SAP CCMS Monitor

The SiteScope SAP CCMS monitor allows you to monitor the performance of your SAP R/3 System landscape in a centralized manner. It retrieves and reports metrics using SAP's new centralized monitoring architecture, CCMS (Computer Center Management System). With CCMS a SAP administrator can monitor all servers, components and resources in his R/3 landscape from one single Centralized Server, greatly facilitating not only problem discovery but also problem diagnosis. Using SAP's new advanced CCMS interface BC-XAL 1.0, this new SiteScope monitor exposes hundreds of performance and availability metrics that the existing SiteScope SAP monitor did not have access to. The error and warning thresholds for the monitor can be set for up to ten of the nearly 120 SAP server performance statistics available.

Software Requirements

This new monitor requires that the SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo 2.0.6 and above) component be downloaded from the SAP Service Marketplace Software Distribution Center, and installed on the same server where SiteScope is running (or at least be accessible on a shared or remote location).
The BC-XAL 1.0 interface is supported on R/3 systems 4.5B and above only.
Consult your SAP documentation to determine if your R/3 landscape components may need additional software installed to run or work with CCMS.

To download SAP Java Connector, go to the SAP Software Distribution Center at:

http://www.service.sap.com/connectors

Then click "SAP Java Connector", "Tools and Services". You will need a valid Service Marketplace login to access this site.

SAP Java Connector Installation

Follow the installation instructions that come with the SAP JCo download for your appropriate platform. On Windows, make sure you add the JCo installation location in the System Environment PATH variable rather than as a User variable. This change usually requires you to then reboot Windows inorder for the system PATH to be updated. Once completed, you must then make the SAP JCo library file available to SiteScope by copying file sapjco.jar (which comes with the JCo install) to:

<SiteScope install path>/SiteScope/java/lib/ext

before starting SiteScope.

Usage Guidelines

The SAP CCMS Monitor allows you to monitor the performance data for various components of your R/3 landscape. You can monitor multiple parameters or counters with a single monitor instance. This allows you to watch server loading for performance, availability, and capacity planning.

The default run schedule for this monitor is every 10 minutes, but you can change it to run more or less often using the Update every setting. Note, however, that CCMS metrics are generally only updated once every 5 minutes.

Note: Due to the large amount of metrics that are being retrieved when displaying the entire SAP metrics browse tree during monitor definition, there could be a noticeable delay going from the "choose server" page to the "choose counters" page (possibly 1 to 2 minutes). However, once a browse tree has been successfully retrieved it will be cached to file automatically, so that the next time you retrieve metrics from the same server/username the wait time will be greatly reduced.

This monitor only retrieves and displays numeric metrics (Performance attributes). That is, Status, Log and Information attributes are currently not supported. Also, presentation and management of SAP CCMS Alerts in SiteScope are not supported at this time.

User Authorization

A SAP user requires certain privileges to read CCMS metrics. When defining a SAP CCMS monitor in SiteScope you must specify a user who has XMI autorization to be able to login to the CCMS server and retrieve metrics. Authorizations are collected in SAP profiles, and the following profiles include XMI authorization:

S_A.SYSTEM
PD_CHICAGO
S_WF_RWTEST
SAP_ALL

Again, when defining a SAP CCMS monitor in SiteScope you must specify a user who has one or more of these profiles assigned to it. A quick test to see if a user has such authorization is to try and issue transaction RZ20 in the SAP GUI and see if the CCMS monitor sets can be displayed.

Completing the SAP CCMS Monitor Form

To display the SAP CCMS Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing SAP CCMS Monitor in a monitor table, or click the Add a new Monitor to this Group link on a group's detail page and click the Add SAP CCMS Monitor link.

Complete the items on the SAP CCMS Monitor form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.

Server

Select the server you want to monitor. Use the choose server link to enter a path name to a server. The server selection page is displayed. Complete this form as follows:

Server: Enter the address of the SAP server you want to monitor.
SAP Client: Enter the Client to use for connecting to SAP. A default client of 800 is typically used.
System Number: Enter the System number for the SAP server. A default system number of 00 is typically used.
Username: Enter the Username required to connect to the SAP server. This user must have authorization to access CCMS metrics; see authorizations for details.
Password: Enter the Password required to connect to the SAP server.
Router String (Optional): If your connection is being made through a router, enter a router address string. You can find the router address using the SAP Logon tool from the SAP Client software. Open the Logon console, select the server you want to monitor and then select Properties to view the router address. Leave it blank otherwise.

Counters

Choose the server performance parameters or counters you want to check with this monitor. Use the choose counters link to bring up the counters selection screen where an expandable browse tree will be displayed. This tree will more or less match the hierarchy of Monitoring Tree Elements displayed in the Monitoring Tree that is shown in the SAP GUI with transaction RZ20. However, our browse tree may show more or less information than RZ20 depending on the authorization level of the username you specified for this monitor.

Check or clear the check boxes on the choose counters screen to select counters to monitor on this server.

Update every

Select how often the monitor should check the SAP server. The default interval is to run or update the monitor once every 10 minutes. Use the drop-down list to the right of the text box to specify another update interval in increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. The update interval must be 15 seconds or longer.

Title

Enter a title text for this monitor. This text is displayed in the group detail page, in report titles, and other places in the SiteScope interface. If you do not enter a title text, SiteScope will create a title based on the host, server, or URL being monitored.

Advanced Options

The Advanced Options section presents a number of ways to customize monitor behavior and display. Use this section to customize error and warning thresholds, disable the monitor, set monitor-to-monitor dependencies, customize display options, and enter other monitor specific settings required for special infrastructure environments. The options for this monitor type are described below. Complete the entries as needed and click the Add or Update button to save the settings.

Disable: Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.
Verify Error: Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error.
Update Every (on error): You use this option to set a new monitoring interval for monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally, but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of alerts generated by this monitor.
Schedule: By default, SiteScope monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Click the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For more information about working with monitor schedules, see the section on Schedule Preferences for Monitoring.
Monitor Description: Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR> <HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.
Report Description: Enter an optional description for this monitor that will make it easier to understand what the monitor does. For example, network traffic or main server response time. This description will be displayed on with each bar chart and graph in Management Reports and appended to the tool-tip displayed when you pass the mouse cursor over the status icon for this monitor on the monitor detail page.
Depends On: To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select the monitor on which this monitor is dependent. Select None to remove any dependency.
Depends Condition: If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor, select the status condition that the other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally as long as the monitor on which it depends reports the condition selected in this option.
List Order: By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Setting Monitor Status Thresholds

SiteScope Application Monitors allow you to set multiple threshold conditions to determine the status reported by each monitor. The individual conditions are combined as logical OR relationships so that when one or more of the conditions (for example any of the conditions for Error if) are met the monitor status is set to the applicable condition. If multiple conditions are met for more than one status condition (such as conditions for both error and for warning), the status for the monitor is set to the highest valued condition. Thus a match of an error condition and a warning condition would be reported as an error status, error being the highest value, warning the next highest and good the lowest value.

Error if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more error conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change error threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. After choosing a counter or parameter, use the comparison operator drop-down list to specify an error threshold such as: >= (greater than or equal to), != (not equal to), or < (less than) and enter a comparison value in the box provided. Comparison values should be entered as whole numbers.
Warning if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more warning conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change warning threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. Set these values relative to those you set for the error threshold in the Error if item.
Good if: You can set this monitor to return a good status for certain conditions. You may define those conditions here. Complete this item as you would for the Error if and Warning if items.