Using Custom Parameters for non-SAP Monitoring

With SAP Solution Manager 7.1

Introduction: One of the main foundations to the template concept with SAP Solution Manager 7.1 is
the use of parameters that can be filled with managed object specific values during the template
activation. This way you can use the same template for several managed objects which increases
transparency and decreases maintenance effort. For standard managed object types several
parameters are available during monitoring activation. So you don’t have to worry about different
system numbers or ports for your ABAP instances, because these are available as parameters and
will be set to the correct value during monitoring activation. For unspecific cluster systems it is difficult
to deliver a standard set of parameters, because they are too various. With Solution Manager 7.1
SP12 we address this issue by introducing custom parameters for unspecific cluster systems. This
guide describes how to create these parameters and how to create an unspecific cluster system that
uses them.

Contents
.......................................................................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction...................................................................................................................................................... 3
Prerequisites .................................................................................................................................................... 3
Create Custom Technology Type.................................................................................................................... 4
Create Technology Type .................................................................................................................................... 4
Assign Parameters ............................................................................................................................................ 5
Create Unspecific Cluster System .................................................................................................................. 7
Add Instances .................................................................................................................................................. 10
Create Custom Data Collector Template ...................................................................................................... 11
Set Up System Monitoring............................................................................................................................. 12
Create custom Template .................................................................................................................................. 12
Create Custom Metric and Alert ....................................................................................................................... 13
Create Custom Metric ...................................................................................................................................... 13
Create Custom Alert ........................................................................................................................................ 15
Activate System Monitoring .......................................................................................................................... 17
Result ............................................................................................................................................................. 18
Additional Metrics.......................................................................................................................................... 19
Generic URL Ping ............................................................................................................................................ 19
Add Custom Parameter to Technical System ................................................................................................... 19
Create Custom Metric and Alert ....................................................................................................................... 19
Result .............................................................................................................................................................. 21

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INTRODUCTION
An unspecific cluster system is a technical system type in LMDB that can contain pretty much anything that a
customer might want to monitor using SAP Solution Manager. There are several data collectors available that
can be used to monitor non-SAP systems with SAP Solution Manager. The Non-SAP Monitoring Wiki
(http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/TechOps/nonSAPMon_home) provides you with an overview and several
how-to guides for non-SAP monitoring. However you might struggle with the setup of non-SAP monitoring,
because you feel that there are parameters for your non-SAP system that have to be evaluated and set during
monitoring configuration.
A good example is the port number for different instances of your non-SAP system. You might want to use the
Generic HTTP Ping data collector to check the availability of your non-SAP system. The non-SAP system is
installed distributed over several hosts and has different port numbers that have to be used to ping the single
instances. To check the availability of the system we want to ping the instance and use the result in System
Monitoring. We have to create the following metric:
An Http ping to the start page of the non-SAP application containing of hostname and port
To achieve this, you could use the Generic HTTP Ping data collector. But now every instance has an own port.
Since in standard the unspecific cluster system doesn’t know the port parameter you would have enter the port
number in the template, which leads to one template per instance …
With SP12 this can be avoided by adding the port parameter to the unspecific cluster system. This way the value
for the port can be maintained per instance in LMDB and later on accessed during the monitoring activation.

PREREQUISITES
If you have access to the host on which the non-SAP instances run you should install SAP Diagnostics and SAP
Hostagents in these hosts. Please refer to SAP note 1858920 for the installation guide for the Diagnostics agent.
The SAP Hostagent is usually installed together with the Diagnostics agent. If you want to install the SAP
Hostagent separately please refer to SAP note 1031096.
The ping will be executed by the Diagnostics agent installed on the host. If you don’t have access to the host,
you can also ping the system e.g. via the Diagnostics agent on SAP Solution Manager itself. In this case you
have to create an additional parameter for the host of the unspecific cluster system and maintain the Solution
Manager host as installation host of the instance. We will get back to this later.

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CREATE CUSTOM TECHNOLOGY TYPE
Create Technology Type
The first step is to create a custom technology type. A technology type describes the architecture of an
unspecific cluster system. Depending on the technology type parameter on system and instance level are
available.
Call transaction SM30 and display the view V_LMDB_FIXVALMAP

In this view you have to add two entries. SAP_UNSPECIFICCLUSTERSYSTEM is for the system level of the 3rd
party system and SAP_UNSPECIFICAPPLICATIONSYSTEM for the instance level.

Owner CIM Class Name CIM Property Name CIM Property Value Value Text

Customer SAP_UNSPECIFICAPPLICATIONSYSTEM TECHNOLOGYTYPE <TechType> <Tech Type>

Customer SAP_UNSPECIFICCLUSTERSYSTEM TECHNOLOGYTYPE <TechType> <Tech Type>

Add two new entries:

Save you entries.

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Assign Parameters
In the next step we create the parameters we need for the non-SAP system and assign them to our technology
type.
Go to transaction SM34 and display the view cluster VC_LMDB_ADD_ATTR:

Now you have to create the attribute you need. For each attribute you have to decide on which managed object
type it is usable. For an unspecific cluster system only Technical System and Technical Instance make sense.
Create a new entry for each parameter that you need. You can assign one parameter to more than one
managed object type. Please note that the attribute key has to start with Z to be in customer namespace.

I created one port for system and one for instance and a host parameter, which can be set on both.

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Now we have to assign these parameters to the previously created technology type.
Select a parameter from the list and navigate to “Restriction by Tech. Types” by double-clicking it in the tree
structure.

