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System Heartbeats with TEC

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This type of monitoring is somewhat similar to Heart rate monitoring which might explain the origin of the term. Heartbeat monitoring can be implemented either as part of endpoint health monitoring (the simplest way is to use “wep status” and “wadminep view_version but Framework v4.1.1  has a new feature: endpoint health check ) or as a central service. In the latter case you can monitor remote hosts independently of whether they have endpoint installed or not from one central location. The most primitive type of this type of monitoring is periodic pings.

ITM 5.1 also can be used, see Heartbeating in 30 minutes with ITM 5.1.1 - part 1

Netview contains build in service for heartbeat monitoring so if Tivoli installation includes Netview it is easier to do it this way.  See also NetView rule set (netview.rls). This is covered is IBM Tivoli software training course - IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console 3.9 Solutions:

NetView Integration

Note:  Orb Data website contains a valuable collection of Tivoli TEC tips.  You can search for the word "TEC" (or more specific search string) from the main page to get the list of  available articles or visit Knowledge Base

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News

Framework v4.1.1 endpoint health check By Gary Hamilton

November 2002 | The Tivoli Advisor

Why is the health check necessary?

In framework version 4.1.1, a new feature was added to help customers with the perennial problem of awareness of the health of endpoints in the environment. Various custom solutions have been written in the past, utilizing either the CLI commands "wep status" and "wadminep view_version" or Distributed Monitoring/ IBM Tivoli Monitoring heartbeats. The problems associated with both these approaches are:
  1. The CLI commands were never designed with this function in mind, so they are ineffective, inconsistent and incomplete. If a problem occurs there is inadequate information to understand and address the problem.
  2. The heartbeats are reliant on the underlining products and framework. The products were not designed with the endpoint process' health in mind. The expectation is that the endpoint will be healthy.
  3. To use the heartbeat you must have a monitoring product installed. The new health check is built into the framework. Therefore no additional products are necessary.

What does the health check do?

The new feature is concerned with the health of the endpoint. This means it tests whether the endpoint is able to perform the operations the products will require it to do.

These operations are:

a. Downcalls

b. Upcalls

c. Method and task execution

d. Creation and deletion of files

e. Token creation on Windows platforms

These five operations encompass all the general functions that products perform on the endpoints.

Heartbeating in 30 minutes with ITM 5.1.1 - part 1

Orb Data

The IBM solution comes as part of ITM (IBM Tivoli Monitoring) 5.1.1 and it can be used to monitor the basic availability of endpoints attached to the gateway at which it is enabled. Events can then be sent to the Tivoli Business Systems Manager (provided that the Tivoli Business Systems Manager Adapter component is installed at the gateway), the Tivoli Enterprise Console (TME® events only) or the Tivoli Monitoring Notice Group (default).

This tip is split into 2 parts. In this first part of the tip I will discuss the physical architecture, some design decisions you need to make and the actual implementation of a heartbeating solution. In part 2 of the tip I discuss the events that you might expect to see if an endpoint is shut down, concentrating on TEC and Notice group integration.

At the end of part 2 of the tip I also detail a simple script that I have written named heartbeat.pl. This script can complete some of the steps that are shown in this tip with only a few basic options, and will hopefully allow your organization to implement heartbeating in 30 minutes.

System Heartbeats with TEC - Monitoring by Exception

Provides the second part of a two part explanation of the use of system heartbeats to display the status of your key systems. This method monitors by exception, displaying only those systems that have missed a specified number of heartbeats for a specified time. Included in this tip are all of the rules, classes and external scripts required.

System Heartbeats with TEC - a state engine approach

Orb Data

One of the requirements of the majority of our customers has been to implement some kind of heartbeat mechanism from their most critical systems. Generally the requirements for this are the same, the customer wants know at any time whether a system is up and running or not.

Even though the requirements are the same, we have seen many different solutions. Over the next two weeks we will discuss two such solutions.

This tip outlines the first solution to some very specific requirements.

RE ITM heartbeat endpoint unreachable alert question - msg#00823 -

sysutils.tivoli.general

Same here, I ended up creating a new severity, TIVOLI, and redirecting these
'heartbeating' events to there, as there are way too many false alarms.

Best Regards

David Weir
IBM Certified Deployment Professional - Tivoli Monitoring V5.1.1

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-tme10-XtjxT7Vmt5b1ENwx4SLHqw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Duffy, Brian (OFT)
Sent: Friday, 30 January 2004 5:36 AM
To: tme10-XtjxT7Vmt5b1ENwx4SLHqw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [tme10] ITM heartbeat "endpoint unreachable" alert question

It means that the endpoint didn't send a heartbeat upcall when it was
supposed to, and the gateway was unable to send a downcall to it.

In our environment, it tended to throw a lot of false alarms. We ended
up writing TEC rules and a couple of scripts to check out the status of
an endpoint before alerting people.

Brian J. Duffy
NYS Office for Technology
brian.duffy-zVgB07JTx4c4Xc9VQZkPiQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-tme10-XtjxT7Vmt5b1ENwx4SLHqw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of D'Apice, Dominic
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 1:09 PM
To: Tme10 (E-mail) (E-mail)
Subject: [tme10] ITM heartbeat "endpoint unreachable" alert question

What mean exactly the "endpoint unreachable" alert in ITM heartbeat ?

Does it mean that the server doesn't response to a ping command or it
mean that the Endpoint process doesn't response to the wep status command ?

Please can someone clarify this question ?

thanks
Dominic D'Apice
* D.D'Apice-XB5swX22BCD3fQ9qLvQP4Q@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

HeartBeat Event to Monitor NV6K Alive Status

Jun 1. 1998 lists.tivoli DOT com

Good Day Netview Admins. We are running NV V4.1.2 on AIX platform. We are running the secured tecadapter to our TEC box (Solaris 2.5.1 TEC3.1). Once events pass through the TEC rulesbase, trouble tickets that are deemed critical or fatal are passed to our Trouble Ticket System - ala..Remedy.

Here's the question.

We want to monitor the entire process from the Netview Box through the adapter to TEC and onto Remedy. Knowing that NV6K polls the entire network, what do you need to do to ensure the NV6K box and all the necessary processes are up themselves all the time. Does NV6K issue a trap or other events before the processes on the box crash? We have Tivoli Distributed Monitor installed on NV6K monitoring files structures, and other processes. But then if the oserv dies on this box, we are out of luck for any of its monitors. Our attempt here is NOT to rely on Tivoli for all monitoring purposes. Sort of a contingency backup failover system to make sure our Enterprise Systems Management boxes are healthy.

Our thinking here is creating a new event within NV6K EventConfiguration panel which would fire every 30-60 minutes. Using Tivoli rulesbase we could have the event pass eventually to Remedy where it could handle filtering and deem the system is up. If the event is not received at Remedy by a certain point, then we can assume somewhere in the process has experienced a failure.

Thanks for any tips anyone can offer that may have configured a similar "HeartBeat" event to monitor the health of the entire process.

John Mull
Hershey Foods Corporation
Information Technology & Integration
Enterprise Systems Management
(717)534-7959
email:jmull AT hersheys DOT com

Recommended Links

Heartbeating in 30 minutes with ITM 5.1.1 - part 1

System Heartbeats with TEC - Monitoring by Exception

System Heartbeats with TEC - a state engine approach

  1. [PDF]

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