This is part 2, on Performance Monitoring. It's dealing with newer releases, so it won't be directly applicable to all environments, but I think it's very useful information:
Have you ever wondered how to bundle together data center resources? Do you ever have to manually deploy and configure your servers, operating systems, middleware, applications, storage and networking devices? They can be managed as a single entity using physical and virtual IBM servers. In this article, you will learn what a virtual data center is, how to create one using POWER7 VMControl and IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager, and how to use a virtual data center to manage your IT systems and virtualization technologies as a single point of control access. In the process, we'll show you an example of how you can use the Tivoli product for patch management, which is one of the most difficult tasks to manage in a large server farm.
Blaming bad code (or bad code monkeys) won't help you find performance bottlenecks and improve the speed of your Java applications, and neither will guessing. Ted Neward directs your attention to tools for Java performance monitoring, starting with five tips for using Java 5's built-in profiler, JConsole, to collect and analyze performance data.
This is not technical, just a word of advice. I watched 8 episodes of the Sopranos on DVD back to back. I started swearing at truly inapprpriate moments. Probably good to throw a Brady Bunch episode in the mix.
One of the coolest and long awaited feature introduced in ITM 6.2.2 FP2 is the file transfer feature. Using this, you should be able to transfer monitoring scripts, dependency files and config files down to the monitored agent. ITM provides necessary CLI to transfer files to/from the agent using "tacmd getfile" and "tacmd putfile".
However this feature is not enabled in the TEMS by default. TO enable this feature, you need to do the following steps.
1. Edit $CANDLEHOME/config/*_ms_*.config
2. Add the following enviornment variable at the end of the config file.
KT1_TEMS_SECURE='Y'
3. Restart the TEMS.
4. Now run "tacmd login" followed by "tacmd getfile" or "tacmd putfile".
To install an agent from the Agent Builder, you use the option to Create a Solution Installer Image
There is also a silent installation option. A silent.txt, is included with the final package - configure this silent file with all the connection details required. If you require additional template options - I will cover that later.
Run the appropriate installer for the operating system with the -silent option.
A recently had to build a new server, really big server... 48 cores, 128gb RAM and 16tb of local storage. I wanted to use VMware ESXi server - the free bare metal hypervisor, but it is limited to 32 cpu's. I looked at Microsoft's HyperV and I have never been less impressed by a product. So I looked at Citrix Xenserver 5.6 - free version. It supports up to 64 cpu's and is a true bare metal hypervisor. There are desktop clients to manage from a workstation, it manages disk stores very niceley and has tools for all the guest OSes. It's not quite as friendly as VMware, but IMHO much more usable and easier to setup clusters.
KFW_CMW_DETECT_AGENT_ADDR_CHANGE=N The Navigator function detects when the IP@ for an Agent is discovered. If the Agent environment is constantly changing or has improper configurations that generate excessive Navigator tree rebuilding, consider adding this environment variable to have any discovery of changes or additions of IP address ignored.
KFW_CMW_DETECT_AGENT_HOSTNAME_CHANGE=N This variable is like the one for detecting Agent address change except that it prevents the Navigator rebuilding if an agent hostname is changed.
KFW_CMW_DETECT_AGENT_PROPERTY_CHANGE=N Similar to the above except that it prevents the Navigator rebuilding if an agent affinity or affinity version changes.
EDIT: Corrected the information after re-testing on a clean machine.
On a Windows TBSM server (I haven't tested this on other platforms), you need to copy the taddm-api-client.jar AND platform-api.jar files from the TADDM SDK into TWO different directories on the TBSM data server to get the Discovery Library Toolkit to work. Specifically, you need to copy taddm-api-client.jar to:
D:\ibm\tivoli\tbsm\XMLToolkit\sdk\clientlib
and copy platform-model.jar to:
D:\ibm\tivoli\tbsm\XMLToolkit\sdk\lib
I found that if you only copy the first file, the toolkit won't work at all, and won't generate any errors or messages of any use.
Well, this is hardly related to Tivoli, but just thought of sharing this cool stuff. I have a 5-year old desktop running Ubuntu Lucid used mainly for running scheduled jobs off of cron. So, basically it plays some music everyday for couple of hours and sits idle for the rest of the day. Ideally, I wanted to put the system on standby all the time and waking it up only when the scheduled job needs run. It is relatively easy to do it in Ubuntu (especially if your BIOS supports it).
Here are the exact steps needed on my Lucid Lynx. Please note that you need to have Kernel 2.6.22 or later for this to work.
1) Install the Power management interface tools. sudo apt-get install powermanagement-interface 2) Copy the following code somewhere in your filesystem and save it as "suspend_x_hours.sh".
#!/bin/bash # This script puts the system under standby mode for x hours
usage() {
echo "usage: $0 <n-hours>"
echo "where <n-hours> is the number of hours to be on standby"
3) Schedule the script in root's crontab. e.g the following crontab entry runs at 8PM and puts the system in sleep for 10 hours, waking it up at 6:00 AM.
Many ITM sites want to disable default ITM situations so that unnecessary alerts are not sent to the operations. In old days, we usually disable the situations by running a simple script. One such example of the script is posted below.
