ITCAM for Transactions version 7.4: how to migrate from CRT to Tx Reporter
ITCAM for Transaction version 7.4 no longer includes the Client Response Time Agent (CRT or ITM product code T4). However most of the metrics reported by this agent can already be found in the Transaction Reporter agent and more.
This is a guide to assist users to migrate their middleware monitored by the CRT agent to Transaction Collector and Reporter.
Background:
ITCAM for Transactions suite includes Internet Response Time (ISM), Response Time and Transaction Tracking products. The CRT agent is part of the Response Time product. The Transaction Collector and Reporter is part of Transaction Tracking.
The CRT agent is used to track Application Response Management ( ARM ) instrumented applications.
ARM instrumented applications work by loading in the monitoring agent's ARM libraries, that will handle the ARM API calls, and sends it to the agent. In this case the ITCAM Transaction's ARM library.
How the ARM instrumented application locates the ARM library is dependent on the application and we recommend you review the product manual. The common scenarios are:
- Hardcoded to a particular directory
- Search the system's dynamic library environment variable. i.e LIBPATH for AIX, LD_LIBRARY_PATH for other Unix, and PATH variable for Windows.
- In a configuration file. for example IHS/Apache webserver, it's the envvar file.
The ARM library in Transaction 7.4, for now, supports simultaneously CRT and Transaction Reporter. Using this feature, this guide will show how users can simultaneously have their ARM application being monitored both with v7.3 CRT, and with v7.4 Transaction Reporter, until they are comfortable with using Transaction Reporter and uninstall CRT from their environment.
We will demonstrate an example by using the sample arm4test tool installed in CRT on AIX platform, as guide which you can adopt for your application and platform.
Assumption:
- Familiar with ITM's concept of TEMS and TEPS and configuring agent for ITM.
- User already has their ARM application configured and monitored by CRT and data is showing up the ITM TEP workspace.
1) Install the 7.4 Transaction Collector And Transaction Reporter agents into the same directory where CRT agent is installed. Default is /opt/IBM/ITM (Unix) and c:\ibm\itm (Windows)
2) Configure the Transaction Collector and Transaction Reporter agents to connect to the same ITM TEMS as CRT agent, using commands like:
/opt/IBM/ITM/bin/itmcmd config -A tu
/opt/IBM/ITM/bin/itmcmd config -A to
3) Start the Transaction Collector and Transaction Reporter:
/opt/IBM/ITM/bin/itmcmd agent start tu to
4) On the host running ITM TEPS, install the Transactions Tracking support files and reconfigure the TEPS for the server to update the GUI.
5) After that, the TEP Client UI will show the Transaction's Tracking workspaces like shown here
6) Now we need to configure the ARM application to use the 7.4 ARM libraries.
First determine if the ARM application is 32bit or 64bit binary. This is important as 32bit app can't load 64bit libraries and vice versa. On Unix, we use the 'file' command. For example, the following shows 'arm4test' is 64bit.
file /opt/IBM/ITM/aix526/t4/bin/arm4test
/opt/IBM/ITM/aix526/t4/bin/arm4test: 64-bit XCOFF executable or object module not stripped
Note:
The location of the TT ARM libraries are:
- 32bit ARM libraries in /opt/IBM/ITM/<architect code>/tu/tusupport/32/
- 64bit ARM libraries in /opt/IBM/ITM/<architect code>/tu/tusupport/64/
Where architect code is depending on the Unix operating system.
7) Configure the ARM applications to use the 7.4 TT ARM libraries. Some application get's this path from it's configuration file whilst others read environment variables from the Unix shell. Please consult your application's manual for this information. A restart of the ARM application maybe needed for it to take effect. For this arm4test application it uses the Unix shell environment variable.
For our 64bit arm4test application on AIX we set:
export LIBPATH=/opt/IBM/ITM/aix536/tu/tusupport/64
Now simply exercise the ARM application.
/opt/IBM/ITM/aix526/t4/bin/arm4test /an="MySampleApp" /tn=txn1 /ap
8) In the TEP's GUI CRT workspace, you'll see the ARM application like below
9) At the same time, the ARM library would have sent data to the Transaction Collector. The Transaction Collector workspace will show an increase in aggregate count of one like below
10) Wait about 5 minutes for the Transaction Reporter to gather and calculate aggregates, and it should appear in Transaction Reporter workspace like below (this is at Application level)
11) And at the Transactions level, we see the transaction name.
You will notice that many of metrics in the CRT workspace also shows up in the Transaction Reporter workspace. For example Percent Available, Percent Slow, Average Response time (This is Total Time in Transaction Reporter).
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