Identifying that there is a problem (or impending problem) with an application or service

BMC ProactiveNet can identify potential problems before customers are impacted. BMC ProactiveNet can help reduce the number of outages, as well as improve the meantime between failures, thus increasing customer satisfaction, and keeping and maintaining service-level agreements. The longer BMC ProactiveNet collects data in your environment, the more accurate BMC ProactiveNet becomes, allowing you to identify problems even more quickly and accurately.

This topic focuses on monitoring VMware vSphere; however, you can apply this process to any environment or combination of environments supported by BMC ProactiveNet.

Key concepts

Before following the procedures in this topic, you should be familiar with the following concepts:

How-baselines-thresholds-and-Key-Performance-Indicators-work-together-to-generate-events-in-the-BMC-ProactiveNet-Operations-Console

Components required

This topic requires the following BMC ProactiveNet components. It is recommended that you read the overviews for each component before continuing:

BMC-ProactiveNet-Server

BMC-ProactiveNet-Integration-Service

BMC-PATROL-Agent-for-BMC-ProactiveNet

BMC-ProactiveNet-Central-Monitoring-Administration-architecture

BMC-ProactiveNet-Administration-Console

BMC-ProactiveNet-Operations-Console

Roles required

Note

There are many user roles involved in the deployment, operation, and management of BMC ProactiveNet. Your company may employ the roles as described below, consolidate them into fewer roles, or divide them into roles with more granular responsibilities and may have other titles for these roles.

The following roles are required to complete the procedures in this topic:

BMC ProactiveNet Administrator
BMC PATROL Administrator
Virtual Infrastructure Administrator
BMC ProactiveNet Operator (IT Operations user)

Before you begin

Before you begin these procedures you must have installed the following BMC ProactiveNet components:

BMC ProactiveNet Server
BMC ProactiveNet Integration Service - integrates BMC ProactiveNet with BMC PATROL and other applications that provide events and data to the BMC ProactiveNet Server
BMC ProactiveNet Cell

For detailed instructions about installing these components, see Installing. After successfully installing these components, continue with the following tasks.

Tasks

The following tasks are required to identify that there is a problem or impending problem in your environment.

Installing the BMC PATROL Agent and BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management - VMware vSphere Monitoring

Required roles: BMC PATROL Administrator and BMC ProactiveNet Administrator

From Central Monitoring Administration, create a monitor installation package that includes the BMC PATROL Agent and BMC PATROL for VMware vSphere monitoring solution, by following these steps:

For detailed instructions, see Creating-and-editing-component-installation-packages. When you are creating your monitor installation package, you will select VMware vSphere and PATROL Agent for your operating system from the Available list. As part of the package creation process, you must include the host name and port where the BMC ProactiveNet Integration Service is running (the default port is 3183), as well as a Central Monitoring Administration (CMA) tag. The CMA tag will be assigned to the PATROL Agent to help BMC ProactiveNet assign monitoring policies that you will create later.

Download and install the monitor installation package you just created on the server where VMware vSphere is installed. For details about installing the monitor installation package, see Downloading-and-installing-an-installation-package.

After the monitor installation package is downloaded and installed, the BMC PATROL Agent automatically is connected to the BMC ProactiveNet Integration Service, and the BMC ProactiveNet Integration Service automatically is connected to the BMC ProactiveNet Server.

Configuring BMC ProactiveNet to warn you when there is a problem or impending problem with VMware vSphere

Required roles: BMC PATROL Administrator, BMC ProactiveNet Administrator, and Virtual Infrastructure Administrator

To configure BMC ProactiveNet to warn you when there is a problem or impending problem with VMware vSphere, you must understand the concepts of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), baselines, and thresholds, as described in How-baselines-thresholds-and-Key-Performance-Indicators-work-together-to-generate-events-in-the-BMC-ProactiveNet-Operations-Console. To set up thresholds for the various metrics (attributes) of VMware vSphere, you can use Central Monitoring Administration to create a policy. This policy can be applied to any PATROL Agent that has a matching Central Monitoring Administration (CMA) tag.

For instructions about setting up a policy, see Creating-or-editing-a-monitoring-policy. To monitor VMware vSphere, the following steps apply:

Define general policy details, as described in Defining-general-policy-details.
When you are defining the general policy details, ensure that the CMA tag that you enter for the policy matches the CMA tag you entered when installing the PATROL Agent that you installed to monitor VMware vSphere.
Add the VMware vSphere monitor type. For instructions, see Configuring-a-monitor.
Configure the thresholds for the various attributes of the VMware vSphere monitor types. For instructions, see Configuring-BMC-PATROL-Agent-thresholds.

Verifying that data is being brought into BMC ProactiveNet

Required role: BMC ProactiveNet Operator

When the BMC ProactiveNet Integration Service connects to the BMC ProactiveNet Server, events will begin to display in the BMC ProactiveNet Operations Console. This does not mean that data from the PATROL Agent and monitoring solutions (also called Knowledge Modules) is actually being brought into the BMC ProactiveNet Server. The events displaying in the BMC ProactiveNet Operations Console could be events generated by the BMC ProactiveNet Server as it monitors itself.

To verify that data is being brought into BMC ProactiveNet, log into the BMC ProactiveNet Operations Console. In the Main drawer of the Navigation pane, click Abnormalities. Ensure that the devices that you have added are displaying in the in the Device View tab in the right pane.

Select one or more of the devices in the Device View tab and click Show Graphs. If data is being brought into BMC ProactiveNet, data points will be visible on the graph that is displayed. Depending on the polling frequency of the attributes that you are monitoring, it may take 5 to 10 minutes for data to be displayed in the graph.

Watching for incoming events in the BMC ProactiveNet Console