This task is much easier with ITM 6.2.2. While seeding application support, ITM asks you to whether you want to add the default managed system groups to the situation distribution. If you answer no, the default situations will not be distributed to any managed system unless you explicitly assign them! However, this feature is applicable only for fresh installation of ITM 6.2.2 and may not apply to those who are upgrading from old version of ITM.
In the first version, the tool could perform only SELECT statements, but now we have updated the tool to execute non-SELECT statements such as INSERT, DELETE and UPDATEs as well. For those who subscribed to this tool, I will send out an updated version this week.
Again, this tool is 100% free. Please send an email request from your work email to tony delgross (tony dot delgross at gulfsoft.com).
One disclaimer: This tool uses FreeTDS libraries to access Omnibus Object server database. While this works, please understand that IBM does not support this method.
IBM's documentation contains the following description of this error:
CTJTD3602E: The Change Manager is still processing. Wait and retry the discovery at a later time.
Explanation: The Change Manager is still running to process recent changes discovered. The discovery cannot be started until the Change Manager completes.
Operator Response: None.
Administrator Response: Allow time for the Change Manager to complete its processing before starting a discovery.
Programmer Response: None.
What we have found is that this condition can possibly occur for at least a couple of different reasons. The two situations we've found have been:
1. There was a deadlock on the database that we had to clear. A "little while" after we cleared the lock, we were able to successfully run a discovery again without receiving the error message.
2. The change manager partially ran, but didn't update the CHANGE_SERVER_STATUS table. Specifically, it left the value of the STATUS column set to 16 for the last discovery. To fix this, we had to run the following SQL:
update DB2TADDM.CHANGE_SERVER_STATUS set status = 17
This updates the STATUS column for all rows in the table. You could limit it with a WHERE clause, but in our case, it was valid as is.
We then needed to stop and restart TADDM, and the error message went away.
Hope you have been using the GBSCMD utility developed by Gulf Breeze for Tivoli Monitoring product.
In the latest version of GBSCMD (V3.7.1), there is a cool new feature added to the program. With "gbscmd listnewsystems", it can list the recently deployed systems in the environment along with the deployed time and the type of the agent. With this feature, you can setup "after-install" policy scripts in ITM just like Framework with little scripting.
Please note that the list of new systems is lost when TEMS is recycled, so you need to make sure this information is saved in a persistent store like a database or flatfile.
You can download the latest documentation for GBSCMD from the following link.
Not yet subscribed to GBSCMD. Please contact us from your company email and we will send you a copy. Don't worry we will use the email only to send you future updates to GBSCMD. For those, who already subscribed to GBSCMD, we will send an update this week.
Are you going to Pulse 2010? Come see Gulf Breeze at Pulse so we can show why we are the best.
Thanks to Venkat Saranathan, who developed this tool and wrote the description. He also wrote 'gbscmd' for use with ITM 6.x.
Many times, you need to analyze the Omnibus data using scripts. For this purpose, Netcool Omnibus provides nco_sql utility that lets you run the Omnibus queries from the command line. However, one of the main limitations of the nco_sql utility is that it is nearly impossible to parse the output. The difficulties include single record spanning across multiple lines, no delimiter option to name a few.
We at Gulf Breeze worked on this requirement sometime back and developed an utility to address some of these shortcomings. The utility is written in Java and can be run with the Java Runtime that comes with Omnibus. Some of the benefits/features of this utility includes the following.
Currently, it can run any Omnibus "SELECT" queries only. Though the utility could potentially be modified to run other queries, the idea is to use the nco_sql utility for all other type of queries.
Consistent one-record per line output
Ability to specify your own delimiter with "-d" switch.
Ability to suppress header output with "-n" switch.
Ability to specify queries in a file or read from command line.
No need to compile any FreeTDS drivers. It comes with the necessary FreeTDS drivers.
Authorization information kept in a separate file and can be specified with -a switch. You don't need to specify the password in your scripts.
Platform independent and works with the IBM and Sun JREs.
-a File name containing authorization information -d Delimiter -f File name containing SQL query text -h Displays the help information -n No header output -q Query text
Here is a sample data.
$ java -jar GbsNcoSql.jar -a my.auth -q "SELECT Node,Tally from alerts.status" Node,Tally sys1,1 sys21,1 sys3,1 192.168.1.50,190
You can create an authorization manually in text editior. Here is how my authorization file looks. Please note that in the value for server is the hostname NOT the object server name.
One of the annoying aspects of ITM troubleshooting is that the timestamps in the logs are written in epoch time in hexadecimal instead of 'human-readable' format. I don't know the exact reason behind it, but the whole purpose of logs is to aid in troubleshooting and timestamps are critical piece of information in troubleshooting.
Anyway, to convert the log timestamps to normal timestamp, I have been using the following one-liner.
GBSCMD is a free Gulf Breeze offering for performing ITM operations from command line. It is complimentary to tacmd tool and performs many operations that are not provided by tacmd. GBSCMD uses ITM Webservices feature extensively and some of the benefits of GBSCMD are listed below.
Feature support for backlevel ITM versions. Most of the features works from ITM 6.1 on wards.
Provides a way to execute remote commands on agents.
Provides a way to get agent data in CSV format.
Clear offline managed systems from Command line.
Provides a postemsg like feature to send events to situation event console.
