Viewing collected data

View collected data on the Monitoring > Devices page. As an administrator or operator, use this data to learn about the monitored environment and correlate, analyze, and prioritize IT operations. Click a device name to view the associated Device Details page. The Event Summary area displays a matrix of events that are associated with the device.

A device is any entity that can be monitored by  BMC Helix Operations Management . A device is created when you define monitor policies and the monitoring begins .  

BMC Helix Operations Managementcollects data from sources. Built-in algorithms convert the information collected about entities into devices, determine whether two or more pieces of data refer to the same entity, and consolidate those entities into a single device.

The source for devices are PATROL Agents. Note that the PATROL Agent itself is treated as a device, in addition to any systems it monitors remotely.  When a monitoring policy is applied to a PATROL Agent, its  device  is automatically added. Device monitors are a way of classifying the data that is to be collected. They continuously monitor various parameters of the device. For example, CPU performance and memory utilization for OS monitoring.

When authorization profiles are set up in your product, you can view a device if the device belongs to your profile. Administrators manage authorization profiles. For more information, see Configuring authorization profiles.

The following screenshot displays the Devices page:

Using groups to filter and view the collected data based on impacted devices

As an operator, you can view and monitor all the impacted devices displayed based on the criteria specified while creating a group.  

This topic explains the groups view and group details view. For instructions on creating groups, see Setting up groups.

Each group is a logical collection of monitored entities in BMC Helix Operations Management. The Groups functionality allows you to filter and group impacted devices based on an entity selection criteria and events based on the event selection criteria. You can use the selection query to define filters in a meaningful way so that it groups the impacted devices and matching events logically. Groups can be associated with authorization profiles if required. For example, all VMs in a particular region can be filtered and grouped, or all Windows or Linux hosts that must be monitored by a specific operator can be filtered and grouped. Groups created in BMC Helix Operations Management can be published as a service model, which can be viewed in BMC Discovery and BMC Helix AIOps consoles. There is no limit to the number of groups that you can create. However, as a best practice, keep this list manageable.

You can use groups to view details, such as group impact summary, group impact status, top three impacted groups, list of devices in each group, total number of devices, list of events on the devices, severity of each event, default priority of each event, host name, and event message, and quickly perform event actions.

From the Monitoring > Groups page, you can do the following:

• View information about impacted groups, group impact status, and top three impacted groups.
• For each individual group, view information about total number of events, summary of event severity, and total number of devices.
• Search for groups.
• Sort the list of groups by impact or name.
• Click on any group tile to view the group details.

The Groups page is automatically refreshed after the interval that you have specified in the Events auto refresh field while configuring event settings on the Monitoring > Events page. For more information about configuring event settings, see Customizing the display of the event list.

Group details and event actions

On the Groups page, click on an individual tile to view the Group Details page. You can do the following:

• View the individual group information.
• View the list of events and perform event actions.
• View the list of devices and device details. 

Here is a screenshot of the Group Details page:

By default, you can see primary and related events in the Events tab.

To view only primary events in the Events tab:

1. Go to the Groups page.
2. Click the Group Preferences  button.  
3. Clear the Show Related Events in group details checkbox and click Save.

To view device details

1. Go to the Monitoring > Devices page.
2. Click a device to view the Device Details page for the device. 

Viewing monitor details 

When you click a monitor name or an application class being monitored for a monitor (for example, Cache for Windows Operating System), the details of the monitor are displayed on the Monitor Details page. This page shows the following details:

• Monitor name or application class details
• Summary of the events created for the monitor name and its attributes
• List of the events created for the monitor name and options to perform actions on an event
• Performance overview of the attributes collected for the class where you get the following options:
  • Configure time period to view performance
  • Compare multiple metrics and view output on a graph
  • Show performance of a single metric on a graph

Taking actions on a monitor type

The action menu  is visible for a monitor type if both the following conditions are true:

• Actions are available for the monitors on the PATROL Agent.
• You have the monitor.patrol_agent_actions.execute permission.
  To view a list of all permissions, see Roles and permissions.

Perform the following tasks to take actions on the monitors on the PATROL Agent:

1. In the Actions column, click the action menu .
2. Click Agent Actions.
3. In the Agent Actions window, select the action that you want to run.
   The options in the Agent Actions window are different for each Knowledge Module on a PATROL Agent.
4. Click Execute.
   A success message appears for the Agent action. For example, see the following image:
   

Customizing monitor graphs to leverage the BMC Helix Operations Management data visualization capabilities

The monitor graph on the Monitor Details page might show data in decimals. For data that is less than a day old, all data points are shown on the graph. However, for data that is more than or equal to a day old, the average data is fetched for each hour. Therefore, you can see 1 data point per hour. For example, refer to the following graph: