Glossary

This glossary contains terms that are relevant to TrueSight Operations Management. Because the content comes from the Common Glossary, some terms might include definitions specific to other BMC products and solutions.

agent for .NET

See App Visibility agent.

agent for Java

A component of App Visibility Manager that monitors performance and availability of applications running on a Java or .NET application server. Agents also monitor server metrics, such as CPU and memory use. App Visibility agents request configuration information from the App Visibility portal and send application data to the App Visibility collector. Agents inject JavaScript into application pages for end-user experience monitoring.

App Visibility collector

A component of the App Visibility server, receives performance and availability application data and server metrics from one or more App Visibility agents, and from TEA Agents, and receives end-user experience data from one or more App Visibility proxies. Captured data is stored in the App Visibility collector's embedded PostgreSQL database.

App Visibility portal

A component of the App Visibility server, manages the App Visibility collectors, App Visibility agents, TEA Agents, and proxies, and communicates with its managed collectors to pull the relevant data for display in the TrueSight Console. The App Visibility portal's embedded PostgreSQL database contains configuration information, aggregated data from the collectors, and requested execution logs.

App Visibility proxy

A component of the App Visibility server, collects and processes end-user experience data on a web application. The end user’s browser retrieves JavaScript from the proxy. The proxy, in turn, receives beacons from the browser and sends end-user metrics to the App Visibility collectors and portal.

App Visibility server

A component of App Visibility Manager that receives and analyzes data from the end user's browser, from App Visibility agents that are installed on application servers, and from the TEA Agent. The App Visibility server is comprised of an App Visibility portal, one or more App Visibility collectors, and, optionally, one or more App Visibility proxies.

application context

The process of monitoring applications in a way that integrates data from App Visibility and from TrueSight Infrastructure Management to provide a complete picture of the data and events that impact an application.

application discovery

In App Visibility Manager, the process of automatically and dynamically discovering and diagramming the structure of web-based applications that are monitored by App Visibility Manager. As transactions flow between monitored servers, App Visibility Manager draws a map of the application nodes and discovers their relationships by monitoring the transaction.

application discovery rules

In App Visibility Manager, rules for discovering applications. The application discovery rules are based on URL patterns. You can group applications together or discard applications that are not important to your environment.

application model

A TrueSight feature that provides a visual representation of the IT infrastructure (formerly context model, but also referred to as application context). Application models are defined by users who group together a set of resources used for a particular business purpose. The application model can include devices, groups, or configuration items (CIs). Application models are manually created through the TrueSight console, or automatically displayed in the console through App Visibility Manger's automatic discovery.

Application View

View that represents an application's logical architecture and used to monitor the health and performance of live traffic and synthetic executions of an application monitored by App Visibility Manager.

attribute set

Attribute sets are group of parameters that measure similar performance attributes. For example, Response Time, Memory Used, CPU Used.

dashboard

Dashboards provide consolidated and customized views of an environment. Dashboards are made up of dashlets.

dashlet

Dashlets provide access to a specific type of data and present it in a graphical format. Dashlets are created from dashlet templates.

entry point

In App Visibility Manager, first monitored method that the App Visibility agent identifies as the beginning of request processing. An entry point is the deepest monitored method of the execution stack when processing a request.

event group

Event groups are sets of events that meet certain criteria or conditions. These conditions are defined by using event classes and slots, and act as filters on events.

execution

A single run of an Execution Plan for Synthetic transaction monitoring.

Execution Plan

The definitions, schedule, and settings that define how an application is run to simulate user transactions for Synthetic transaction monitoring. 

group

Groups are created manually in the Infrastructure Management Server, or whenever an instance is created on Infrastructure Management, and indicate that the monitor instance is a kind of pool or group. Group information is periodically synced with the Presentation Server.

For an automatically discovered application, App Visibility Manager dynamically creates a group of application servers for a load balancing server or cluster.

Infrastructure Management administrator console

The console that allows you to modify the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server and the Integration Service network management areas by adding or deleting device groups, monitored devices, data collection adapters, or changing event management configuration

Infrastructure Management database

A database that stores objects collected by the Infrastructure Management Server. You can choose to use an Oracle database or the default, embedded Sybase ASA database.