If you would like to learn about GBSCMD tool, here are some links to the past articles about GBSCMD. You can google search "gbscmd site:blog.gulfsoft.com".
We have been tweaking the tool from time to time to introduce new features and address bug fixes and this blog discuss some of the changes introduced during the recent versions. The latest and greatest version of the tool as of this writing is version 3.6.4. If you would like to get the latest version, please feel free to contact me at venkat at gulfsoft.com or Tony Delgross at gulfsoft.com. If you have some suggestion on features that you would like to see in GBSCMD, please feel free to write to me as well.
Here are the changes introduced to GBSCMD since version 3.6.1
Version 3.6.1
This version introduced support for row filtering of SOAP Call results with --afilter option. The following example uses --afilter option to get the disk data from an agent and filters the results to include only C: drive information.
You can also get the last 24 hour history data from the agent using --history switch to CT_Get. Some of the other changes include ability to see the results in XML format using --xml option (Thanks IV for making that change!).
Version 3.6.2
This version introduced new SOAP calls for starting and stopping situations at RTEMS level using --starttemssit and --stoptemssit options. If you are running backlevel of ITM and would like the ability to start and stop situations, you can use this feature. It also addressed some timeout issues while getting large SOAP data. (e.g. listing of all managed systems in the entire enterprise for a large ITM Setup).
Version 3.6.3
This version uses new SOAP call for listing situations running on individual agents.
Version 3.6.4
This version introduces column filtering of SOAP results with --attribute option. For example, if you want to get the disk data and only interested in Disk Name and Free Megabytes attributes, the following command line will get you the information.
Here is a commonly asked question from our customers. How do I get the real time agent data exported to excel format (CSV) from command line for further analysis? Even though this can be done from Portal using a combination of logical workspaces and table view, it is real simple with gbscmd tool.
With GBSCMD, you just invoke ct_get subcommand providing agent name and attribute group you're interested in. For example, if you want to get the list of current disk usage information from a Windows OS agent, you can use the following command.
As promised, here is a link to download a logfile monitoring agent. It will work on Unix, Linux or Windows and can monitor up to 10 logfiles per instance of the agent. This is a very generic agent with no filtering. The agent will take up to the first 1024 characters and put them into one field. As always, I've run this in the lab it works great - your setup may vary. The watchdog is setup and the memory threshold is set at 100mb for all OS platforms.
Step 1 - Download and unzip. The entrie package is 26mb in size, it contains all of the supported platforms.
Step 2 - Run the installIraAgentTEMS.bat or .sh on your HUB TEMS and Remote TEMS. Step 3 - Run the installIraAgentTEPS.bat or .sh on your TEP server (recycle the TEPS afterwards) Step 4 - Populate your depot using tacmd addbundles -i /path... or just copy the zip file to the destination and run the installIraAgent.bat or .sh. Step 5 - Configure it. Create an instance and add at least file name to the agent. Step 6 - Once the agents appear in your portal server, you can create a situation that uses the "Scan for String within String" method to search for specific keywords.
A little while back I posted a perl script (http://blog.gulfsoft.com/2009/05/script-to-retrieve-tivoli-patches.html) to list updated patches on ftp.software.ibm.com. It appears that only some patches are getting updated there and all patches are now being handled on a new service called Fix Central.
General Comments We have been hearing about this product since Pulse 2008. The idea was to target a product on the desktop segment rather than one the covers both the server and desktop markets. This was done as these are two different worlds when it comes to management. IBM was hearing from customers that they wanted a more hands-off approach to dealing with desktops, in other words “set and forget” (my term I just made up, so don’t blame IBM for this possible bad phrasing). This was also what other vendors have been doing in the desktop market.
I have been involved with the beta of this product since it was available and will cover a few components of the product.
During the beta, this product was known as DTM. At release, it was renamed to Tivoli Policy Driven Software Distribution (TPDSD), which at least let you know that it was policy driven, but seemed to state that it only did software distribution, which it does, but also does more. It looks like this could be renamed in the next release to Tivoli Endpoint Manager (TEM). Which may seem to be a better name to some, it is actually really confusing to others that have been involved with Framework as this was the name of the component that responsible for managing information regarding the endpoints. For the purposes of this blog, I will use the current name of TPDSD. Who knows, maybe it will change again before TEM comes out ;)
Operating System Support With the first release of TPDSD, there is very limited support for just Windows on both the server and target. The server can run on Windows 2003 and 2008 on 32 or 64 bit. The agents are supported on Windows XP, Vista, 2003 (32/64), 2008 (32/64).
The next release is supposed to have more support for both the servers and agents. There is even talk of MacOS support.
Agent Communications In TPMfSW you were able to handle tasks to the targets using either RXA or the TCA. TPDSD only uses the agents for these tasks and the only time RXA is used is for the remote agent installation.
The great news is that the agent is now natively compiled, so no more JRE! The new agent is approx 30MB and that is the core agent and all other required support files.
Like TPMfSW, the agent also has various polling intervals. There are intervals for: 1. Checking local cached policies 2. Checking for new policies 3. Sending reports
All of these variables can be set at installation time or by an agent configuration policy.
What is a Policy? The policies within TPDSD are what are used to do anything to an agent. If you want to install a piece of software, that is a policy. Scan the system, another policy. Configure the agent, you guessed it, a policy. When a policy is created, it is assigned to a target or a group of targets and will stay with that target until it is withdrawn or the machine is rebuilt.
Policies can be setup to either require or prohibit software from being installed. In order to require software to be installed, you need to first define the software to TPDSD and then define how the software is to be recognized on the target. For the recognition of software, there quite a few different ways that can be used to define how to detect software on a target. 1. If it is an MSI, you can define the GUID as the key. When importing an MSI, this is done automatically 2. If using a SPB, the state code is used when importing. This would take the name and version of the SPB and verify that it is in a successful install state on the target (IC--- for those familiar with TCM) 3. File existence – check for a specific file in a directory 4. Registry existence – check for a specific registry key
There are 35 different checks that can be done and multiple checks can be combined to determine if a product is installed or not. This can make the detection very flexible.
To prohibit software, you still need to create the software definition which would also define how to remove the software. The definition needs to exist so that the policy can be created and the uninstall instructions need to exist to actually do the removal.
Self Service Catalog The self service catalog is a web interface that can be used be the client system to request the installation of software. The catalog contains a searchable section and a “Popular Software” section. The “Popular Software” could be something like a core set of products or free software that is allowed to be installed. This interface also allows the end user to remove software that is currently installed.
When the user requests software from the catalog, it is submitted and a new policy is created for the software to the specific target. This means that the agent will keep checking if the software is installed even after the initial request is completed.
The “set and forget” is the policy part of the product. You set a policy for a target, or group of targets, to have or not have software and the product takes care of maintaining the state of the target.
Integration with TPMfOSD TPMfOSD is not included with TPDSD, but can be easily integrated using a couple global variables. It is very easy to include the TPDSD agent as a software module so that it will automatically be installed and connected with the TPDSD server. Once installed, the agent can be set to automatically install application or perform other configurations based on policies.
Conclusion This product is looking really good and I cannot wait for the next release. Right now, due to the limited OS support and a few other things, it is not really ready for the primetime, and I do not believe that IBM is even stating that it is. It is really close and the concepts will continue from this version to the next. The next version will include much more OS support and I have heard of many new (and cool, as in good) features that people have been saying are missing. I do believe that this is a way better solution that has been designed from the ground up for the distributed environment, unlike TPMfSW, which will good, really was designed more for a datacenter.
Shameless Plug Look for Gulf Breeze Software Partners at Pulse 2010. I will also be doing a presentation called “End to End computer management with Tivoli Policy Driven Software Distribution”. This session will be demoing the use of TPDSD along with TPMfOSD to perform a bare-metal install all the way to installing applications via polcy.
The TADDM GUI only shows you a subset of the information that's stored in the database. The rest of the information can be found by accessing the database directly or using the command line ($COLLATION_HOME/dist/sdk/bin/api.sh). If you use the command line, the easiest way to get information about an object is if you have its GUID, with:
api.sh find [--depth num] --guid THE_GUID
but you need to get the GUID first. It's actually easy - just drag and drop an icon from the GUI into Notepad, and what you'll see will be similar to:
If you are looking to monitor Tivoli Framework from ITM, the best way is to develop an Universal agent or agent builder to pull framework metrics using your custom script. Needless to say, Framework provides a vast array of commands that can easily be scripted to get you the metrics you needed.
If you are looking to monitor basic server components such as TMR, ManagedNode, epmgr and gateways and if you are at Framework 4.3.1 or later, you are in luck. You don't even need to develop an MDL. Framework 4.3.1 provides a new component called tmfmon that provides necessary MDLs and commands that can be readily imported into Universal agent.
You need to take a look at $BINDIR/../generic/tmfmon/README file on how to implement this solution.
These aren't clear or verbose at this point, but I wanted to get the info out to anyone who wants it:
TADDM 7.2 and CCMDB 7.2 are out now, and they seem to work just great.
The TADDM 7.1.1.5 -> 7.2 upgrade works amazingly well, tho it takes several hours if you have lots of data
Java 1.6_17 (the latest as of a couple of weeks ago) JRE doesn't work with the TADDM GUI. You need to use an older version (1.6_07 works like a champ).
New in TADDM 7.2 is an "explore" feature in a topology view. This lets you add additional relationships to a view. So you can right-click a machine and select "Explore", then select what relationships you want displayed, then you can select which other objects that are associated via those relationships will be displayed. Kinda nifty.
CCMDB 7.2 has a new CI topology view. This is a nice feature so you don't have to launch over to TADDM just to see topology info.
In CCMDB 7.2, the "Admin" workstation is no longer limited to just Windows - Linux is supported (so you can run the CCMDB Launchpad from a Linux machine).
If you have been using CSV/flat file as a persistent storage for your scripts, you should really checkout, SQLite. It gives you the power of RDBMS while without the complexity that comes with it. Any SQLite database you create is nothing but a file. It provides locking, transaction support, joins, etc. With ".dump" command, it can generate the SQL commands to reproduce the whole schema.
Did I mention, this database format is supported by ActivePerl, by default? You can use the standard Perl DBI module to manage this database.
Also, there is a CLI tool called sqlite3 (~500K) that lets you run all database manipulation and SQL commands. And, if it is good enough for Google Android and Apple Safari, chances are it should be robust enough for my needs.
