is new in IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.1 post-GA
    8. What is new in IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.2
  4. Chapter 2: Planning considerations - large scale deployment of Tivoli Monitoring V6.1 components
    1. Hardware requirements
      1. Hardware requirements
    2. Scalability considerations
      1. Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server deployment recommendations
      2. Portal client deployment recommendations
      3. Tivoli Data Warehouse deployment recommendations
    3. Additional considerations
      1. Where to run the hub Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server
      2. Situation formulas and event volumes
      3. Associating agents with the hub monitoring server
      4. Using an event manager
  5. Chapter 3: Firewall considerations
    1. IBM Tivoli Monitoring network components and flows
      1. Communications protocol selection
      2. Port requirements
      3. Understanding the COUNT and SKIP options
      4. Understanding ephemeral connections
    2. How your network firewall design relates to IBM Tivoli Monitoring
      1. Simple firewall design
      2. Complex firewall design
      3. Firewall Gateway Proxy (1/3)
      4. Firewall Gateway Proxy (2/3)
      5. Firewall Gateway Proxy (3/3)
    3. Additional considerations
      1. Multiple network interface cards
      2. Universal Agent firewall considerations
      3. Warehouse Proxy agent firewall considerations
      4. Service Console ports
  6. Chapter 4: Planning historical data collection in large scale environments
    1. Short-term versus long term historical data
      1. Short-term historical data
      2. Long-term historical data
      3. KFW_REPORT_TERM_BREAK_POINT parameter
      4. KHD_HISTRETENTION parameter
    2. Infrastructure considerations
      1. Tivoli Data Warehouse Version 2.1
      2. Summarization and Pruning agent (1/2)
      3. Summarization and Pruning agent (2/2)
    3. Size the Tivoli historical data collection
      1. Use the Warehouse Load Projections spreadsheet to estimate and control the Tivoli Warehouse database size (1/3)
      2. Use the Warehouse Load Projections spreadsheet to estimate and control the Tivoli Warehouse database size (2/3)
      3. Use the Warehouse Load Projections spreadsheet to estimate and control the Tivoli Warehouse database size (3/3)
      4. Estimate agents disk space for data collection using the Warehouse Load Projections spreadsheet
      5. Estimate the amount of historical data for Universal Agent applications (1/2)
      6. Estimate the amount of historical data for Universal Agent applications (2/2)
      7. Customize the Warehouse Load Projections spreadsheet
    4. Reduce the number of agents for historical data collection
      1. Suspend monitoring server from the Historical Data collection
      2. Configure multiple Warehouse Proxy agents
    5. Other planning considerations for collecting historical data
      1. Estimate the size for bandwidth
      2. Determine the upload time
      3. Considerations regarding performance
      4. Considerations regarding security and availability
  7. Chapter 5: Optimizing performance within an IBM Tivoli Monitoring environment
    1. Setting the heartbeat frequency
    2. Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server performance
      1. Monitoring server parameter tuning
    3. Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server performance
      1. Portal server database tuning
      2. Configuring an external Web server for large environments
      3. Deploying multiple view-only portal server
      4. Maintaining multiple view-only portal servers
      5. Portal server parameter tuning
      6. Portal server database memory model on AIX
    4. Tivoli Enterprise Portal client performance
      1. Portal browser client versus portal desktop client
      2. Tuning the portal client JVM
      3. Structuring the enterprise
      4. Creating workspace links
      5. Workspace refresh interval
      6. Portal client parameter tuning
    5. Tivoli Data Warehouse performance
      1. Tuning the Warehouse Proxy agent
      2. Tuning the Summarization and Pruning agent
      3. Using data marts
      4. Database tuning (1/3)
      5. Database tuning (2/3)
      6. Database tuning (3/3)
    6. OMEGAMON XE performance
      1. General performance guidelines
      2. Short-term historical collection at agent
      3. Use backup and archiving jobs sparingly
      4. Tuning ITMS:Engine
    7. Event management integration performance
      1. Tivoli Enterprise Console tuning parameters
    8. Query optimization
      1. Query processing
      2. Defining custom queries
    9. Situation optimization
      1. Situation processing
      2. Situation distribution
      3. Situation predicate processing
      4. Situation sampling interval
      5. Situation synchronization
      6. Situations and policies
      7. Embedded situations
      8. Using policies to manage time-dependent situations
    10. Platform-specific recommendations
      1. Disable TCP delayed acknowledgements on AIX systems
      2. VMware configuration setting to improve tacmd response time
  8. Chapter 6: Monitoring best practices
    1. Who owns the tool
    2. Defining the need for monitoring
      1. Understanding the terms
      2. Pure versus sampled events with impact to the IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.1 console user
      3. Pure versus sampled events and customer impact
      4. Identification of monitoring need
      5. Identify the target audience
      6. Identify and refine the possible events list
      7. Meet with the target audience for approval
      8. Create, test, and implement the monitor
    3. Building the monitoring
      1. Naming the situation
      2. Selecting attributes for comparison
      3. Editing the formula
      4. Selecting targets of distribution: MSL, systems, or both
      5. Writing expert advice to explain the situation event
      6. Setting the action
      7. Using the Until tab
    4. IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.2 enhancements for event integration
      1. Sending events to multiple destinations and setting event severity
      2. Common event console (1/2)
      3. Common event console (2/2)
  9. Chapter 7: Deploying IBM Tivoli Monitoring agents in a large scale environment
    1. Choosing the most suitable method for deploying agents
    2. Command line interface terminology
    3. Agent deployment architecture
    4. Considerations for installing OS and non-OS agents remotely
      1. OS agents
      2. Non-OS agents
