Event Packs overview

TrueSight Middleware and Transaction Monitor (TMTM) enables the definition of custom event conditions (called event triggers) based on any Boolean combination of properties that TMTM monitors.

TMTM supports the monitoring of many middleware technologies including IBM WebSphere MQ, IBM Integration Bus (or Message Broker), IBM WebSphere Application Server, IBM DataPower, TIBCO EMS, and more. BMC has developed libraries of recommended event triggers for each of the monitored technologies. For legacy reasons, only the event triggers that apply to IBM WebSphere MQ (MQ) and the self-monitoring event triggers are included by default in the Monitor Console. The libraries for other supported middleware technologies are separated into an importable file called an Event Pack.

These libraries include not only the event triggers, but supplied policies that can be applied as a unit to quickly set up monitoring for your environment in compliance with BMC standard recommendations. If you use any technology other than MQ, it is recommended you import the BMC supplied library (from the Samples/EventPacks directory of your BMM Server installation) for each of the middleware technologies that you monitor. The supplied policies comply with good practice out-of-the-box, but can be customized according to your requirements.

Why aren't policies and event templates for all technologies visible out of the box?

For legacy reasons, the MQ monitoring components are visible out of the box. For example, the TMTM Agent Bootstrap package that is the basis for all TMTM Agents contains not only the Agent (qpea) and the Configuration Agent (bmmtm_agent) and their utilities, but automatically contains the MQ Monitoring Extension (qpmon) even if you intend to monitor only DataPower or other technologies.

Monitoring extensions for other technologies (such as bmmpa_datapower, qpwmb, qpwasmon, and qptibems) are then added to the Agent through the Package Distributions tab. Similarly, the supplied event templates (and the underlying triggers) and the supplied policies are not included in the Monitor Console by default. To add them, you must import the Event Pack for each technology as described in the Finding and importing Event Packs section below.

What Event Packs are supplied?

Event Packs are currently supplied to cover the following technologies (with their technology prefix included):

IBM DataPower (DataPower)
TIBCO EMS (EMS)
IBM HTTP Server (IHS)
BMC MainView for WebSphere MQ (MVMQ)
TIBCO Rendezvous (RV)
IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS)
Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS)
IBM Integration Bus (or WebSphere Message Broker)(WMB).

These Event Packs can be found in subdirectories of the Samples/EventPacks sub-directory of the BMM Server installation.

What is contained in each Event Pack?

The foundation of each event pack is a library of event triggers.

An event trigger is a Boolean condition that indicates a problem or other condition that might require alerting an administrator or taking other action. For example, the DataPower OpState property might be 0 indicating that a service is not running at the same time that the AdminState for that service is 1, indicating that it has not been intentionally stopped. In this case, the event trigger would be OpState !=0 && AdminState==1.

Some event triggers are obvious and indicate direct problems like a broker being down. In such a case, you can attempt to restart the broker, or more likely notify an administrator (perhaps via email) to restart the broker.

Generating emails or executing programs are examples of event actions. Some other event triggers, however, are only informational. That is they may be one symptom of a larger problem requiring attention. If you do not capture enough of these conditions, then critical troubleshooting information may not be available to the administrator without searching through the console. However, if you capture all possible conditions, then the noise may overwhelm the administrator. Correlating such event streams is the function of event managers like the BMC Event Manager (BEM) included in the TrueSight Infrastructure Management (TSIM) platform. Thus, a very common event action is to send the information to BEM or another event manager.

Finding and importing Event Packs

First, identify the technologies that are relevant to your environment.

Then find the technology prefix for your technology (see the What Event Packs are supplied section above). Log in to the TMTM Server system and navigate to the TMTM installation directory. Change directories to the Samples/EventPacks sub-directory (cd Samples/EventPacks on Linux).

Follow the specific instructions in the ReadMe.txt file for each technology you are importing.