Here is a simple Perl script to access this database from Perl.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use DBI;
my $dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:SQLite:dbname=sample.db',',');
$sql = qq{ CREATE TABLE MYCERT ( num int not null, name varchar(20) ); }; $dbh->do($sql); $sql = qq{ INSERT INTO MYCERT VALUES(1, 'ITM'); }; $dbh->do($sql); $sql = qq{ INSERT INTO MYCERT VALUES(2, 'Omnibus'); }; $dbh->do($sql);
If you are looking to develop custom monitoring solution in ITM, ITM gives you two options, viz. an eclipse GUI based Agent Builder tool or Universal Agent (UA). Which one would you choose? While the agent builder is shiny and easy to use, UA solution has its own advantages. Read on to know some of the pros and cons of each approach.
Agent Builder based solution makes sense for the following scenarios.
1) If you want to deploy something real quick and easy, then Agent Builder is a good candidate for your needs. Once you are familiar with the agent builder interface, you can create a custom monitoring agent literally in minutes. Moreover, there are not many typos/mistakes you can make with the Agent Builder's GUI based approach.
2) If you generally prefer GUI method over CLI methods, you will like Agent Builder more.
3) If you want to pull from data sources such as JDBC, WMI, NT Event Log, Service Control Manager, etc, then you should be build an agent builder agent with few clicks. UA will require lot of work as you may have write your own code to pull data from these data sources.
4) If you want to integrate the custom monitoring deployement with your current agent deployment methods, then obviously agent builder is the way to go. Deploying agent builder is very much the same as deploying any other agent.
Universal Agent based solution makes sense for the following scenarios.
1) If you want to minimize the number of agents you want to manage, then you are better of with UA. For example, if your requirement is to deploy 'n' custom monitoring solutions, typically agent builder would require 'n' agents, whereas in case of UA, one agent should be able to perform all 'n' monitoring activities.
2) Let me prefix this statement with a caveat. Check with your IBM representative for all licensing related information. Since one UA can handle multiple monitoring tasks, the licensing costs of UA based solution is typically lower than that of Agent Builder.
3) If you have been using UA for a long time, you can deploy the UA solution as quickly as an Agent Builder solution. More over, UA works pretty reliably.
4) If your monitoring requirements needs advanced summarization capabilities, then UA provides more advanced features than agent builder. Again, some of these tasks can be done using by modifying the itm_agent_toolkit.xml file, but it is just that the Agent Builder capabilities in this regard is not fully known yet.
Hope this information is helpful in your next custom monitor deployment.
BIRT provides a very tight integration with Java/Java Script for customizing your reports. Most of the time, you embed your JavaScript within your reports and you have to modify each of the reports if something need to be changed.
However, there is a better way especially for some frequently used functions. You can put them in a .js file and re-use them across your reports. Here is how to do it.
1. Create a set of Java Script functions (such as for logging, modifying your queries, etc) and put it in a file. (e.g. GbsFunctions.js)
2. Save the file under somewhere under your resource directory, which can be set using Window->Preferences->Report Design->Resource->Resource folder within Eclipse. (e.g. resourcedir/GBS/scripts/GbsFunctions.js).
3. Now add the following XML tag to your XML source of the reports. Make sure that the XML you add doesn't result in malformed XML. (e.g. add just before <data-sources> tag). <list-property name="includeScripts"> <property>GBS/scripts/GbsFunctions.js</property> </list-property>
4. Now, you can access the functions listed in GbsFunctions.js within BIRT.
If you plan to install ITNM 3.8 on AIX 6.1 as a non-root user and have it run as SUID root (as opposed to having the processes actually run as root, which is your other option after you go through the install), you will need to install at least GSKit 7.0.4.11.
The reason I'm posting this is that you may unwittingly encounter these issues:
1. If you've already installed an ITM 6.2.1 agent on your AIX, you've got GSKit installed, but it's the wrong version. The version included with ITM 6.2.1 is 7.0.3.18. This version will cause several of the ITNM processes to fail.
2. ITNM actually ships with the correct GSKit libraries, but it simply copies those libraries to your AIX machine underneath your ITNM install location. So you might think that you can just set your LIBPATH environment variable to use these GSKit libraries. HOWEVER, you would be wrong - when a process is running as SUID root on AIX, the ONLY directories it searches for necessary libraries are those that are HARD-CODED into the binary! You can see this library path for any binary with the command 'dump -Hv executable_file_name'.
3. If you choose to run ITNM as root (rather than SUID root), you won't have this problem because you can just set the LIBPATH environment variable appropriately.
Hope you read my previous articles on converting TDW Timestamps into "normal" timestamps in DB2 and in JavaScript (BIRT). Recently, I had to re-write this function in MySQL. In case you wonder, ITNM uses MySQL as the poll data collection database and again the same problem manifested.
The solution in MySQL is similar to that of DB2 based solution. Create a function in MySQL database and call that function in your SQL. But here is how to do it.
Bring up MySQL Administrator client and connect to the database in question.
Goto Catalogs in your left pane and select the appropriate database schema.
Goto Stored Procedure tab and click the "Create Stored Proc".
In the name field, give a Name for the function (e.g. TDW_TO_NORMAL_TS) and click "Create FUNCTION" button.
