User goals and features

BMC ProactiveNet Oracle WebLogic Monitoring provides a complete monitoring and management solution to ensure reliable, predictable performance of a Oracle WebLogic Server environment, this release of the product provides the following features:

Select the servers and components to monitor

  • Monitor a single Managed Server without requiring an available Admin Server: if the Admin Server is down, BMC PATROL can continue to collect data, monitor performance, and manage the Managed Server.
  • Monitor the availability and memory usage of the Node Manager process associated with each WebLogic Server in a domain. The Node Manager will appear as the ActiveProcesses list in the BEAWLS_OS class (you can exclude it if you want).
  • Check the consistency of JDKs and WebLogic versions in a monitored domain.

Component monitoring

You can monitor the following critical components of the WebLogic Server environment:

  • The Java Transaction API (JTA), whose functions include the ability to generate various reports with performance metric details
  • The Java Messaging Service (JMS)
  • The Java Connector Architecture (JCA), which is the foundation for web applications to interact with other types of business software, including transaction processing systems, databases, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications.
  • Jolt and JDBC pools. JDBC performance information is available for peak usage and number of active connections, as well as for connection waiting times. Additional JDBC features include profiling for connection leaks, prepared statement cache, and SQL roundtrip metrics.
  • The JRockit JVM
  • The WebLogic Messaging Bridge
  • The Store and Forward (SAF) service and agents (with WebLogic 9.x or later)
  • The WebLogic Tuxedo Connector (WTC) service (with WebLogic 9.1 or later)
  • Web application monitoring capabilities include the ability to monitor specific servlets.

Additional monitoring

The following features can be configured in a BMC PATROL console, and the results viewed in BMC ProactiveNet.

Web services management

Monitor the deployed web services, web service operations, and service-level Java APIs for XML-based remote procedure call (JAX-RPC) handlers in the WebLogic Server environment. In addition, you can generate the overall web services performance matrix report for service availability and assurance.

Integration server management

Monitor and manage the Oracle Integration server, including monitoring the status of application views and adapters, the average service elapsed time, and the number of event notifications.

J2EE performance

Provides a Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application-centric view so that you can diagnose the performance of the application and easily identify performance bottlenecks of the components within the application.

JVM profiling

Provides the ability to monitor performance of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) by monitoring selected Java classes and profiling performance. Available data includes JVM memory statistics, garbage collection metrics, method-level data, and thread data.

JVM JVX monitoring

Provides support for JVM profiling using Java Management Extensions (JMX).

JMX MBean monitoring

Monitor MBeans used in a JMX-managed Oracle WebLogic Server. You can select which MBeans you want to monitor and you can define attributes that:

  • Determine which MBeans are monitored
  • Trigger automatic alerts (including events that can be managed in the PATROL Event Manager
  • Take automatic actions based on your monitoring criteria

Log file monitoring

The domain, server, HTTP, and Java Database Connection (JDBC) logs are monitored by default; however, you can register any log file to be monitored. In addition to being able to watch error and informational messages as they are written to the log, you can:

  • Define sniff patterns to isolate critical error messages
  • Subscribe to email or Event Manager notifications
  • Generate PATROL events when specific text patterns are written to the log

Sniff patterns

You can set up sniff patterns to match text strings in the log file so that you can pinpoint error messages that are most critical to your monitoring environment. You can define sniff patterns for any kind of text occurrence. Some of the most common strategies are to set up patterns for the following items:

  • Resource or service type---Specify a sniff pattern of SSLListenThread to isolate only those messages pertaining to the secure socket listener.
  • Date---Specify a sniff pattern to look at the log file to determine the date format you should match. When you view the server log file, the Message Filter dialog box provides a field for limiting the date range.
  • Severity level---Specify a sniff pattern to limit output to only errors or warnings, or to show just the information messages if you are looking for a specific text string. For example, on the server log file, you could set a sniff pattern of <!> to see the warnings, or you could use <I> to find the informational only messages.
  • Host name---Use the host name as a sniff pattern to isolate messages based on the server name if you are monitoring an environment with many servers.

For each log file, you can define multiple sniff patterns. When you use the Sniff Pattern Setup menu commands, you can select, view, edit, and delete the sniff patterns that you previously defined. You can also set up the sniff pattern to generate annotated data points on graph parameters, and to generate events that can be monitored through the PATROL Event Manager.

Events

When you define a new sniff pattern, you can specify that it automatically triggers a PATROL event when the message is written to the log file. Triggering the events enables you to monitor the events through the PATROL Event Manager interface.
 The PATROL Event Manager window displays events generated from the selected log file. In this window, you can manage events as you do for any other PATROL event classes. For more information about managing events, see the PATROL Event Manager Help in your console.

Notifications

When critically important messages are written to the log file, you can use the notification feature to configure BMC ProactiveNet to send you an email message alerting you to the error situation. You can also have these messages reported to the PATROL Event Manager.

Response time probe

The WebLogic Probe monitor type enables you to monitor and manage server timing data. You can automatically generate events based on ping time or response time whenever the status changes to WARNING or ALARM. You can then monitor PATROL events through the BMC ProactiveNet interface.

 

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