This section describes the architectural overview and deployment procedures to enable the transaction tracking and J2EE monitoring capability of this solution.
Architectural Overview
Install the components to enable deep-dive transaction and J2EE tracking, which can help locate a root cause in an SAP J2EE-based application. Figure 15 shows these new
components in orange. Netweaver data collectors have been deployed to the SAP Netweaver servers. They are configured to communicate with the transaction and J2EE agents. IA
managing server is also deployed to collect data, provide services to the data collectors, and serves as a virtualization engine to view JavaTM Virtual Machine (JVM) and heap details in real-time.
Figure 15: Phase 4 – Transaction tracking and J2EE monitoring (Deep-dive)
Deep-dive Analytics Component Deployment
In this section, we summarize the basic installation for this capability. If applicable, special notes or nuances are explained.
Transaction Tracking Collector and Reporter agents
For this solution, the transaction-tracking agents are required in the transaction tracking deep-dive phase. However, they can be used in conjunction with web response time and youcan see the basic transaction, component, application, and server topologies.
For more details on product version and maintenance levels, refer to the Reporter/Collector entry in Appendix A.
For more details on installing and configuring the Reporter/Collector agents, refer to the Reporter/Collector entry in Appendix B.
Netweaver J2EE data collectors
The data collectors collect J2EE monitoring data from the SAP server. The data collectors are installed into the SAP server, so the cdata collectorsinstallation user must have the correct authorization. The installation step is simple because it simply lays down the files. IThe configuration of the cdata collector is discussed later in this paper.
For more details on product version and maintenance levels, refer to the Netweaver cdata collectorentry in Appendix A.
For more details on installing and configuring the Netweaver cdata collector, refer to the Netweaver Data Collectorentry in Appendix B.
J2EE agent
The J2EE agent works in conjunction with the data collector. The cdata collectorsends data to the agent and the agent forwards the data to the Tivoli Enterprise Management Server. The J2EE agent can be installed remotely on any computer system. For this solution test, it was installed on the same system as the AMC, RRT, and SAP agents.
For more details on product version and maintenance levels, refer to the J2EE agent entry in Appendix A.
For more details on installing and configuring the J2EE agent, refer to the J2EE agent entry in Appendix B.
Managing Server
The Netweaver data collector also works with the managing server . The cdata collectorcan be configured using the managing server, and the managing server can also display deep-dive J2EE data from the Netweaver server. The managing server requires the WebSphere server and a database like a DB2 database; you can reuse an existing WebSphere or DB2 server. In this solution test, the managing server and DB2 server were installed on the same computer system.
For more details on product version and maintenance levels, refer to the Managing Server entry in Appendix A.
For more details on installing and configuring the Managing Server,refer to the Managing Server entry in Appendix B.
Configuring Web Response Time monitoring
In this section, you configure the ITCAM for Transaction components to enable agentless transaction tracking of you applications. For additional details on agentless transaction
tracking, click the source link Agent-less Transaction Tracking in ITCAM for Transactions in Appendix C.
For agentless monitoring using WRT, you must have a single dedicated system for the WRT agent. It is highly recommended to use the agentless configuration because the WRT agent can be resource intensive and can negatively affect the server.
The following sections describe some of the prerequisite steps that you must complete to enable agentless tracking.
Port mirroring
The WRT agent must be installed on the same switch as the application server that is to be monitored. The switch must be configured for port mirroring. In Appendix C, click the What is Port Mirroring linkf or more details.
The TCP traffic that is generated by the robotic response time agent hitting the application server wis analyzed by the WRT agent as shown in Figure 16.
Computer System
Figure 16: Port Mirroring showing WRT and SAP Server as an example
Enabling the network monitoring protocol on the WRT system with Windows OS
For WRT agents running on a Windows OS, install the network-monitoring driver. To do this, complete the following steps:
1. Click Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs.
2. Select Add/Remove Windows Components.
3. Select Network Monitoring Protocol.
Remember: This is only necessary for WRT agents running on Windows OS.
Verifying WRT is capturing data in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server console
To verify that WRT is capturing data, log into the portal server console, and navigate to the Network view in the WRT workspaces. TFigure 17 shows a workspace containing WRT data.
Figure 17: Network workspaces in WRT
In these example workspaces, you see a summary of components, servers, and connections based like the HTTP server, DB2 server, and NetWeaver.
Recording and Playing Back SAP Transactions
In this section, record the transactions and configure the Robotic Response time agent playback to generate TCP traffic for agentless transaction tracking. For a thorough example that outlines in detail how to record transactions and distribute the transactions to the
playback agents, click the link Monitoring Applications with Rational Performance Tester and ITCAM for Response Time in Appendix C.