Infrastructure Management Integration Service

The Integration Service enables the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server to remotely gather statistical data from all supported operating systems. The Integration Service fetches this data from BMC PATROL and from third-party products, such as HP Operations Manager, Microsoft SCOM and IBM Tivoli Monitoring, and provides this data to the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server.

Infrastructure Management PATROL repository

A repository that contains the monitoring solutions to be used in TrueSight Infrastructure Management. This repository is required on the TrueSight Presentation Server. The repository includes the current versions of the BMC component products that you can use with Infrastructure Management. You select monitoring installation components, such as the BMC PATROL Agent and monitoring solutions, to create a deployable package. The monitoring installation components can then be installed together using the deployable package. 

Infrastructure Management Server

A TrueSight Infrastructure Management core component that receives events and data from various sources, including BMC PATROL Agents, Event Management Cells, and Third-party event and data sources, and then processes events and data using a powerful analytics engine and additional event processing instructions stored in its database.

Integration Service

See Infrastructure Management Integration Service

Knowledge Module

Knowledge Modules (KMs) are files from which a PATROL Agent receives information about resources running on a monitored computer. A KM file can contain the actual instructions for monitoring objects or simply a list of KMs to load. KMs are loaded by a PATROL Agent and a PATROL Console.

KMs provide information for the way monitored computers are represented in the BMC PATROL interface, for the discovery of application instances and the way they are represented, for parameters that are run under those applications, and for the options available on object pop-up menus.

location

A location is a logical group of TEA Agents, grouped for load balancing and high availability, and according to the needs of your organization. Each Execution Plan is run on one TEA Agent in a location. If several Execution Plans are run on the same location, the Execution Plans are distributed evenly across the location.

Monitor Category

Each monitor type is categorized as one of the following: System, Database, Application, Network, Web, FireWall, Availability, ResponseTime, or Other.

monitor instance

Monitor instances are objects that are created on each TSIM server that collect health and performance data for a target resource. The monitor instance data is synced into the data displayed by the Presentation Server.

PATROL Agent

An Infrastructure Management component that collects and stores data locally or remotely.

PATROL repository

See Infrastructure Management PATROL repository

Presentation Server

The TrueSight Presentation Server. A core TrueSight Operations Management component that receives data from various sources. The Presentation Server functions as a central server and is the server in which Operations Management is installed.

probable cause analysis

The process of gathering, filtering, and analyzing data to determine the cause for an event is called probable cause analysis.

request

As part of an operation, an interaction of a client program with a server program.

In App Visibility Manager, a request is the interaction that is captured by a monitored application server, and is connected to other interactions for the same operation. The name of a request is usually determined by an application's URL, and a transaction name is the first request in an application that is received by a monitored application server.

robotic transaction

See synthetic transaction.

service level objective (SLO)

A service objective or target within a service level agreement (SLA); the defined thresholds that are set to meet an SLA.

Service Model

Service Models are defined by users grouping together a set of resources used for a particular business purpose. The service model can include devices, groups, and CIs.

stale devices

Device information is persisted in the Presentation Server database and there could be instances where certain devices are displayed in the TrueSight console, though they are not associated with any Infrastructure Management server. These are referred to as stale devices.

synthetic transaction

A transaction that is the result of a script run to simulate a user transaction. Also called a robotic transaction.

tier

In App Visibility Manager, a separate logical structure representing a distinct process in an application. Tiers are displayed in the Application View.

tier member

For applications monitored by App Visibility agents, the application server device or the discovered database.

In the Synthetic tier, tier members are executions, individual runs of Execution Plans.

trace

A specific instance of a transaction.

transaction

In App Visibility Manager, a sequence of requests and related operations, such as updating a database, that is treated as a unit to satisfy a business need. A transaction is named after the first request in an application that is received by a monitored application server.

TrueSight console

The console hosted on the TrueSight Presentation Server.

TrueSight Infrastructure Management

Replaces BMC ProactiveNet (PNet) as an infrastructure monitoring and management tool. TrueSight Infrastructure Management is part of the TrueSight Operations Management solution.