Collecting data via capacity agents

In TrueSight Capacity Optimization, data collection by means of agents is accomplished by installing a Gateway Server. The collected data is periodically transferred to the Gateway Server, where it is automatically processed into hourly intervals and saved in text files called vis files. Agents are typically installed on the computer whose data is to be collected.  

On the Gateway Server computer, schedule daily Manager runs to collect operating system data from a set of managed machines, called managed nodes. The manager runs can be created, deleted, and modified from the Gateway Manager.

The managed nodes should run capacity agents. The components to be installed and custom options to configure are described in Installing Capacity Agents on UNIX and Linux and Installing Capacity Agents on Windows.

Gateway Server data and retention

On the Gateway Server computer, the collected data is processed in an automated fashion by a program called Analyze. This program also outputs other files. For more information, see the Analyze outputs from a UNIX Gateway Server topic in Analyze.

Some guidelines

• Keep about three months' worth of vis files. These are useful in case you need to "recover" data. For more information, see Recovery section.
• For UDR and vis files, it is recommended to keep three months worth of data, of which the oldest two months could be kept compressed to save space.
• Review UDR disk space requirements
• Review Vis files disk requirements
• Each manager run should have no more than 4 domains (one domain is one vis file)
• One domain should have no more than 25 nodes (managed systems)

Loading Gateway Server data into TrueSight Capacity Optimization

The recommended method to load Gateway Server collected data into TrueSight Capacity Optimization is to use an OOTB Gateway Server vis files parser. For more information, see BMC - TrueSight Capacity Optimization Gateway VIS files parser.

The vis files are produced on the Gateway Server machine. It is reasonable to assign one manager run to one ETL, if the manager runs contain 4 vis files. If the manager runs contain only one vis file each (i.e., one domain each), then it is reasonable to assign up to four manager runs to a single ETL.

The recommended way to automatically move these files to the TrueSight Capacity Optimization ETL Engine is to use the via gateway service selection in the "Extractor mode" option in the TrueSight Capacity Optimization Gateway Server VIS files parser ETL.

Multiple vis files parser ETLs

If there are multiple vis file parser ETLs scheduled on a scheduler, then we recommend they be included in a task chain, with the "parallelism" parameter set to twice the number of CPU cores available on the ETL Engine. In addition, you should follow all the sizing guidelines for any ETL Engine. For more information, see Sizing considerations for ETL Engine Servers.

Discovering and configuring Gateway Server

The Gateway Manager page in the Admin section of the TrueSight Capacity Optimization console lets you look at the available consoles and configure additional ones. The Gateway Manager page offers various management operations to deal with the Gateway Server and their Manager runs that are producing data. For more information, see Managing and maintaining Gateway Servers.

Recovering data that has not been loaded into TrueSight Capacity Optimization

If data is missed for any reason, you can "recover" it using existing vis files provided you have been retaining them according to the recommended procedure above. For recovery, you can use a Gateway Server vis files parser ETL with a special configuration. Note the Data Retention section above; the main reason to keep vis files for three months is to enable data recovery. For more information, see Recovering data using the vis files parser.

When you use the vis files parser as a recovery ETL, you can use a single one to recover all the Gateway Server ETLs in a task chain. The particular vis files to be recovered are automatically identified by recovery scripts on the Gateway Server and made available in a predefined directory for the vis files parser to consume. For more information, see Creating recovery scripts.

Appendix: Gateway Server platform classifications