Recording the transactions
You will need to target important enterprise transactions that capture key performance and availability for your enterprise. To record transactions, use Rational Performance Tester (RPT ).
For Netweaver-based application, ensure that you can log into your web application before recording. For R/3 applications, ensure that the SAP client and SAP server are SAP GUI enabled. In our solution, we recorded HTTP and SAP GUI based transactions with 5 - 10subtransaction steps.
Setting up the playback agent
Using the Application Management Configuration editor in the Tivoli Enterprise Poprtal Server console, create an RRT profile for each script. Configure each subtransaction’s number of retries or response time thresholds if necessary, as shown in figure 18. Assign the playback to agents in the Distribution tab.
Figure 18: RRT profile in AMC editor
In this view, you can edit some of the transaction defaults such as minimum and maximum response time for overall transactionsand the subtransactions.
After the transactions are distributed to the agents, the each will begin to play back the transaction. In the next section, we look at defining clients, applications, and servers using the AMC.
Using the Application Management Console to Manage SAP Monitoring
In this section, we will define server components, applications, and clients. The Application Management Console agent support provides many server components and applications that are immediatley available to use. However, in this section we discuss how to create these definitions to help you monitor the enterprise using the APM UI.
Refer to the link to the ITCAM User’s Guide for more information on configuring the Application Management Console. The URL is referenced in Appendix C.
Define server components
To identify the server components containing your business applications, you can define them in the AMC under the components menu. For example, define the protocol for the server using an IP address and port. In this example, we’ve defined a Tivoli Service Request Manager server as shown in Figure 19:
Figure 19: Defining a HTTP protocol in the AMC
Define clients
To identify remote playback agents in different regions and networks, define them as client filters in the AMC. In the following example, a playback agent in Austin is defined by the IP address.
Figure 20: Defining a client for RRT agent in Austin
Configure the Applications
The AMC contains some default definitions for applications such as Siebel and SAP. Also, when you create a RRT playback profile, it automatically creates an application based on your profile as shown in the following example.
Figure 21: Applications in the AMC
Monitoring with the SAP Agent
This section describes the configuration and how the agent is used to monitor the SAP applications.
Refer to the elink to the ITCAM for Applications: SAP User’s Guide for more information and details. This URL is referenced in Appendix C.
Instance configuration
In our solution environment, a single agent remotely monitored four SAP server instances.
The following figures show examples of the instance configuration windows:
Figure 22: SAP agent configuration window 1
Figure 22: SAP agent configuration window 2
Version 7.1 of the SAP agent adds the ability to test the connection, which is extremely useful.
Troubleshooting
If you see that you are missing data in the workspaces, ensure that the dates, times, and time zones are synchronized between the agent, SAP servers, and Tivoli Monitoring servers.
If the dates, times, and time zones are synchronized and you still do not see some data in the workspaces, refer this tech-note which helped us during our testing:
Tech-note 1329545
Solution Manager for SAP and Process Integrator for SAP
ITCAM for Applications SAP V7.1 added new workspaces that show data from Solution Manager for SAP and Process Integrator for SAP. TFigure 23 shows the landscape and solution manager views for Solution Manager. There are more nodes available depending on what is in your Solution Manager:
Figure 23: Landscape Directory in the SAP agent
Figure 24 shows the views for Process Integrator for SAP. Again, more nodes can be displayed depending on what is available in your SAP instance.
Figure 24: Process Integrator in SAP agent
For more details on views, workspaces, and metrics, refer to the ITCAM for Applications: SAP User’s. This URL is referenced in Appendix C.
Using the Application Performance User Interface
In this section, we use the Application Performance Management (APM) UI to manage performance and availability of our business applications. We then configure and customize the APM UI to use the Tivoli Monitoring and ITCAM monitoring infrastructure and business application definitions covered in the previous sections.
Configuring the data provider
To connectthe APM UI to Tivoli Monitoring, the Common UI Rest Interface (CURI) must be enabled on the Tivoli Enterprise Management Server. In Tivoli Integrated Portal, create a connection as shown in Figure 25:
Figure 25: Connection Panel in TIP
The connection in the summary table should display WORKING as shown in Figure 26.
Figure 26: Connection Summary in TIP
Launch the APM UI, and click Settings to configure the data provider. The data provider is automatically displayed in the list of available providers.
Figure 27: Provider Configuration in APM UI
Next, let’s create an application with a dashboard.
Creating an SAP application from a template
Add a new application, create a name and description, select an application from the list, and select the SAP application template. For each node, select one or more resources as shown in tFigure 28:
Figure 28: Application Configuration Panel in APM UI
Repeat this for other applications that are running in your environment. Figure 29 shows a list of SAP applications in the Application Overview.
