Preparing the agent for IBM Performance Management
If you want to use your agent with IBM® Performance Management, you need to prepare it using the Dashboard Setup wizard. This wizard configures the information that you can see in the summary and detail dashboards in Performance Management. It also sets the resource information that Performance Management requires for the agent.
Before you begin
- One or more data sets (attribute groups) that produce one row
of data. You can use the attributes from these data sets to populate
the summary dashboard. Important: To include any information in the summary dashboard, you need to provide it in a data set that produces a single row of data. Some data sources create data sets that produce multiple rows of data; for example, the process, Windows service, and command return code data sources place data into the single Availability data set, which produces multiple rows. In such cases, you need to create a filtered data set producing one row in order to include the data in a summary dashboard. For instructions, see Creating a filtered attribute group.
- A numeric attribute within one of these data sets that indicates the status of the monitored service (normal, warning, critical, or other similar status values). You must define status severity values for this attribute. For instructions about defining status severity values, see Specifying severity for an attribute used as a status indicator.
- If the port number on which the monitored application provides service is fixed, you must know the port. If the port might change between different deployments, one of the data sets that produce one row of data must contain a numeric field that indicates the port.
- If the agent can be installed on a host to monitor a server that
is running on a different host, a string attribute within one of these
data sets that indicates the server IP address. If the agent always
monitors the host where it is running, such an attribute is not required.Tip: If an attribute that provides the host name is available, you can create a derived attribute for the IP address by using the nameToIpAddress function. For information about creating a derived attribute, see Creating derived attributes. For information about the function, see ipAddressToName.
If the agent has subnodes, these requirements apply to each subnode for which you want to create a dashboard.
About this task
Performance Management monitors resources. A resource corresponds to instance of the agent, or sometimes a subnode. To define a resource, you need to supply a resource type name, server name, IP address, and port number that apply to the monitored service.
Performance Management displays a summary dashboard for every monitored resource. The summary dashboard includes a status indicator; with this indicator (usually green, yellow, or red for normal, warning, or critical status) the user can see the status of the resource at a glance. The same dashboard can contain a few other high-level health metrics.
On the summary dashboard, data is displayed as single items. Therefore, the data set with this data must produce only one row.
Optionally, a detail dashboard can be available for the agent. The user can click the summary dashboard to view the detail dashboard. The detail dashboard can display tables, so data from any data set can be used on this dashboard.
Procedure
Results
Click the summary dashboard for the agent to view the detail dashboard. By default, all information in the detail dashboard is displayed as tables.
You can use the Attribute Details tab to configure custom display of this information as tables and charts.