HP OVO Alert Monitor

The SiteScope HP OVO Alert Monitor allows you to integrate an existing Hewlett-Packard OpenView installation with Mercury Interactive's Topaz by transferring HP OVO messages from HP OVO Server to a Topaz server. This monitor makes use of Mercury-supplied integration module that must be installed on the HP OpenView server.Once the SiteScope HP OVO Alert Monitor is configured and running, it collects alerts from HP OVO Server as these are created or modified, and transfers the alerts to the Topaz.

Usage Guidelines

Operating environment

The SiteScope HP OVO Alert Monitor depends on a Mercury Interactive HP OVO Integration Addon to collect alerts from the HP OpenView Server. The Addon, when installed on the HP OVO Server machine, listens to messages received by the HP OVO system and sends them to the SiteScope HP OVO Alert Monitor. The HP OVO Alert Monitor transfers the messages to a Topaz server. The Addon and the monitor communicate using TCP/IP networking (using customizable TCP port).

HP OVO Integration Installation

The following is an outline of the steps you use for the HP OVO Integration Installation Process:

Install and configure the HP OVO Integration Addon on the HP OVO Server
Activate the HP OVO Alert Monitor and the HP OVO Integration Addon

See the section Working with the HP OVO Integration Addon below for more information about installing, activating, and configuring the Integration Addon.

Status

The status reading returned by the monitor is the current value of the monitor, such as 10 received alerts, 1 connected addon. The status is logged as either OK, warning, or error. A warning status is returned if no addon is connected to the monitor. The status can be configured further using advanced options in the HP OVO Alert Monitor Configuration Form.

Completing the HP OVO Alert Monitor Form

To display the HP OVO Alert Monitor Form, either click the name of an existing Network Monitor in a monitor table, or click the Add a new Monitor to this Group link on a group's detail page and choose the Add HP OVO Alert Monitor link.

Complete the items on the HP OVO Alert Monitor Form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add/Update Monitor button.

Update every: Select how often the monitor should check the integration status. 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.
NOTE: This setting controls only the statistics reports. Actual alerts are sent without any delay.
Title (Optional): 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.

NOTE: Disabling the monitor affects only statistics reports. HP OVO Alerts are still sent to the Topaz.

HP OVO Addon TCP Port

Enter the TCP port number as configured in the HP OVO Integration Addon. By default port 9000 is used.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

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.

Error if

Set the Error threshold for this monitor. By default SiteScope reports an error condition if any packet errors occur. You can change this to be dependent upon packet errors per second, the number of active connections, bytes per second received, or bytes per second sent. Choose the option you want from the drop-down list, select a comparison value symbol, and enter the threshold number in the text entry box. You must enter a whole number. For example, if you want SiteScope to report an error condition if your packed error count exceeds 5 errors per second, you need to choose errorsPerSecond >= from the pull-down menus and then enter 5 in the text entry box.

Warning if

Set the warning threshold for this monitor. By default SiteScope reports a warning condition if your bytes out per second is more than 50000. You can change this to be dependent upon packet errors per second, the number of active connections, bytes per second received, or bytes per second sent. For example, if you want to change the warning threshold to 10000, choose outBytesPerSecond > from the drop-down lists and then enter 10000 in the text entry box.

Good if

By default SiteScope assumes a good status. You can change this to be dependent upon packet errors per second, the number of active connections, bytes per second received, or bytes per second sent.

Working with the HP OVO Integration Addon

The purpose of the HP OVO Integration Addon is to connect to the HP OVO message infrastructure, to receive alerts from the HP OVO and to forward these alerts to the SiteScope machine.

Note: The Addon module is platform specific. Currently we provide Addon modules for the Solaris 8/SPARC and HP UX 11 platforms.

Detailed Addon Installation Instructions

Before installing the HP OVO Integration Addon

Prior to installation of the HP OVO Integration Addon, make sure you have following data available:

IP address (or network name) of the SiteScope machine on which the monitor is installed.
Path to HP OVO server libraries (the default is /opt/OV/lib/ )
Path to the Oracle server software libraries.
Path to the Java runtime libraries. For example, /usr/java1.

Installing the HP OVO Integration Addon

The HP OVO Integration Addon is distributed as a .tar archive. You perform the following steps to install the Addon:

Login as the super-user to the HP OVO Server; alternatively, use the su command to gain super-user permissions.
Choose an installation directory (INSTALL_DIR) on the HP OVO Server. Create the directory if needed.
Note: It is highly recommended to install the Addon under directory /opt/topaz/hp_ovo_addon/ as this would minimize the configuration changes needed to a minimum.
If installing on the Solaris8 Platform, copy <Sitescope>\ems\HPOV\addon\solv4\hpovo.addon.solv4.tar file to INSTALL_DIR. If installing on the HPUX 11 Platform, copy <Sitescope>\ems\HPOV\addon\hp9\hpovo.addon.hp9.tar file to INSTALL_DIR.
Uncompress the tar file in the INSTALL_DIR using a command such as: tar xvf hpovo.addon.solv4.tar (this example is for the Solaris8 platform)
Configure the Addon by editing the run_addon.sh file in the INSTALL_DIR folder on the HP OVO Server. Refer to the configuration instruction section below for details.

Configuring the HP OVO Integration Addon

Once installed, the Integration Addon must be configured before it can be used. The configuration is done by editing the addon configuration script: run_addon.sh.

The following parameters must be set in the configuration file:

HOST: IP Address or network name of SiteScope machine on which the HP OVO Alert Monitor is installed (No default)
OVO_DIR: Location of HP OVO server software libraries. (default is /opt/OV/lib)
JAVA_DIR: Location of Java software libraries(default is /usr/java1.1/lib)
ORACLE_DIR: Location of Oracle software (default is /opt/oracle/product/8.1.7/lib)

In addition to these required parameters, following parameters can be customized:

PORT: TCP Port number for Addon-Monitor communication (default is 9000)
Note: If you change this setting, make sure to update the SiteScope HP OVO Alert Monitor.
LOG_DIR: Log directory. (default is /tmp/hpovo_ito_addon)
HEARTBEAT_TIMEOUT: Maximum time period (in seconds) between two sequential heatbeat reports (default is 45)
DEBUG_LEVEL: Debug level. Possible debug levels are: DEBUG/INFO/WARNING/ERROR (default is ERROR).
LOG_FILE: Log file name. By default log file name is constructed automatically, basing on current date. You can override default behaviour by setting explicit log file name here.

Starting and Stopping the HP OVO Integration Addon

Start up and Termination

The HP OVO Integration Addon must be started using the run_addon.sh shell script, which comes with the package. It will connect to the HP OVO Alert Monitor, IP address of which is written in the run_addon.sh shell script during the configuration.

Once started, the Addon can be shut down using the termination script, stop_addon.sh.

If the Addon disconnects from the SiteScope during operation, it will try to reconnect to the SiteScope at regular intervals. During the re-connection phase the Addon will not receive alerts from the HP OVO Server; the events will be stored within the HP OVO software. In the case of addon process termination, the messages will be held on the management server until the process will be brought up and then sent to Topaz.

The HP OVO Integration Addon Log File

The HP OVO Integration Addon logs its activity to the log file. The log file is created when the Addon is started. Its name and location is determined by the run_addon.sh script.

By default, the logs are created in the /tmp/hpov_ito_addon directory. The log files are named by default hpovo_ito_addon_YEAR-MONTH-DAY--HOUR:MIN:SEC.log. For example, hpovo_ito_addon_2002-Dec-18--14:35:50.log.

The log file entries have the following format:

HPOV Addon: DATE LEVEL FILE:LINE MESSAGE