MySQL will create a skeleton function like below. CREATE FUNCTION `ncpolldata`.`TDW_TO_NORMAL_TS` () RETURNS INT BEGIN END
Replace the "CREATE FUNCTION" to look like below. CREATE FUNCTION `ncpolldata`.`TDW_TO_NORMAL_TS` (tdw_time bigint) RETURNS DATETIME DETERMINISTIC
Between the "BEGIN" and "END" blocks, paste the following code. BEGIN Declare normal_time datetime; Declare tdw_trunc bigint; Set tdw_trunc = substr(tdw_time,2,12); Set normal_time = DATE_FORMAT(tdw_trunc, '%y%m%d%H%i%s'); return(normal_time); END
That's it. Click on the "Execute SQL" button to save the newly created function.
Call the function in your SQL Statements like below. SELECT TDW_TO_NORMAL_TS(poll_time) from KNP_POLL_DATA_COLLECTION LIMIT 100
I was just trying to create a simple report in BIRT using a flat file and got this error when trying to preview the data:
A BIRT exception occurred. Plug-in Provider:Eclipse.org Plug-in Name:BIRT Data Engine Plug-in ID:org.eclipse.birt.data Version:2.2.2.r22x_v20071212 Error Code:odaconsumer.CannotPrepareStatement Error Message:Failed to prepare the following query for the data set type org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.oda.flatfile.dataSet. [select "COLUMN_1", "COLUMN_2", "COLUMN_3" from mydata.txt : {}] Invalid table name:mydata.txt
The problem turns out to be the location of my stupid file. I had placed it in C:\ and BIRT apparently doesn't like that at all. So I moved the file to a folder named C:\deleteme, then updated my Data Source and Data Set, and then all was well.
The two large differences between SNMPv3 and SNMPv2 (or v1, for that matter), are that:
1. it supports authentication via userid and password., and 2. it supports encryption
v1 and v2 don't support either of these. Their only means of authentication is via a "community string", which is basically like a password, but since it's always transferred over the network in the clear, it's not considered very secure.
The WRT component of ITCAM for Transactions can identify a number of transactions that, when processed by the AMC component, will create Managed System names that WILL corrupt your EIB (and you can't delete them). To guard against this, you should create the following filters (in the Application Configuration Tool):
Basically, Managed Systems should only have characters that match this regular expression: [-A-Za-z0-9_:.] (that's a literal "period"). If a Managed System has characters NOT in that expression, then 'tacmd cleanms' will fail. 'gbscmd clearoffline' can be used, and it will succeed in at least submitting the request, but your TEMS will soon crash.
"Restore from a backup (the /opt/IBM/ITM/tables directory)" is the best option, but that's not always an option. These steps will remove ALL data in the TEMS, HOWEVER, you don't have to reinstall all of the application support; you need to re-apply it, but you don't need to reinstall it. Here are the steps that I went through with ITM 6.2.1 IF2 on 32-bit Red Hat:
1. stop the TEMS and all other agents on the box. 2. remove the /opt/IBM/ITM/tables/YOUR_TEMS_NAME directory 3. uninstall the TEMS component by running /opt/IBM/ITM/bin/uninstall.sh and only select the TEMS component. 4. run the install from the CD/DVD and choose to install the TEMS 5. The install will create a directory named /opt/IBM/ITM/todata. Rename this directory to "YOUR_TEMS_NAME". 6. run 'itmcmd -S -t YOUR_TEMS_NAME ms' to configure the TEMS 7. restart the TeMS and all other agents 8. open up the "Manage Tivoli Monitoring Services" and add all application support (it's all still installed; you just need to re-apply it to the TEMS)
IMO, the reinstall (or re-configure) should recreate the /opt/IBM/ITM/tables/YOUR_TEMS_NAME directory, but it doesn't (it creates the directory, but not the EIB files). So the whole trick is copying the "todata" folder.
If you are using TEPS Java Webstart client, does it matter which JRE TEPS uses? You should be able to bring up the portal using either one, but in my experience IBM JRE works better for TEPS. With Sun JRE version 1.6.0.11, you may encounter issues with popups. While the situation editor and other tools worked correctly, I had problem with deploying non-OS agents from portal. The popup prompting for agent selection didn't appear at all. I encountered similar issue with the Database agent configuration window. Switching to IBM JRE resolved the issue.
So, how do you switch to IBM JRE? Assuming you're using Windows XP, goto Control Panel->Java->Java Tab->Java Application Runtime Settings -> View. In the list of JREs, disable the Sun JREs and enable only IBM JRE. Can't find IBM JRE? You can add the IBM JRE, by clicking either Find or Add button.
The xLinux 64-bit libttapi.so file for Linux is not included with the ITCAMfWAS 6.1.0.4 data collector, so if you enable the TTAPI you'll get error messages about ttapi not found in java.library.path in your WebSphere SystemOut.log file. You can find this file buried a little deeply in the ITCAM for Transactions 7.1.0.2 Collector Agent installation image, however. It is buried in a file called sdk/examples/linux-64.tar.gz. Untar this file and you'll file lib/libttapi.so and lib/libkbb.so, both of which you'll need to copy to your DC/toolkit/lib/linux-ix64/ directory, then restart WebSphere.
