Features of the BMC ProactiveNet and BMC PATROL Agent integration

The following are the key features that the integration of the BMC ProactiveNet and BMC PATROL Agent provides:

• • Reduction of footprint
  • Reliable collection of data
  • Self health monitoring
  • Event integration
  • Event with monitor association
  • Streaming
  • Reduction in the number of processes that were running

Reduction of footprint

The BMC ProactiveNet architecture offers minimal footprint and maximum scalability. For example, the size of the BMC ProactiveNet Integration Service installation executable has reduced because of the BMC ProactiveNet and BMC PATROL Agent integration, which in turn, decreases the time taken to install the Integration Service. The integration also offers better performance and scalability numbers. For a description of this feature using a use case, see Utilize-minimal-footprint-with-maximum-scalability.

Reliable collection of data

The BMC PATROL Agent offers reliable collection of data by guaranteeing delivery of event data and instance data to the BMC ProactiveNet Server. Data is sent by the PATROL Agent to the BMC ProactiveNet Integration Service, which then transfers the data to the BMC ProactiveNet Server. The behavior of data delivery depends on the type of data to be sent. In BMC ProactiveNet, data can be divided into three types:

• Performance data (also known as statistical data)
• Event data
• Instance data: data of each instance in BMC ProactiveNet

BMC ProactiveNet introduces an acknowledgement mechanism whereby the PATROL Agent receives an acknowledgement for the data it sends. This acknowledgement mechanism varies depending on the type of data being sent by the PATROL Agent. This mechanism is applicable if the BMC PATROL Agent or any component of BMC ProactiveNet goes down during execution. The acknowledgement mechanism applies only to instance data and event data.

Self health monitoring

You can monitor the health of all the components of BMC ProactiveNet. The ability to monitor the health of the BMC ProactiveNet components is called self health monitoring. Self health monitoring includes monitoring the health of:

• BMC ProactiveNet Server
• BMC ProactiveNet Integration Service
• BMC PATROL Agent

The health of a component is usually affected by resource depletion which can occur because of a heavy load on the resources or because of crossing scalability limits. Resource monitoring can provide early insights into the health of a component and makes it possible to measure the load on components such as instances, attributes, and so on.  This in turn, provides an early insight into scalability issues. You can view the health of any component from the ProactiveNet Health node in the Operations Console. For more information, see Viewing-the-health-of-the-BMC-ProactiveNet-components. For a description of this feature using a use case, see Detect-problems-using-the-automated-self-health-monitoring-capability.

Event integration

The BMC PATROL Agent can forward events to its consumers through two channels:

• Channel through the Integration Service
  In this channel, an event shares the same channel that is available for data streaming. All the events that are triggered and filtered to pass are routed through the Integration Service. The event response acknowledgement is implemented in the BMC PATROL Agent to guarantee the delivery of the event to consumers, which in this case is BMC ProactiveNet.
• Separate Channel through IMGW
  In this channel, an event is pushed to the BMC ProactiveNet Server Cell that uses propagate rules to forward the event to one or more destination cells or gateways. The BMC PATROL Agent has a dependency on the IMGW library interface for the message acknowledgement mechanism. Guaranteed delivery is available only between two peer IMGW interfaces.

Event with monitor association

You can configure BMC PATROL and BMC ProactiveNet such that events are sent from BMC PATROL to the Integration Service. The Integration Service then routes these events to the BMC ProactiveNet Cell. The BMC PATROL event reaches the BMC ProactiveNet Server through the BMC ProactiveNet Cell and is then displayed in the BMC ProactiveNet Operations Console. You can then perform any event operation on the BMC PATROL events (such as Probable Cause Analysis) and drill-down to the root cause to troubleshoot the issue. In earlier BMC ProactiveNet versions, only intelligent events could be viewed in the Operations Console.

For a description of this feature using a use case, see Perform-Probable-Cause-Analysis-on-events-generated-by-the-BMC-PATROL-Agent.

Streaming

The BMC PATROL Agent pushes the data as and when it collects it, to BMC ProactiveNet. That is, data is directly streamed from the BMC PATROL Agent to BMC ProactiveNet without buffering, thus minimizing the latency for data, events, and instance information to reach the BMC ProactiveNet Server.

Reduction in the number of processes that were running

Only one BMC ProactiveNet process, the Integration Service process, runs in the background when you use BMC ProactiveNet. This reduces the number of possible failure points, and makes the architecture more robust.