PROCESSIT Application Monitor Introduction

PROCESSIT Application Monitor is based on Nagios Core IT Infrastructure Monitoring tools.

Standard and advanced use of monitoring systems based on Nagios are documented extensively in the Nagios Support Wiki Library hosted by Nagios.org.

Documentation pertaining specifically to Nagios Core can be found here.

Installing Application Monitor

PROCESSIT Application Monitor is delivered as a VMware Virtual Application template, which must be deployed, and then customized to fit your environment.

It is available as a standard license Add-On module, and can be downloaded from the ReadSoft FTP site.

You must have access to the ReadSoft FTP to download the .zip package for PROCESSIT Application Monitor.

Download the .zip file

1. Access the ReadSoft FTP site.
2. Download the file /Software/Oracle/PROCESSIT/Standard_License_Add-ons/Application_Monitor/PROCESSIT Application Monitor.zip
3. Unzip the file to a temporary directory.

Deploy the OVF

1. Open a vSphere client for VMware Application deployment.
2. Open the File menu
3. Select Deploy OVF. This opens a deployment wizard
4. In Source, select PROCESSIT Application Monitor.zip
5. Click Next
6. OVF Template Details gives an overview of the deployment size.
7. Click Next
8. In Name and Location, specify the application name PROCESSIT Application Monitor and the virtual machine location for the application deployment. You must select the location by browsing.
9. Click Next after supplying location and name.
10. In Host / Cluster, specify the host IP address for the deployment by selecting an IP address from the list of available addresses.
11. Resource pool lets you select the resource pool for the deployment.
12. Click Next.
13. Datastore shows the available space on the selected machines. You must select a location to store the VM files.
14. Click Next
15. In Disk Format specify how to format the data storage.
    • Select Thin provisioned format to begin with the minimum required disk space and let it grow in size over time. This is the recommended choice.
    • Select Thick provisioned format to make all storage space available immediately.
16. Click Next
17. Ready to Complete shows a summary of the deployment settings. When you are satisfied with the settings, click Finish to start copying files.
18. Restart the machine with PROCESSIT Application Monitor deployed.
19. Log in to the virtual machine as root user.
20. You should now see the desktop for user root.

The standard login url is the ip address of the machine where PROCESSIT Application Monitor is installed, followed by /nagios/

Default nagios users

By default, to nagios users are available for PROCESSIT Application Monitor.

General user: nagios

Password is nagios. This user can see statuses and inspect states and overviews.

Nagios administrator: nagiosadmin

Password is admin. This more advanced user can schedule system downtimes, set alarms and modify adminestration of servers.

Nagios User Desktop Documents

For the general user nagios, a pdf describing PNP4Nagios is available on the desktop. It explains the preconfigured graphics showing

Configure to fit environment

PROCESSIT Application Monitor setup is based on several files in the directory /usr/local/nagios/etc/. The standard configuration file is nagios.cfg. The main configuration file for the Application Monitor is processit.cfg, which is modified by the setup script. The configuration files are written in a specific nagios language, somewhat similar to xml, which allows a multitude of monitoring options and configurations.

Run script for setup

The main part of the Application Monitor configuration is handled by running the script setup.sh, which is available on the root user desktop.

1. Double-click setup.sh
2. Select to run in terminal
3. The script answers a series of questions. Provide the appropriate values during the script run.
   • IP Address for WebLogic Server
   • IP Address for BPEL Application Server
   • IP Address for BPEL DB Server
   • IP Address for EBS DB Server
   • IP Address for EBS APP Server
   • IP Address for Email Server
   • Fully qualified name of mail server to use
   • Fully qualified name of this monitoring server

The script updates host file(s) with the supplied information, updates the mail relay client, and adds basic users.

Once the script is complete, it starts up PROCESSIT Application Monitor.

Ensure that all values in processit.cfg matches your environment. The file defines servers and applications that each individual check monitors.

Custom Configuration

Further configuration is done by writing and adding .cfg files for each group that you wish to monitor, for instance environmentAlpha.cfg environemntBeta.cfg.

You must write the checks manually in these files. Please refer to the nagios documentation references at the beginning of this document for details. The nagios configuration language is similar to xml files and java properties files.

The basics of the file is that you can monitor anything that returns a single line result. For instance, you can define service checks for sql checks against your database, linux commands checks, nagios-native commands checks for system states etc.

Adding Users

Like with other configuration, users are defined in text-based configuration files. You can add users via files in the directory /usr/local/nagios/etc/obejcts/.

Starting and stopping PROCESSIT Application Monitor

You can use command line commands to start, stop, restart nagios. You must be logged in as root on a terminal to issue the commands.

• Start Application Monitor: service nagios start - if it is already running, this command does nothing.
• sShut down Application Monitor service nagios stop
• Restart Application Monitor: service nagios restart

Using PROCESSIT Application Monitor

Application Monitor shows statuses and alerts for the defined hsots and services. Usually, a host entry corresponds to a server, while a service can check anything defined in the configuration files.

You log in to PROCESSIT Application Monitor via browser. The url is the host ip address followed by /nagios/. You must use a configured user to log in.

Once logged in, you see a dashboard. The navigation menu on the left hand side lets you choose specific monitoring pages, or you can create reports for detailed inspection.

MONITORING

• Tactical Overview - Standard overview that gives a quick view for any health or system issues. You can see if any networks, hosts or services are down, and see the performance of the application monitor.
• Host Detail - Shows status details for all hosts and servers that are configured to be monitored. You can jump directly to details views or graphical history details by clicking the icons for any host/server. The screen also provides current statistics for host and service status totals.
• Hostgroup Overview - Shows current statuses for defined host groups. For instance, you can group together the BPEL engine and the WebLogic server for a single PROCESSIT instance group overview.
• Host Problems - Notifications about issues with hosts and servers can be seen here.
• Service Detail - Shows status details for defined and configured services. You can click the graph icon to view a graphical representation of activity for a particular service, and get further insight into activity details.
• Servicegroup Overview - Overview for grouped services.
• Service Problems - Notifications about issues with defined services can be seen here.
• Status Map - A graphical representation of the configured server group structure with indicators for status overview.
• Network Outages - Shows any network failures.
• Comments - View or supply user comments.
• Downtime - View schedule downtime for a host or service.
• Process Info - And overview of the resources that PROCESSIT Application Monitor / nagios consumes itself.
• Performance Info - Performance information about PROCESSIT Application Monitor
• Scheduling Queue - View scheduled service checks for hosts or services. You can schedule new checks for a service or host.

REPORTING

• Trends - Create and view a uptime status report for a host or service. Select the desired server and specify a time frame to see the report.
• Availability - Create and view an availability report that shows how much of the time a host, service or group is available.
• Alert Histogram - Shows a graphical representation of downtime and alerts for a chosen server and time frame.
• Alert History - Shows all alerts in a historical line-up.
• Alert Summary - Get a report for the chosen alerts within a given time frame.
• Notifications - Shows notifications.
• Event Log - Shows prior events.