Parsing the Download Manager file

When using the Download Director from IBM, a file is created called dlmgr.pro. This file is created in the directory that you download your files to. I have often found it annoying with the naming convention of files that I download to determine what a file is after I have downloaded it and left it for a while. I found that the dlmgr.pro file does contain pretty much all the info needed to identify the file information. So I thought I would create a quick perl script to parse the file. It is not the prettiest script, but it does what I need.

The script requires the path and file name to the dlmgr.pro file as an argument, and then creates a file called dlmgr.csv in the current directory.

Click here to download

TPAP/ISMP/CCMDB/Maximo/TAMIT/etc. info

Tivoli is now starting to roll out solutions based on Maximo, so I figured an overview, explanation of the names of things and list of resources would be helpful.

Overview

IBM Tivoli CCMDB 7.1 was the first product introduced by Tivoli based on the newly-revised Maximo platform. is now up to version 7.1.1, and there are now additional Maximo 7.1-based applications available, such as IBM Tivoli Asset Management for IT 7.1, IBM Maximo Asset Management 7.1, Tivoli Business Continuity Process Manager 7.1.0, IBM Tivoli Release Process Manager 7.1.1 and Tivoli Service Request Manager 7.1. (Notice how the naming isn't quite standardized; I imagine they will correct this in the future). All of these products are fundamentally based on the same core software and database, which was previously known as the "Maximo base software". This base software is now known by a couple of names, depending on which documentation you're viewing: Tivoli Process Automation Platform (TPAP) or IBM Service Management Platform (ISMP or SMP)

(I'll use TPAP as my acronym of choice from here on, because it seems to be used in the latest redbooks). TPAP generally consists of the supporting middleware (WAS 6.2, Tivoli Directory Server 6.1, ITUP Composer, DB2 9.2, Rational Agent Controller 7.0, IBM HTTP Server and others), the database schema, and some WebSphere-based applications. I say generally because you do have options to use non-IBM middleware, and other software may end up being used in your implementation.

TPAP is NOT available as a standalone product, similar to the way that Tivoli Framework was/is not available as a standalone product. By itself, TPAP does "provide you with the capability" to do several things, but its usefulness really comes through when there are additional components bundled with it. This is the case with all of the products listed above - they are shipped as TPAP plus something. Exactly what that "something" is depends on the product. If you purchase more than one of the above products, then you will only install TPAP once, then you will use product installer to add additional components on top of what you already have installed.

Example: CCMDB

As one example, when you install CCMDB, you get TPAP plus:

Change Process Manager - This consists of additional applications, roles, workflows, job plans, tools, reports and management controls to support the ITIL-defined Change process.

Configuration Process Manager - This consists of additional applications, roles, workflows, job plans, tools, reports and management controls to support the ITIL-defined Configuration Management process.

TADDM - A standalone application that is used to discover configuration items and their relationships, and this data is uploaded to the TPAP database through the IBM Tivoli Integration Composer.

Example: TAMIT

As another, slightly different example, when you install Tivoli Asset Manager for IT, you get TPAP plus:

customized TPAP-based applications, roles, workflows, job plans, tools, reports and management controls to support all of the functions surrounding the management of IT Assets (such as Contract Management, Procurement and Financial Management).


Tivoli License Compliance Manager - A standalone application that is used to gather inventory/asset information, which is then fed into the TPAP database using the IBM Tivoli Integration Composer.

Tivoli License Compliance Manager for z/OS - similar to above, for z/OS.

Installing Multiple Products

As you install additional products, you will see additional options in the Go To menu of the TPAP interface. This interface is accessible by pointing your browser to http://your_server/maximo. A large issue currently is finding documentation on the integration of the functions provided when you have multiple products installed. I imagine IBM will publish some documentation on this as the product suite matures, and I plan to add blog entries as I develop more generic solutions/opinions for the integration issues from the implementations we're currently performing. A good place to check for information from IBM is at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/cgi-bin/searchsite.cgi?query=maximo.

Etc.

There are some other process managers listed in Tivoli's documentation, but note that ONLY those process managers at version 7.1 or above are actually part of the current TPAP. The others are generally version 1.1, which are note completely outdated.

You will see the ISMP Toolbox referenced in several places, and that can be found on OPAL here. It's really a great collection of documentation related to IBM's service management strategy.

Thanks to everyone who came by our booth at Pulse

The conference was much larger than it has been in years past, and we got a chance to visit with old friends and to make some new ones. And for everyone who didn't get to go, here's a picture of us with our booth.

From left to right: Tony, Venkat, IV, Martin, Frank, Jason

Sample Emailing Script

Here is a simple custom emailing script using Perl. You need to install Mail::Sendmail module from CPAN to get it to work. You also need to change the values of $mailhost and $from field values.

Here is a typical usage of this program.

/itm_email.pl somebody@gulfsoft.com "Sample Subject" "Sample message body"


#!/usr/bin/perl

# Send emails via this platform independent module
use Mail::Sendmail;

main();

sub main {
my ($to, $subject, $message) = @ARGV;
send_email($to, $subject, $message);
}

# Sends email using Mail::Sendmail module
sub send_email {
my ($to, $subject, $message) = @_;
my ($mailhost, $from, %mail, @to);

$mailhost = "smtp.mydomain.com";
$from = "itm_alerts\@mydomain.com";

%mail = (
Smtp => $mailhost,
From => $from,
To => $to,
Subject => $subject,
Message => $message,
);
sendmail(%mail);
}


Hope you find it useful.

