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User-Centric Proactive IT Management BPPM & Aternity Integration

Prepared by Aternity, Inc. ©2012 Aternity, Inc. All other trademarks or trade names are properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

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Notice of Confidentiality

This document contains confidential and proprietary information (the “Information”) of Aternity Inc. regarding support processes for the Aternity Frontline Performance Intelligence platform. The Information contained herein is disclosed on the condition that it will be used solely in connection with its stated purpose. The recipient of this document shall not directly or indirectly disclose, allow access to, transmit or transfer the Information to any third party without Aternity’s prior written consent. The recipient may disclose the Information only to those of its employees who have a need to know the Information in connection with the stated purpose. The receiving party of this Information agrees that it shall not use the Information for any purposes other than in connection with the stated purpose. For the purpose of protecting the Information, the receiving party will use efforts commensurate with those it employs for the protection of corresponding information of its own, including as a minimum, alerting its employees of the confidential and sensitive nature of the Information.

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Table of Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................... 4

WHAT IS “REAL” END USER EXPERIENCE? ..................................................................... 4

WHAT IS FRONTLINE PERFORMANCE INTELLIGENCE? ........................................................ 4

WHAT IS USER-CENTRIC PROACTIVE IT MANAGEMENT? ................................................... 4

Integration Process - Aternity ................................................................. 5

SNMP/MIB Parameters ........................................................................... 8

incidentID .......................................................................................................... 8

incidentImpact ................................................................................................... 8

numEps.............................................................................................................. 8

incidentDescription ............................................................................................. 8

incidentStatus ..................................................................................................... 9

application ......................................................................................................... 9

activity ............................................................................................................... 9

group ................................................................................................................. 9

Integration Process - BPPM ................................................................... 10

Setting up SNMP for BPPM ................................................................................ 10

Compiling MIB files ........................................................................................... 10

Edit MAP/DAT files ............................................................................................ 11

Creating Cell Rule ............................................................................................. 12

Viewing Data in the BPPM Console ........................................................ 13

Viewing Detailed Incident Information from Aternity .............................. 14

Appendix ............................................................................................. 15

File Names and Descriptions .............................................................................. 15

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Introduction

WHAT IS “REAL” END USER EXPERIENCE?

“Real” End User Experience is defined by the three primary components that dynamically interact to constantly impact how End Users experience the IT Services they consume in real-time:

Physical & Virtual Desktop Performance – Boot profiling, CPU and memory utilization per process, error messages, non-responding processes, crashed applications, Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), etc.

Application Performance – Latency, response time and “key-to-glass” transaction time for user workflows across the widest array of applications and environments, including HTTP(s), RIA/AJAX, Client Server, Java, .NET, XenApp/ICA, Terminal Server/RDP, VDI/RDP, etc.

User Productivity – Application, module and function usage statistics, usage trail, and execution time/time spent, e.g. trades executed, calls closed, emails sent, invoices created, etc.

WHAT IS FRONTLINE

PERFORMANCE

INTELLIGENCE?

Frontline Performance Intelligence is the result of the real-time aggregation, analysis, correlation of all the performance metrics that define and impact real end user experience. By transforming end user experience metrics into actionable business intelligence, Frontline Performance Intelligence becomes a strategic business enabler. Frontline Performance Intelligence is enabled by self-learning, statistical modeling of dynamic performance baselines, preemptive problem detection, dynamic isolation of impacted users, and automatic identification of business impact and probable cause. With Frontline Performance Intelligence, enterprises rapidly gain the agility required to address end user issues before they impact business results.

WHAT IS USER-CENTRIC PROACTIVE IT MANAGEMENT?

Industry-leading analysts have established that in 74% of the reported help desk cases, IT first learns about performance and availability problems when the users call the Help Desk. That’s because existing application performance management products are data center focused, and provide very little visibility into “real” end user experience. User-centric, proactive IT Management leverages Frontline Performance Intelligence to address this critical problem at its core. By doing so, it empowers enterprises to attain the required service levels demanded by users, while containing the costs associated with a “real-time” enterprise.

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Integration Process - Aternity

This document overviews the integration of Aternity’s Incident Console and BMC’s BPPM.

Utilizing Aternity’s SNMP Integration, we can configure data to be sent to BPPM via SNMP traps. Configurations are made in the Aternity Console (Image 1,2). The first configuration change is setting the trap configurations (Image 3), which includes identifying the SNMP version, community, and receiver. The next configuration is performed at the activity level under the Monitors tab (Image 2,3). It is recommended to only send an SMTP trap on incident “Open” only. Add the alert configurations for each activity desired.

Image 1

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Image 2

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Image 3

Once these configurations are in place, Aternity is ready to send information specified by the MIB file for the SNMP trap.