    5. Agent depots
      1. Agent depot solution
      2. Populating agent depots
    6. Deploying the monitoring agents by using the tacmd command
      1. Installing the operating system agents
      2. Installing non-operating system agents
      3. tacmd return codes
    7. Deploying agents using Tivoli Configuration Manager (or Tivoli Provisioning Manager)
  10. Chapter 8: Managing IBM Tivoli Universal Agent in a large scale deployment
    1. Introduction to IBM Tivoli Universal Agent
    2. Dealing with Universal Agent versions
      1. Types of changes
      2. Resetting the Universal Agent version
    3. Metafile Server for the Universal Agent
  11. Chapter 9: Integrating data from external or third-party applications into Tivoli Data Warehouse
    1. Warehousing data using IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.1 Universal Agent (script provider)
      1. Configuring the Tivoli Universal Agent
      2. Viewing data in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal
      3. Warehousing the Universal Agent data (1/2)
      4. Warehousing the Universal Agent data (2/2)
      5. Creating graphical views for historical data (1/2)
      6. Creating graphical views for historical data (2/2)
    2. Warehousing data using IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 Universal Agent (ODBC provider)
      1. Configuring the Tivoli Universal Agent
      2. Viewing the data in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal
    3. Tivoli Storage Manager Universal Agent in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal
      1. Warehousing the Universal Agent data (1/2)
      2. Warehousing the Universal Agent data (2/2)
    4. Viewing data in Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server using an external ODBC data source (1/2)
    5. Viewing data in Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server using an external ODBC data source (2/2)
  12. Chapter 10: IBM Tivoli Monitoring resiliency and high availability
    1. Availability and resiliency of IBM Tivoli Monitoring components - general considerations
      1. Hub monitoring server availability
      2. Portal server availability
      3. Availability of the Data Warehouse and Summarization and Pruning agent
      4. Remote monitoring server availability
      5. Availability for Warehouse Proxy agents
      6. Availability of agents
    2. Hub monitoring server Hot Standby option
      1. Configuration and operation
      2. Operation
      3. Tips and best practices for using Hot Standby (1/2)
      4. Tips and best practices for using Hot Standby (2/2)
    3. Clustering several IBM Tivoli Monitoring components
      1. Hub monitoring server cluster solution
      2. Portal server cluster solution
      3. Warehouse cluster solution
    4. Installing IBM Tivoli Monitoring Agents within a cluster
      1. Agents within a Windows cluster
      2. Agents within UNIX or Linux clusters
  13. Chapter 11: Reporting enhancements
    1. New reporting features in IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.2
      1. Multi-row data plot
      2. Combined historical and real-time data
    2. Tivoli Common Reporting Initiative
      1. Shared reporting ecosystem
      2. Where Common Reporting fits
      3. Samples of Tivoli reports
      4. Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools
      5. BIRT terminology
      6. How BIRT interacts with IBM Tivoli Monitoring
    3. Case Study 1 - IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.2 and BIRT integration scenario
      1. Our environment
      2. Installation
      3. Configuration
      4. Report creation
    4. Case Study 2 - IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.1 and BIRT integration scenario
      1. Our environment
      2. Report creation
    5. BIRT tools
    6. OPAL solutions
  14. Chapter 12: IBM Change and Configuration Management Database integration
    1. IBM Change and Configuration Management Database and Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager fundamentals
    2. Using Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager and IBM Tivoli Monitoring to discover and deploy to unmanaged systems
      1. Scenario background
      2. Using TADDM to discover all systems on the network
      3. Scan IBM Tivoli Monitoring environment using Discovery Library Adapters
      4. Upload generated XML file to TADDM
      5. Query the TADDM database
      6. Deploy new IBM Tivoli Monitoring OS agents
      7. Using the TADDM reporting feature to assess coverage
    3. Using Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager and IBM Tivoli Monitoring to facilitate server consolidation
      1. Scenario background
      2. Use TADDM to discover all systems on the network
      3. Collect historical data for CPU utilization
      4. Identify dependencies and utilization of systems
  15. Chapter 13: Troubleshooting
    1. Log files directory
      1. Windows
      2. UNIX and Linux
      3. OS/400
      4. z/OS
    2. General terms, extensions, and product code
      1. Log terms
    3. Log file names and their usages
    4. Identifying the latest log file
    5. How to enable tracing (1/2)
    6. How to enable tracing (2/2)
    7. Using DIGUP to retrieve UNIX log files
    8. Using KINLOGS to format log file time stamps
    9. Common configuration problems (1/2)
    10. Common configuration problems (2/2)
  16. Appendix A: Product codes
    1. IBM Tivoli Monitoring product codes (1/2)
    2. IBM Tivoli Monitoring product codes (2/2)
  17. Appendix B: IBM Tivoli Monitoring component flow diagrams
    1. Situation event processing component flow
    2. Portal client workspace query component flow
    3. Short term history (Historydriver) collection instantiation component flow
    4. Warehouse Proxy Agent component flow
  18. Appendix C: Additional material
    1. Locating the Web material
    2. Using the Web material
      1. System requirements for downloading the Web material
      2. How to use the Web material
  19. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks publications
    2. Other publications
    3. Online resources
    4. How to get IBM Redbooks publications
    5. Help from IBM
  20. Index (1/3)
  21. Index (2/3)
  22. Index (3/3)
  23. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: IBM Tivoli Monitoring: Implementation and Performance Optimization for Large Scale Environments
  • Author(s): Vasfi Gucer, Naeem Altaf, Erik D Anderson, Dirk-Gary Boldt, Murtuza Choilawala, Isabel Escobar, Scott A Godfrey, Mauricio Morilha Sokal, Christopher Walker
  • Release date: February 2008
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: None