If a monitoring agent supports the self-describing capability, application support is installed on the agent system. If the monitoring agent includes the IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.2.3 or later agent framework or is installed on a system where the V6.2.3 or later agent framework is already installed, the monitoring servers and portal servers retrieve the application support files from the agent after agent startup and automatically apply the support. The infrastructure servers retrieve only the application support from a self-describing agent if they have not already applied the application support or if they have an earlier version of the application support.
The self-describing update occurs only once for each specific agent version. The update files are stored at the agent so that when the agent connects to a monitoring server, the monitoring server is automatically informed of the available application support update. If the self-describing function is enabled, the application support is retrieved from the agent, and the monitoring server support is updated.
If you installed your monitoring server on Linux or UNIX, the application support files for all base monitoring agents and other supported agents were automatically installed on the monitoring server. This process is different from installing the monitoring server on Windows, in that the Linux or UNIX installation always automatically installs the application support files for monitoring agents. Check the monitoring server and portal server to ensure that self-describing agent products are installed as expected.
The Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Automation Server component, provided in IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.3, contains the Open Services Lifecycle Collaboration Performance Monitoring (OSLC-PM) service provider. The Performance Monitoring server provider does not support the dynamic refresh of application support files. This means that the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Automation Server must be recycled when new application support is added to a system, regardless of whether the support was added through a self-describing agent, a regular installation, or a manual copy. However, if the monitoring agent does not provide OSLC support, then the automation server does not need to be recycled. Typically, agents before IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.3 do not provide OSLC support. See the agent documentation to determine whether an agent provides OSLC support.
If the self-describing agent feature installs application support on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server and the dashboard data provider component is enabled, the portal server must be restarted so that the dashboard data provider can pick up the new or changed application support and use to it retrieve data for monitoring dashboards.
Roadmap
Use the following roadmap to help you configure, enable, and use the self-describing feature. Because this roadmap is meant to provide a comprehensive overview, when applicable, links are provided to relevant sections in other Tivoli Monitoring guides.
Step | Description and information provided |
---|---|
1 | Two types of installation scenarios are available:
a pristine installation and an upgrade installation. See "Configuring self-describing agent seeding" in
the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Installation
and Setup Guide.
|
2 | Configure self-describing at the hub monitoring
server. See "Enabling self-describing agent capability at the
hub monitoring server" in
the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Installation
and Setup Guide,
for more information about this initial setup. This step includes
setting each hub monitoring server environment variable KMS_SDA=Y.
|
3 | Note: If you are not running IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.3,
skip this step. In IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.3, by default, the hub monitoring server blocks all self-describing agent installations (even if you turned on self-describing at the hub monitoring server with setting KMS_SDA=Y from step 2) until you issue one of the following commands:
This feature provides more control over what products and versions are installed on your monitoring server and portal server by the automatic self-describing agent process. After modifying your install options, you can use the tacmd listSdaInstallOptions command to display the current installation configurations for the hub monitoring server. For detailed information and tacmd commands, see "Managing your self-describing agent installations" and "Dynamically controlling the hub monitoring server self-describing agent capability" in the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Installation and Setup Guide.
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4 | Use the tacmd listappinstallrecs command
to monitor the application support installation records. Use the tacmd listSdaStatus command to monitor the self-describing enablement and suspend status for all monitoring servers in your environment. See Self-describing agent installation.
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5 | After a self-describing application update is
completed, you can see the following new agent data in the portal
client:
Application support is not automatically applied to the Tivoli Enterprise Portal clients.
An indicator is displayed on these clients
to tell the user that they need to recycle their client to apply new
or modified application support.
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6 | To begin preliminary diagnostics tests and troubleshoot
any problems, see "Monitoring agent troubleshooting" in
the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Troubleshooting
Guide.
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