One of the things that started to annoy me when using FireFox was that it seemed to only allow meI to do 6 downloads from a site at a time. I would click on 6 downloads and they would all start, but when I click the 7th link, it would sit there until one of the previous downloads completed.
So after some digging I found that this is actually quite simple.
1. In the address bar type about:config. This will list all the possible configuration options with FireFox. Be Careful! 2. In the filter type http.max 3. Double click on the network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server. This will display the Enter Integer Value dialog box. 4. Set the value to whatever new value you want. 5. Press OK to set the value
FireFox does not need to be restarted for this value to be set.
I would not set this number too high as it could slow down the overall speed of the download. I set it to 10 as there were 10 files I needed to download and I did not want to wait for one to finish before I started the next. I just wanted to click and walk away and come back in an hour :)
If you need to deploy the SQL Server agents, one of the items prompted for is the SQL Server Version. Most of us know the SQL Server by the year it was released as in SQL Server 2000, 2005 or 2008, but it is not the version number. (Version 2000 of SQL Server would be a rock-solid SQL Server, wouldn't it? :)).
Here is how to identify the version. Connect to the database server in question using Query Analyzer or SQL Server Management Studio and run the following SQL.
SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productversion')
The above query on SQL 2005 returned 9.00.3042.00 and your result may vary depending on the Service Pack level. Generally speaking, SQL Server 2000 is version 8.x, 2005 is version 9.x and 2008 is version 10.x.
I finally had a chance to try an install on RH 5 x64 since it is now supported in 4.3.1. I have done some installs on Windows and RH 4 i386 and had no issues, but the 64 bit threw a couple problems.
1. The setup_linux_intel.bin file did not handle x64. When you ran the script the message "OS not supported" would be displayed. To correct this problem look for the case statement "case `uname -m` in" under this there is not a check for a return of 64 bit. So I modified the case to look like:
case `uname -m` in *86) FRESH='setup_linux_intel.bin' ;; *64) FRESH='setup_linux_intel.bin' ;; *390*) FRESH='setup_linux_390.bin' ;; *) echo "OS not supported." exit 1 ;; esac
Once this was done, the installer would start.
2. With the setup_linux_intel.bin fixed I was now getting the message "The installer is unable to run in graphical mode. Try running the installer with the -console or -silent flag". I made sure I had all the prereqs according to the doc, but still nothing. So after some playing around, I found out that I was missing the libraries libXmu-1.0.2-5.i386.rpm and libXp-1.0.0-8.1.e15.i386.rpm. The 64bit versions were there but not the 32 bit.
Hopefully this saves someone some grief if they need to install on RH5 x64.
It happened to me and it could happen to you too! The first time Tivoli Portal Java Web Start Client is launched, it creates a desktop shortcut. When you use the shortcut for subsequent portal use, the TEPS Client "Unable to launch application" error.
The error may happen on systems where IBM Java is not installed as System JVM and the TEPS shortcut points to the javaws.exe under C:\Windows\System32 and NOT the one under C:\Program Files\IBM.
The simplest way to correct the issue is to create a new desktop shortcut manually to point to the javaws.exe under C:\Program Files\IBM\JAVA50\jre\bin. When you do that, Java Webstart will prompt you to select the application every time by bringing up "Application Cache Viewer".
To skip this step, simply copy the command line argument to the javaws.exe from old shortcut to the new shortcut. You can get the argument to javaws.exe by right clicking the old shortcut -> go to Properties->Target.
Here is an example SQL statement you can use in a query to pull real-time NT Logical Disk data from all of the agents that have been added to the "MYWIN" Managed System List:
SELECT ORIGINNODE,TIMESTAMP,INSTCNAME,PCUSED FROM KNT.WTLOGCLDSK AT ("HUB_ITMSERVER") WHERE SYSTEM.PARMA("NODELIST", "MYWIN",5 )
In this statement, "HUB_ITMSERVER" is the label (not the hostname) of the TEMS the agents are connected to, "MYWIN" is the MSL name, and the "5" is simply the length of the string "MYWIN".
To find other available table names, the easiest way is to look in the agent application support SQL files on the TEMS.
ITM Event Synchronization (aka SUF, Situation Update Forwarder, SitForwarder) with Omnibus is mainly straightforward, but there are a couple of things to look out for.
Setting the logLevel
The 3 available logging levels in C:\IBM\SitForwarder\etc\situpdate.conf are:
low med verbose
Where the Logfile is Created
The default log file is in the Omnibus log directory, HOWEVER, the tracing log file is in:
C:\tmp\itmsynch\logs
This is where you'll see more information if you increase the logging level - NOT in the default log.