Figure 29: Application Summary Dashboard
Now, you can drill into each category and view the various dashboards. For instance, Figure 30 shows the resource dashboard for one of the SAP applications:
Figure 30: SAP Resource Dashboard
The APM UI provides basic application and resource monitoring. Now, we’ll take a look at deep-dive analytics to determine relationships and deeper root cause analysis.
Deep-Dive Analytics using Transaction Tracking
In this section, we describe how to configure and utilize the J2EE and transaction tracking features of this solution. We reference pertinent documentation and present important topics that might be crucial to this solution.
Figure 31 shows the deep-dive components where the arrows represent the data flow. We use this diagram as a reference in the following sections.
Figure 31: Deep-dive component data flow
Transaction Collector and Reporter
The reporter is the Tivoli Monitoring agent that provides the transaction topology workspaces in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal console. The reporter is configured to “listen” to collector
agents. You can configure more than one collector agent per reporter. The collector agent receives data from data collectors such as the Netweaver Data Collector and the Web Response Time agent as shown in Figure 32.
In our solution testing, we enabled transaction tracking for the WRT and pointed to the collector agent. The reporter agent was configured to listen to the collector agent.
After the collector and reporter agents collect transaction-tracking data, you can see some topology data from the Web Response Time agent:
Figure 32: Transaction Topology in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal console
For more details on configuring the transaction tracking components, refer to the ITCAM for Transactions User’s Guide. Use the URL link in Appendix C.
J2EE Agent
As shown in figure 33, the J2EE agent receives metric data from the Netweaver Data
Collector. Ensure that the workspaces in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal console contain data. If they do not, it is very likely the Data Collector is not configured or incorrectly configured to send data to the agent.
For more details on configuring the J2EE agent, refer to the ITCAM for Application Diagnostics User Guide. Use the URL link in Appendix C.
Managing Server
After installation, the managing server listens for data collector connections. This is described in the next section.
For more details on configuring the Managing Server, refer to the ITCAM for Application Diagnostics User Guide. Use the URL link in Appendix C.
Netweaver Data Collector
Now that you’ve configured the transaction topologies, the J2EE agent, and the managing server, configure the Netweaver Data Collector.
For more details on configuring the Netweaver Data Collector, refer to the ITCAM for Application Diagnostics User Guide. Use the URL link in Appendix C.
Here are some important points:
During configuration, point the Data Collector to the collector agent, J2EE agent, and the managing server as shown in the data paths in Figure 33. You can always reconfigure the Data Collector if you do not want to enable some of these features.
If the configuration tool does not detect your SAP Netweaver server, ensure that the correct maintenance level is applied to the data collector as described in Appendix A.
Ensure all times, dates, and time zones are synchronized between the systems containing the SAP server, J2EE agent, transaction collector agent, and the Tivoli Monitoring core servers.
The SAP server also has an internal time zone that can be configured in the SAP GUI.
Make sure it also matches the system time zone.
Follow the pre-configuration and post-configuration steps in the J2EE data collector Installation Guide very carefully. SAP Performance metrics must be enabled.
In the Managing Server, under Administration > Monitoring on Demand, configure the monitoring level to L2 or higher. You might have to modify the toolkit_custom.properties and restart the SAP instance.
Putting the deep-dive parts together
After configuring transaction and application diagnostics components, the transaction tracking topology now shows some of the deep-dive elements which should be stitched the WRT data:
Figure 33: Transaction Topology showing JDBC nodes
The J2EE agent workspaces in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal console should show data. For instance, Figure 34 shows metric data on the SAP data sources:
Figure 34: J2EE Datasources workspaces
The managed SAP Netweaver view in the managing server user interface should provide some detailed JVM and response time data as shown in Figure 35:
Figure 435: Managing Server view
Conclusion
After you deploy this phased solution, i you twill realize significant value towards your overall application performance management strategy. You will be able to proactively detect
performance and availability issues that impact the end-to-end monitoring. In phases one and two of this solution, we have seen how to deploy end-user and robotic transaction monitoring.
We introduced resource monitoring in phase three and observed the powerful features of the SAP agent such as Solution Manager and Process Integrator monitoring. Finally, phase four introduced deep-dive analytics using transaction tracking and J2EE monitoring. All this lays the foundation for introducing more advanced application performance management using DevOps.
Appendix A: Architecture
SAP© Netweaver SAP© NW v7.01 N/A Red Hat 5.1 64bit
Appendix B: Information Centers
Appendix C: Additional References
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