Tivoli TEC Alert Monitor

Use the Tivoli TEC Alert Monitor to monitor the number of events forwarded by particular Tivoli Event Server.

Usage Guidelines

The Tivoli TEC Alert Monitor listens for incoming TEC events and reports the total number of received events and number of received events per minute. You can forward TEC events to a Topaz platform for further use by Topaz Business Availability and RCA Applications. For details see the Advanced Options section below.

As the first step of the monitor definition you need to configure your Tivoli Event Server to forward events to SiteScope machine. The configuration is performed by creating new rule in the TEC Event Server rule base. If you are seasoned Tivoli Administrator and don't like the following solution, you can perform configuration manually.

The following are the recommended steps to configure the TEC Event Server.

Note: To execute following steps you need to have at least senior Tivoli authorization.

Make available the contents of the SiteScope/ems/Tivoli/rulebase/tec_version_number directory to your TEC server where tec_version_number is replaced with the TEC version number you are monitoring (for example, tec37). You can copy the directory locally to the server or map/mount the network drive.
Open command prompt (or new terminal) window. Initialize Tivoli environment by running Tivoli script. If the TEC server machine is running on NT/2000 server, the script is located under: % SystemRoot%\ system32\ drivers\ etc\ Tivoli\ setup_ env. cmd. If the TEC server is running on UNIX machine, run the script: / etc/ Tivoli/ setup. sh
Run the SiteScope rule base installation Perl script: perl pcreate{SiteScope Hostname} {Rule Base Path},on your TEC event server, where {SiteScope Hostname} is the name of the SiteScope machine and {Rule Base Path } is the full path for the TopazProbe rule base creation. Note that if you run the script without parameters you will be asked for the required parameters.

The TopazProbe rule base creation performs the following tasks on the TEC server:

Creates a new TopazProbe rule base.
Imports into it the Topaz probe event class definition and rules.
Imports the active rule base content (event class definitions, rule sets and targets) into the TopazProbe rule base.
Activate TopazProbe rule base.
Restarts the event server.

You can use the TEC Event History tool to view recent TEC events received by the TEC event listener included with SiteScope.

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. It is recommended to set up monitor scheduling to match the appropriate Tivoli Event Server scheduling.

Completing the Tivoli TEC Alert Monitor Form

To display the Tivoli TEC Alert Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing Tivoli TEC Alert Monitor listed in a monitor table, or click the add a Monitor link on a group's detail page and click the Add TEC Alert Monitor link.

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

Update every

Select how often the monitor should update the event counter. 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.

EMS Configuration File Path

Enter the path to the EMS integration configuration file. For more information about format of the file see EMS Generic Alert Probe Configuration.

TEC Server

Enter the TEC Server hostname and port number in form hostname:port. Upon monitor definition Topaz_ProbeConnect event will be sent to the specified TEC event server/port. If the TEC server runs on UNIX platform and uses portmaper service leave unspecified port number and monitor will obtain the port number from portmaper service on TEC machine. Every minute the monitor sends Topaz_ProbeHeartBeat event to the same destination and Topaz_Probe Disconnect upon monitor deletion. Rules created in TopazProbe rule base will automatically detects whether incoming event should be forwarded to SiteScope. For example, if your TEC server runs on NT machine named tivoli01 and listens for incoming non TME events on port 5529 specify tivoli01:5529. If the TEC server runs on UNIX machine tivoli02 and uses portmaper specify tivoli02.

If you leave the parameter unspecified the monitor reports Total Number of Events and Number of Events per minute received from any location.

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.

Setting Monitor Status Thresholds

Integration 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 value 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.