Add new entries. For the host parameter I have to add “Technical Instance” and “Technical System”

For the ports I only need to add the respective entity (Technical Instance for the instance port and Technical
System for the system port)

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CREATE UNSPECIFIC CLUSTER SYSTEM
The next step is to create an unspecific cluster system for our technology type and maintain it in LMDB. During
the maintenance in LMDB you will also maintain the new parameters.
Call transaction LMDB and switch to the Technical Systems tab. Select Unspecific Cluster System

Make sure “Unspecific Cluster System” is selected and click “Next”

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Enter a system name and select your custom technology type from the list. Flag the “Add Standard Product
Instance” option to make sure the correct product to use this system for system monitoring is added.

Enter an extended SID and click “Next”

Save you entries in the next step.

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In the next screen you can add the custom parameters on system level.

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Add Instances
Now you have to add all instances that belong to your system (if it has instances). Navigate to the view
“Technical Instances” in the left-hand navigation tree.
For my first instance I have installed a diagnostics agent for the host and the host is available in LMDB. I want to
use the diagnostics agent installed on the host to ping the instance. To do this I create an instance and use the
host it is installed on for the value host during the instance creation.

For this instance I maintain my custom instance parameters on the “Attributes” tab.

Add further instances if necessary.

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CREATE CUSTOM DATA COLLECTOR TEMPLATE
In the next step we have to adjust the SAP delivered data collector to use our custom parameters. We have to
do this on data collector template level for the “Host” parameter, because this parameter is a hidden Collector
Context Parameter (CCP) which cannot be adjusted during the metric creation in the template.
Data Collector templates are maintained in the “Data Collector Maintenance” application.
http://<SolMan host>:<SolMan port>/sap/bc/webdynpro/sap/wd_mai_dpc_main
Select collector type “Diagnostics Agent (Push)” and filter for the “SAP Ping Http Generic” collector:

When you select the collector you can see the collector details and the parameters in the frame below. The
parameter hostname is the one we are interested in.

To change it we have to create a copy of the SAP-delivered data collector template in customer namespace.
Click the “Copy” button on top of the screen:

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On the “Properties” tab enter a new name for your data collector template. Make sure it starts with ZZ to avoid
overwrite during content updates. Adjust collector name and description.

Leave the rest of the field as they are.

On the “Parameters” tab adjust the predefined value for the HOST_NAME parameter and enter @Z_HOST@ (or
whatever you called your custom host parameter).

Save you changes.

SET UP SYSTEM MONITORING

Now you can set up the system monitoring for the non-SAP system.
Create custom Template
At first you have to create a custom template. We will create one template on system level and one on instance
level. I will only create the template on system level to be able to access the system in System Monitoring, the
actual availability metrics will be on instance level.
The template you create must be a copy of the “Generic Product version” template to be able to assign it to your
generic cluster system. Go to transaction SOLMAN_SETUP Technical Monitoring System Monitoring
Step “Template Maintenance” and open the sub-tree “Technical Instance”. Switch to “Edit” mode. Select the
SAP template for “Generic Product version” and click “Create Custom Template”

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Enter a name for the template and save.

Create a template on “Technical System” level the same way.

Create Custom Metric and Alert
The custom metric and alert are created in the template on instance level.
Create Custom Metric
Switch to “Expert Mode” and create a custom metric:

Enter a name for the metric and select an appropriate category, class and unit.

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On the data collection tab select your custom data collector. Enter the name of the custom port parameter as
value for PORT.

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If you want you can also activate the BW data collection to have reporting available for the metric.

Set the threshold type to “Already Rated”

Click “Next”.
As we don’t have a custom alert yet, we just click “Finish” and save our template.

Create Custom Alert

Create a custom alert for your metric.

Make sure the category of the alert matches the category of the metric.

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Click “Next” and assign the metric to the alert.

Click “Finish” and save your template.

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ACTIVATE SYSTEM MONITORING
The last step is to assign the template to the non-SAP system and activate the monitoring.
Go to step “Define Scope” and select your non-SAP system. Click “Next”.

Click the “Assign Templates” link for each row (system and instances) and select the correct template.

Then apply and activate the template.

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RESULT
Now you can open the System Monitoring application for your system and see the result.

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ADDITIONAL METRICS
Generic URL Ping
A typical scenarios we find at customers, is that they want to ping a URL of e.g. a partner that can be accessed
and used by them from the internet, but they don’t have access to the host or even internal network of this
partner. Until now this was only possible with some tricks because there was neither a parameter nor a data
collector that could use plain URLs and ping them.
Now we have the parameter as well as the data collector to ping generic URLs.
If you have only one specific URL that you want to ping from e.g. the SAP ERP system, you can go directly to
the section “Create Custom Metric and Alert” on page 19.
Add Custom Parameter to Technical System
This step only works for custom technical system of type Unspecific Cluster System. On SAP standard technical
system types you can’t assign custom parameters.
Create your custom parameter as described in section “Assign Parameters” on page 5. I created the URL
parameter as parameter on Technical System level.
Add the parameter URL to the technical system or instance in the LMDB. Enter the full URL:

Save your entries.

Create Custom Metric and Alert
Since SP12 we ship the data collector SAP_URL_AVAILABILITY_CHECK which can be used to ping any URL.

This is the data collector we will use to ping the URL.

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In the Template Maintenance create a new custom metric on the correct managed object level.

On the data collection you now have to maintain the URL you want to ping. You can enter your new parameter
here, e.g. @Z_URL@.

Enter the necessary information on the other tabs. For the tab parameter you should use “Already Rated”. The
HTTP return code is also returned in the value fields of the result. But anything other than RC=200 would be
considered unsuccessful anyway, so you can go with the already rated result as well.

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Create a custom alert for the metric and assign the metric to it.

The last step is to assign the template to the correct system and activate it.
Result
In system monitoring you can now see the result for the pinged URL

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