TCM 4.2.3 FP06

Not sure how I missed this but FP06 is now out (since March 28).

Some interesting features:

1. Windows 2008 is supported as an Endpoint
2. AIX 6.1 is supported as an Endpoint
3. WSUS 3.0 support

There are also some other changes that you can read further about at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/tivoli_support/patches/patches_4.2.3/4.2.3-TIV-TCM-FP0006/4.2.3-TIV-TCM-FP0006.README

Tivoli System Automation for Multiplatforms Overview

TSAM is not a new product, but it's definitely one that is becoming more popular these days, especially with the introduction of the Balanced Data Warehouse, which relies on its capabilities. So I thought a general overview might be useful. This high-level overview doesn't go into the gory details, as those are very well documented in the product documentation and in several redbooks and redpieces (links at the end of this post). Rather, this overview is meant to be a little more explanatory than the existing marketing material.

TSAM competes directly with Veritas Cluster Services (VCS). The purpose of both products is the same: to provide high availability to resources. A large portion of the functionality of TSAM is provided by Reliable Scalable Cluster Technology (RSCT) component, which is included as part of AIX, and is available for Windows, Red Hat and SuSE Linux. RSCT, along with its prerequisites (such as General Purpose File System), provides the mechanisms that allow you to define resources and have them monitored. There is no graphical interface for the configuration of RSCT or TSAM, so all of the configuration must be done from the command line.

RSCT provides the ability to "harvest" resources in your environment, so it will find and identify all of your network adapters, disks, filesystems, etc. You don't have to define *those* components. RSCT also provides the *ability* to define arbitrary logical resources and the *ability* to define automations to react to changes in the environment. RSCT also allows you to group resources into Resource Groups, which allow you to manage multiple resources as a single logical entity. RSCT also allows you to define Relationships between resources, allowing you to specify, for example, that these two filesystems must ALWAYS be available on the same node. (Update: these features are actually provided by TSAM) RSCT also allows you to define actions that should be taken when different resource change states. However, if you wanted to leverage RSCT directly, you would have to do a LOT of detailed customization for each component that you want actually automate to make highly available.

This is where TSAM fits in to make life easier for you. You've still got a good bit of customization to do, but it's a LOT less that you would otherwise have to do with the base RSCT. TSAM sits on top of RSCT and provides the mechanism that actually allows you to define arbitrary resources, resource groups and relationships, and based on your configuration (or "policy"), TSAM configures all of the automation necessary to make your resources highly available among the nodes in a cluster.

Specifically, TSAM allows you define resources of type "IBM.Application" (these are your applications) for which you configure Start, Stop, and Monitor commands. TSAM also provides the feature that automates the reflex actions required when your resources change state (for example, when an application goes Offline). With the introduction of these features (on top of RSCT as the base technology), TSAM fully automates the high availability of your applications based upon your configuration.

Much (certainly not all) of TSAM is scripts that are wrappers for the underlying RSCT commands. So when debugging TSAM, you'll primarily use RSCT commands. This is important to note, since it means that you must be intimately familiar with RSCT to be able to successfully deploy and manage TSAM. And TSAM makes a point of not replicating the RSCT documentation, so many of the commands you'll use to configure TSAM are documented in the RSCT manuals.

TSAM also provides an Operations Console, which is implemented as a WebSphere application that plugs into the WebSphere-based Integrated Solutions Console. This is really JUST an Operations Console, in that it ONLY allows operator-level management of your environment (e.g. bring an application online or offline, view information). This console provides you with NO configuration capabilities. You need to create all of your Resources, Resource Groups, Relationships, etc. from the command line. But it's not all painful. TSAM also provides the capability to export your "Automation Policy" (essentially, your entire configuration) to an XML file, and also to import from the same file. So this allows IBM and others to provide sample automation XML files that you can download, modify for your environment, and add to your existing policy.

All of the above is provided by the TSAM Base Automation Component. TSAM also provides an End to End (E2E) Automation Adapter, which allows you to manage and automate actions to be performed on resources across multiple clusters. This E2E component supports not only TSAM clusters, but also HACMP, Linux clusters, and even VCS clusters on Solaris.

TSAM also provides a TEC EIF publisher so you can send events to TEC (or the Omnibus EIF Probe) to allow you to monitor the status of your TSAM environment.

Links:

Lots of Documentation and Downloads:
http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/sys-auto-linux/downloads.html

Version 2.1 Redbook:
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247117.pdf

Main Product Page:
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/sys-auto-multi/index.html

Installing BIRT on Windows Vista?

Well, installing BIRT is a no-brainer.  Just download the BIRT All-in-one from eclipse.org and unzip it. Very simple, right?  Prepare for a little bit of surprise when you do it in Windows Vista.   While trying to unzip on my Windows Vista computer, Vista displayed the following error. 

 

The source file name(s) are larger than is supported by the file system. Try moving to a location which has a shorter path name or try renaming to shorter name(s) before attempting this operation".

 

This error occurs due to 255 character limit on file names and C:\users\administrator\downloads\birt-report-designer-all-in-one-2_2_2.zip takes about 75 characters! This does not leave much room for the files within the zip causing the above error.

 

The solution is very simple. Rename the zip file to something like b.zip and move it up to the root directory (C:\).   Now try extracting it, it works like a charm. 

 

And, don’t ask me how the heck this worked in Windows XP and NOT in Vista? J