Configuring Metric Data Collection

To configure metric data collection for IBM Tivoli, perform the following steps:

1. Configure IBM Tivoli.
2. Configure Operations Connector for IBM Tivoli.
3. Optionally, configure metric filtering to optimize the amount of data which is being collected.

Configuring IBM Tivoli for Metric Collection

Before you can collect metric data, make sure that the following prerequisites are met.

1. Enable the dashboard data provider.

   1. On your ITM system open Manage Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Services.
   2. Right click Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server and select Reconfigure.
   3. The TEP Server Configuration window opens. Click OK to continue.
   4. Make sure that Enable the dashboard data provider is selected. Click OK.
   5. You are asked if you wish to reconfigure the warehouse connection information. Select No.
   6. Click OK to finish the configuration.

   To verify if your data access works:

   1. Start the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server and open the following link:

      http://<hostname>:15210/ITMRESTProvider/test.html

   2. When you click GET, you should be asked for your user name and password. If you receive data about configured hubs, the connection is working correctly. The configuration can take some time so if you do not get any data with the first GET request, wait for a few minutes and try again.

2. Make sure data is saved to the data warehouse.

   The metric integration collects only data which is stored inside the Tivoli Data Warehouse (History Collection). If you do not configure metric collection to the data warehouse, the metric collector will not be able to collect any data.

   If History Collection is not enabled, enable it with the following steps:

   1. On your ITM system, open the Tivoli Enterprise Portal application. Click the History Collection Configuration button in the top toolbar.
   2. Scroll to the bottom, right-click the Windows OS agent type and click Create New Collection Settings.

   3. Enter a name and a description and select the Attribute Group you wish to collect. For example, to collect information about the memory usage on your windows server select attribute group “Memory”.

      Click OK.

   4. Set the desired Collection Interval and Warehouse Interval and assign the system on which you wish to collect data in the Distribution tab.

Configuring Operations Connector for IBM Tivoli

To integrate IBM Tivoli metric data into OMi, perform the following steps on your Operations Connector host:

1. Run the following commands to set the username and password:

   genintcrypt --set tivoli-username

   genintcrypt --set tivoli-password

   The command is located in <OvInstallDir>/bin/win64 (Windows) or <OvInstallDir>/bin64/ (Linux).

2. Change the current directory to <OvDataDir>/conf/HPBsmIntTivoli/genint and open the metric integration configuration file in a plain text editor.

3. In the configuration file, replace the values in quotation marks in the lines of the following options:

   • tivoli-hostname: Enter the host name from which the integration will collect data.

4. Optionally, review the preconfigured values of basic configuration options and adjust them as needed. Add and configure advanced options if necessary. For descriptions of basic and advanced options, see Configuration Options.

5. Save your changes.

6. Review the policy to ensure its settings are proper for your OpsCx for IBM Tivoli configuration.

7. To start the metric integration service, run the following command:

   ovc -start tivolim

   Startup of the service initiates metric data collection from IBM Tivoli and forwarding of the events to OMi.

Verify your connection settings by checking the contents of the directory for persistency data files on the Operations Connector host. The path of the directory is defined by the persistency-dir option in the event integration configuration file. If the directory is empty or its contents do not appear to be updated, check the corresponding OpsCx for IBM Tivoli log file. For details, see Product Log Files.

If you deactivate the policy for IBM Tivoli metric data, data continues to be collected while the policy remains inactive after the deactivation. The processing and forwarding of accumulated metric data resumes when you reactivate the policy.

Configuring Metric Filtering

By using metric filtering, you can optimize the amount of data which is being collected from the ITM server. You can perform filtering for each metric group on a specific agent type and also limit it to a defined collection of hosts on each agent type.

The filter files consist of two files per agent type. There are host filtering files which end with .hosts.txt and metric filtering files which end with .metrics.txt.

For a bigger configuration with multiple hubs these files can also be duplicated, so you have different collection filters depending on the hub the information is being collected from.

Host files

You can configure the hosts files in two different ways:

• If for a specific agent the .hosts.txt file is empty, all hosts will be collected from that agent type.
• If hosts are specified (one per line) with a long or short hostname, then the metrics from that agent type will only be collected for the specified hosts.

The hosts file can also contain comments which must start with a double slash (//), everything written behind the double slash will be ignored by the integration.

Examples:

host
host.example.com
host.example.com//comment

Metric files

The .metrics.txt files have the following syntax:

metric_group:metric,metric, ...//comment or list of other available metrics in this group  

For example:

MetricGroup.NTMEMORY:AVAILBTMEM,AVAILPCT,PAGESSEC//MEMUPCT This is a comment 

To add metrics to the collection, simply add them in front of the comment delimiter (//), separate them with a comma and restart the collection process by running ovc -restart tivolim.

Example:

To add MEMUPCT to the collection

MetricGroup.NTMEMORY:AVAILBTMEM,AVAILPCT,PAGESSEC//MEMUPCT This is a comment

add it in front of the comment:

MetricGroup.NTMEMORY:AVAILBTMEM,AVAILPCT,PAGESSEC,MEMUPCT//This is a comment

After you restart the collection, it will also collect MEMUPCT from ITM.

Multiple Hubs

If your ITM server consists of multiple hubs on the same server, you can create specific filters for each hub.

This is done by copying the filter files and replacing the text default in the name with a short hostname of the hub.

If you specify a hub for one filter file, the default filtering is not used on any agent type of that hub. Therefore, you have to create filter files for all agent types that you wish to collect from.

Example:

If one of your hubs is hub_hostname.example.com and you wish to create specific filter files for that hub you can copy all the filter files and create them so they look like this:

hub_hostname.*.metrics.txt
hub_hostname.*.hosts.txt

This will make sure that for a specified hub only the specified filtering files will be used.

Metric Filter Tool

The Metric Filter Tool is a helper tool with which you can create a list of hostnames and metric groups used for metric filtering. By default, only a list of hostnames is generated. To also generate a list of metric groups, enable the option create-metric-classes-list in the configuration file.

The tool is located in %OvDataDir%\installation\HPBsmIntTivoli\utils (on Windows) or /opt/OV/bin/installation/HPBsmIntTivoli/utils (on Linux) and consists of a configuration file (metric_collection_tool.conf) and an executable script (metric_collection_tool).

Make sure to store the tivoli-username and tivoli-password with the genintcrypt command before you run the tool.

Open the configuration file and set the host name with the option tivoli-hostname. If you wish to collect only the hostnames for the default agent that comes with the integration, close the file and start the collection running the metric_collection_tool.

On Windows systems, it is recommended that you run the tool in a command prompt that is run with Administrator privileges. This this will enable you to see the output of the script.

Once the script finishes the collection, the output files are saved in the location defined in the configuration file with the option tivoli-tools-output-folder. The default location is %OvDataDir%\datafiles\HPBsmIntTivoli\MetricFilterToolOutput (on Windows) and /var/opt/OV/datafiles/HPBsmIntTivoli/MetricFilterToolOutput (on Linux).

Now you can use the saved files to create new metric filtering files.