Product terminology and name mapping

In BMC Performance Manager, a set of files, knowledge modules (KM) 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.

Monitoring solutions 

A monitoring solution is a pre-defined set of metrics that monitor the health and performance of a specific device or service. BMC monitoring solutions are composed of monitor types and attributes.

Monitoring profiles 

In BMC ProactiveNet and TrueSight Operations Management, monitoring profiles are profiles to which the monitor types you want to enable are associated. Each solution contains multiple monitoring profiles and help to reduce unnecessary monitoring. Each monitoring profile is associated with a group of monitor types. The monitor types that belong to a profile are pre-determined. You cannot add or remove monitor types from a profile.

Monitor types or Application classes

Application classes are the object classes to which an application instances belong; also, the representation of the class as a container in UNIX or folder in Windows on the PATROL Console. It is a logical grouping of individual applications, while an application group is a logical grouping of application instances. You can use the developer functionality of a PATROL Console to add or change application classes. Within PATROL, you use application classes to define the attributes of all instances within an application class (global settings), or the attributes of a single application instance that has been customized (local settings). In BMC ProactiveNet and TrueSight Operations Management, monitor types are similar to application classes. Monitor types are a way of classifying the data that is to be collected. 

Attributes or parameters

Parameters are the monitoring elements of a PATROL knowledge module. Parameters are run by the PATROL Agent, they periodically use data collection commands to obtain data on a system resource and then parse, process, and store the data on the computer that is running the PATROL Agent.  Parameters can display data in various formats, such as numeric, text, stoplight, and Boolean. Parameters have thresholds and can trigger warnings and alarms. In BMC ProactiveNet and TrueSight Operations Management, attributes are similar to parameters. Attributes classify monitor types into types of data. 

The BMC PATROL for Web Transaction KM has the following types of parameters:

• Collector parameters - A PATROL collector parameter executes commands and gathers data for a consumer parameter to display, often collecting many values. It does not display any values itself. As such, it does not have alarms or run any recovery actions. Collector parameters are defined in the collector's application class rather than in the applications for which they collect data. This avoids the situation in which a separate collector would execute for each application instance and negate the efficiency of the collector or consumer parameter. 
• Consumer parameters - A consumer parameter only displays a value that is collected by a collector parameter. A consumer parameter never issues commands; it is not scheduled for execution, but it has alarms and can run recovery actions. A consumer parameter cannot be updated directly by selecting an option on its display. To update a consumer parameter, you must execute the collector that gathers its data.