Agile Service Manager UI Introduction

Here's a short video introduction covering the basic features of IBM's Netcool Agile Service Manager.

IBM Netcool Agile Service Manager Thoughts

I recently installed IBM's Netcool Agile Service Manager and wanted to give my initial thoughts on it.

What is Agile Service Manager?

Basically, it's a real-time topology viewer for multiple technologies. Specifically, it can currently render topology data for ITNM, OpenStack and Docker, all in one place. Additionally, it maps events to the topology so you can see any events that are affecting a resource in the context of its topology. So, for example, if you receive a CRITICAL event for a particular Docker container, you will see the node representing that container turn red. Pretty neat. Here's an example of a 1-hop topology of my ASM server's docker infrastructure (you always have to start at some resource to view a topology):

What's so great about it?

Combined Topology View

First, this topology view is wonderful for Operations and Development because it shows a topology view of your combined Network, Docker and Openstack environments, so everyone can see where applications are running and the dependencies among the pieces.

ElasticSearch

Second, it's got ElasticSearch under the covers, so updates and searches are amazingly fast, and the topology view is built extremely quickly.

Custom Topology Information

Third, you can add your own topology information to make it even more useful!

Here's a screenshot where I've manually modified the topology using a combination of the File Observer and direct access to the Topology Service REST API (from the Swagger URL):

Notice also that Time Entry is in a Critical state. That's due to an event that I generated.

History

Fourth, it maintains history about the topology. That means that you can view the difference in topology between 2 hours (or two days) ago and right now.

Is ASM a complete replacement for TBSM and/or TADDM?

No, ASM is not a complete replacement for TBSM or TADDM, but you can definitely think of it as "TBSM Lite". TBSM still has some very unique features, such as status propagation, service rules, and custom KPIs that can be defined on a per-business-service basis.

And TADDM's unique capability is the hard work of actually discovering very detailed data and relationships in your environment.

However, because the search and visualization pieces of ASM are so fast and efficient, I can definitely see ASM being used as at least part of the visualization portion of  TADDM. What would be required to allow this is a TADDM Observer to be written.

Additionally, I think the ASM database and topology will in the future be leveraged by TBSM, though this will take a little work.

Parting thoughts

ASM is a truly useful product, with some great capabilities. It's also incredibly easy to install if you've already got Netcool Operations Insight (or at least DASH) installed - I was able to get it installed in just a few hours. I'm certain IBM will be adding features and add-ons to provide even more functionality in the coming months.

New Linux Samba vulnerability and fix

A new vulnerability was found in Linux Samba from version 3.5 and above. Details here:

https://www.samba.org/samba/security/CVE-2017-7494.html

The workaround is easy and is contained in the link above:

in your /etc/samba/smb.conf file, add the following in the [global] section:

nt pipe support = no

Then restart smbd with 'service smb restart'

BMXAA7025E and BMXAA8313E Errors running MAXINST on ICD 7.6

I wanted to install the demo data that's provided with ICD 76 by basically following the instructions found here:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Anything%20about%20Tivoli/page/To%20load%20the%20sample%20DB2%20database%20after%20Control%20Desk%207.6%20installed

But I didn't find those steps before I started, so I took my own path.

Specifically, I didn't drop the database, and that meant that I encountered errors BMXAA7025E and BMXAA8313E when running the 'maxinst.sh' script. What I found is that the cleandb operation doesn't really delete all of the tables and views in the MAXIMO schema (I'm on DB2/WebSphere/RHEL 6.5), so when maxinst gets to running the files under:

/opt/IBM/SMP/maximo/tools/maximo/en/dis_cms

It fails because a few of these SQL files try to create tables and views that still exist. I found this link about the problem:

https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21647350

But I didn't like it because it tells you to re-create the database. So with a little digging, I found that after I hit the error, I could run the following db2 commands to delete all of the tables and views that were not automatically deleted:


db2 connect to maxdb76 user maximo using passw0rd
db2 DROP TABLE ALIASES
db2 DROP TABLE ATTRIBUTE_TYPES
db2 DROP TABLE BNDLVALS
db2 DROP TABLE BUNDLENM
db2 DROP TABLE CDM_VERSION
db2 DROP TABLE CHANGE_EVENTS
db2 DROP TABLE CLASS_TYPES
db2 DROP TABLE CMSTREE
db2 DROP TABLE CMSTREES
db2 DROP TABLE DESIRED_SUPPORTED_ATTRS
db2 DROP TABLE DESIRED_SUPPORTED_MAP
db2 DROP TABLE ENUMERATIONS
db2 DROP TABLE FTEXPRSN
db2 DROP TABLE FTVALUES
db2 DROP TABLE INTERFACE_TYPES
db2 DROP TABLE LAPARAMS
db2 DROP TABLE LCHENTR
db2 DROP TABLE LCHENTRY
db2 DROP TABLE ME_ATTRIBUTES
db2 DROP TABLE METADATA_ASSN
db2 DROP TABLE MSS
db2 DROP TABLE MSS_ME

db2 DROP TABLE MSS_RELATIONSHIPS

db2 DROP TABLE NAMING_IDENTIFIERS

db2 DROP TABLE NAMING_POLICIES

db2 DROP TABLE NAMING_RULES

db2 DROP TABLE RELATIONSHIPS

db2 DROP TABLE RELATIONSHIP_TYPES

db2 DROP TABLE SBSTVALS

db2 DROP TABLE SUPERIORS

db2 DROP TABLE VALID_REL_TYPES

db2 DROP VIEW ATTR_PRIORITIES

db2 commit

And then I could re-run the maxinst.sh script and it worked like a champ. Please feel free to use my super secure password for yourself.