Presented at the 2013 IBM Pulse conference, this presentation explores how our clients achieved a quick time to value, and vastly simplified administration, when deploying ITCAM to monitor their middleware infrastructure by taking a non-standard approach. Learn how we simplified the often complex management aspects, and reduced implementation time, by leveraging the APM UI; eliminating the need for Managed System Lists (MSLs) by leveraging the little know Situation Groups; and how they addressed the unique challenges of monitoring a pooled WebSphere Application Server infrastructure.
2. Agenda
IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) Overview
Typical Situation Management Challenges
Managed System Lists (MSLs)
Situation Management
Streamlined Situation Strategy
No Dependency on MSLs
Easily Determine What is Running Where
Simple to Manage One-off Situations
TEP vs. APM UI for Operators/Users
Workspaces vs. Dashboards
User/Group Authorizations
Summary/Q&A
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3. ITM Overview
Situations
Formula (what to check)
Sampling Interval (how often to check)
Distribution (where to check)
Managed System Lists
Static grouping of Managed Systems and/or MSLs
Used to distribute Situations
Each Agent Type on a system has it’s own Managed System Name
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4. Typical Situation Management Challenges
Situation/MSL Management
No simple way to add a new Managed System to a set of standard
Situations
• Requires editing each of the MSLs to which these standard Situations are
distributed to
No simple way to add a new standard Situation and distribute it to
all existing Managed Systems
• Requires manually defining the Distribution
No simple way to manage one-off Situations for a single Managed
System
• Does not allow for the use of a MSL, becomes very tedious
No simple way to know where a specific Situation is distributed to
when using MSLs
No simple way to know which Situations are distributed to a specific
Managed System
Number of MSLs required becomes cumbersome to manage
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5. Streamlined Situation Strategy
Leverage Situation Groups (little-known feature)
Create different Situation Groups for a set of standard Situations and
one-off Situations
Assign Situations as Members
• Situations do not have to be monitored by the same Agent Type
Assign Managed Systems for Distribution
• No dependency on MSLs
• Managed Systems do not have to be the same Agent Type
Each Situation is only monitored by their related Agent
• No unnecessary monitoring
Easily determine where a Situation is distributed to
• No need to determine which Managed Systems belong to specific MSLs
Easily determine which Situations are distributed to a specific
Managed System
• No need to open each Situation in the Editor and note only the Situations
which are distributed to the specified Managed System
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6.
7. TEP vs. APM UI for Operators/Users
TEP Workspace Usage Challenges
Multitude of Workspaces under many different locations
• Challenging to navigate
Role-based data filtering
• Create a new Query for every View in their Workspace (pre-filtering)
• Add filters to every View in their Workspace (post-filtering)
Cluttered Look-and-Feel
• UI can be distracting rather than empowering
APM UI Advantages
Meaningful arrangement of Dashboards
• Simple yet powerful drill-down navigational flow
True Role-based data filtering
• Assign applications to a role > assign role to an LDAP user/group
Clean Look-and-Feel
• Finally a sexy UI that is focused on only viewing data (not editing)
• Simple to navigate via tablet or smartphone
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8.
9. Summary/Q&A
Quick Time-to-Value by leveraging Situation Groups
Straightforward grouping of Situations
• More manageable method of scanning for Situations of consequence
• Transparent process of identifying where a Situation is running
Assign a single Distribution list for all standard Situations
• Transparent process of identifying what Situations are running where
Practical manner to maintain one-off Situations
• Provides flexibility to confine all one-off Situations to a single group
Quick Time-to-Value by leveraging the APM UI
Operators/Users can start viewing relevant data from day-1
True Role-based access via LDAP groups
Focused dashboards which make the KPIs the center of attention
Questions?
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