What to Look for in the Log
If event updates are correctly being sent back to ITM (for example, when you acknowledge an ITM event from the AEL in Omnibus), the following is an example of what you should see in the log file (with logLevel=verbose):
2009.06.03 16:24:09.703-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder formatEvent IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP Entry, parm 1 = op=a,sn=NT_Invalid_Logon_Attempt,sh=webappprod,sv=itmserver.gulfsoft.com:,et=,di=SYSTEM
2009.06.03 16:24:09.703-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder formatEvent IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP Number of tokens is 6
2009.06.03 16:24:09.703-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder formatEvent IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP Display item token is SYSTEM
2009.06.03 16:24:09.703-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder formatEvent IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP SOAP string: sysadminxxxxxNT_Invalid_Logon_Attemptwebappprod
2009.06.03 16:24:09.703-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder formatEvent IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP Exit, return value = sysadminxxxxxNT_Invalid_Logon_Attemptwebappprod
2009.06.03 16:24:09.703-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder getServerUrlConnection IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP Entry, parm 1 = op=a,sn=NT_Invalid_Logon_Attempt,sh=webappprod,sv=itmserver.gulfsoft.com:,et=,di=SYSTEM
2009.06.03 16:24:09.703-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder getServerUrlConnection IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP Default port 3661 is being used by Web Services.
2009.06.03 16:24:09.703-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder sendEvent IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP Entry
Additionally, you should have no lines data in the C:\IBM\SitForwarder\persistence\situpdate_* file.
What it Looks like When Things are Wrong
In my case, I was acknowledging an event that was sent from ITM to Omnibus BEFORE I got the SUF configured, so the correct EIF Probe rules were not in place. These lines were in the persistence file:
Here's an example of the lines in the log file when I had this problem:
2009.06.03 16:22:49.376-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder formatEvent IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP SOAP string: sysadminxxxxxNT_Invalid_Logon_Attemptwebappprod
2009.06.03 16:22:49.376-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder pollCacheFile IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP Exception while processing cache file: null
2009.06.03 16:22:49.376-04:00 com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder pollCacheFile IBM Tivoli Monitoring TEC Synchronization netcoolserver.gulfsoft.com IP java.lang.NullPointerException at com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder.sendEvent(Unknown Source) at com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder.pollCacheFile(Unknown Source) at com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder.poll(Unknown Source) at com.tivoli.candlenet.SituationUpdateForwarder.main(Unknown Source) at com.tivoli.candlenet.W32Service$SUFRunnable.run(Unknown Source) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:568)
Notice that there are no lines stating that the event is being sent.
BIRT Report library is a place where you can store report elements such as Datasource information, datasets, parameters and styles and use them across multiple reports. When you change the information in the libraries, the changes are automatically reflected in the reports.
Why Libraries are so useful?
Say for example, you have about 10 reports using information from Tivoli data warehouse and suddenly the database password changes. Without the library, you will need to update the userid/password in the datasources defined in the 10 reports. Instead if you created the datasource at the library and shared it across the 10 reports, then you just need to update the userid/password in the library. Which one do you like?
How can I create and use libraries?
In BIRT, you can create a library using File->New->Library. Creating any report component in library is the same as creating them in a normal report design. To use the library, goto your report design file, goto library explorer and right click the newly created .rptlibrary file and select Use Library. This option will be available only if the library is not already in use (See the picture above).
Now, all the resoures created in the library are available for your report design. Just drag and drop necessary elements from library explorer to your data explorer.
How do I create a same look-and-feel for all my reports?
Create a master page in the library and share it across your reports. Also define styles in the library using your own custom theme and use the theme across your reports. To use the library master page in your reports, go to the XML Source for the report design. Look for the line containing something like the following.
Assuming your library master page is named GBSMasterPage and your library is named GBS, replace the above line with the following.
simple-master-page name="Simple MasterPage" id="2" extends="GBS.GBSMasterPage" Now, your report design uses the same look-and-feel defined in the library.
I hope this article gives you enough information to get started on the BIRT report libraries. If you have any questions, please feel free to post your comments.
I get a few people that I know asking about backup solutions for home, so I thought I would put document what I use and works well for me.
What I needed was a solution that would allow for the following: 1. backup multiple iterations 2. allow for centralized backup for multiple computers 3. simple to use (I am a simple person)
Now I know you all are going, "of course you went with a Tivoli product", but I downloaded the trial and was quite pleased with how it worked and did the tasks I needed it to do.
Here are some screen shots
This is the Start page for TCDP. I have meshed together the flyouts for the My Files, Local Storage and Remote Storage to show some more info.
The General Settings (Accessed from My Files flyout > Settings) allow for some configuration options such as where to backup locally, how many iterations and how much space to use.
In the Files to Protect settings, you can set the files/directories to include and exclude.
Email protection will allow for some various email programs for backup.
Remote Storage allows for TCDP to backup files to a remote storage device. In my case it is the DLINK NAS as listed above.
Advanced Settings allow further configuration to tune TCDP
As files are modified, TCDP will back them up locally and remotely (if available). Below is the Report feature that shows the image files I used for this blog being backed up. The popup in the screen occurs when you click on the Date/Time for the row that you want to see to provide more detail.
I really have not noticed any performance impact, but you also have to look at what is being backed up. I made sure to exclude any of the VMWare extensions and a few others that I know I do not want backed up. This is just like setting exclusions for Antivirus software :)
The restore is also quite simple and will allow for selection either from the local or remote source. When restoring, you have the option of restoring to the original location or to a new location. I would put screen shots for the restore steps, but this one is getting long enough already.
The backup and restore does work, and works well, I tested it out recently after someone had their drive crash with all their pictures. I wanted to make sure this worked!
Now the only issue I have with it is that there is not currently a linux client, which may or may not be a problem for you. It is not a big deal for me as anything linux I have does not really require a backup solution.