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SNMP/MIB Parameters

There are two MIB files that need to be utilized for the integration. One is the Aternity 5.0 mib file (attached in appendix). This contains the entire data definitions specific to Aternity’s SNMP traps. The second is IANA-ITU-ALARM-TC-MIB (attached in appendix), which Aternity’s MIB file is dependent on, and will need to be passed to BMC for compiling. For the Aternity MIB file, there are several parameters that are sent in the array which specify many of the attributes that describe the incident. Since we are dealing with a monitored alert, we will be describing the aternityMonitoredAlarmInfo Object. The aternityMonitoredAlarmInfo Object contains the following information:

incidentID incidentImpact numEps

incidentDescription incidentStatus application activity group

incidentID Value type: Integer Description: The Aternity Incident ID (as seen in the UI) Other: This value provides the incident ID that will be passed through the URL

incidentImpact

Value type: Integer Description: The impact of the incident detected by the aternity system Other: The integer passed describes the severity of the incident as set in MIB

file

numEps Value type: Integer Description: The number of affected EPs in the detected incident

incidentDescription Value type: String Description: The textual description of the detected incident Other: The string is a concatenated view of the columns describing the

incident in the UI

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incidentStatus Value type: String Description: The status of the detected incident

application Value type: String Description: The application of the detected incident

activity

Value type: String Description: The activity of the detected incident

group Value type: String Description: The group of the detected incident

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Integration Process - BPPM

There are several steps to be performed to integrate with BPPM.

Setting up SNMP for BPPM

Edit the mcxa.conf, under pw\server\etc, and enable the snmp adapter by adding in the following lines at the end of the file: [Snmp] Engine = MA::ESnmpTrap # --Modify the following value(s) according to your environment-- # Replace by the actual destination cell (if different from the global) ServerName = <cellname> ---

Where <cellname> is the name of the cell in your BPPM system. It is typically pncell_<hostname>, but you can choose to name it differently during the install.

Compiling MIB files

You'll need to convert the mib files to a map file, and also install the resulting baroc files to the cell. In the documentation (Impact User Guide, a copy of the guide is accompanied with this document) it covers this using the SNMP Adapter Configuration Manager. That is a separate install from BPPM (it is also available from EPD, under the BPPM section). You can use it to make the process easier and more automated using the mib2map utility. The output is 4 files.

1. The mcsnmptrapd.map and mcsnmptrapd.dat go into pw/server/etc directory. (A copy of the updated files are accompanied with this document)

2. The mcsnmptrapdmibe.baroc and mcsnmptrapdmib.baroc go into

pw/server/etc/<cellname>/kb/classes. (A copy of the updated files are accompanied with this document)

3. Edit the .load file in the same directory and add:

mcsnmptrapdmibe mcsnmptrapdmib

After this, you'll need to restart the ProactiveNet Event Adpaters and the Proactivenet Impact Manager. However, to prevent the cell from becoming out of sync with the

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rate process, it is recommended to restart the BPPM Server with 'pw system start' (that will stop and restart all of the processes, except the ProactiveNet Event Adapters; this process should be restarted separately).

Edit MAP/DAT files

If you utilize the default files with no configuration from the mib2map utility, you can manually add the SNMP information to BPPM’s Core Event slots already available. This will keep you from having to create a custom view to see the data. The following is one method of addressing this (for additional/advanced configuration options, please see the Knowledge Base Reference Guide in the appendix): Under the map file, overwrite the SNMP Class data for the aternityMonitoredAlarm (a copy of the updated file is accompanied with this document): CLASS SNMP_aternityMonitoredAlarm $TrapOID equals /^1\.3\.6\.1\.4\.1\.23292\.4\.2($|\.)/ Incident_ID = GetListElem ($var, 0) severity = GetListElem ($var, 1) Number_Endpoints_Affected = GetListElem ($var, 2) msg = GetListElem ($var, 3) Application = GetListElem ($var, 5) Activity = GetListElem ($var, 6) Group = GetListElem ($var, 7) mc_long_msg = printf("http://<Aternity Server URL>/Management/#/incident/impact?username=<BMC Username for Aternity>&password=<BMC Password for Aternity>&incidentId=%s",$var0) END

These changes will map the SNMP data to existing slots in the BPPM console Under the dat file, under the ENUMERATION for incidentImpact, change the text values to all uppercase. The ENUMERATION for the Core Event severity will only accept uppercase values, otherwise it will default all severity to “OK”: ENUMERATION 1.3.6.1.4.1.23292.3.3 incidentImpact {OK(0),CRITICAL(1),MAJOR(2),MINOR(3)}

Restart the ProactiveNet Event Adapters and the ProactiveNet Impact Manager.

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Creating Cell Rule

In order to accommodate different types of SNMP notifications (increase/decrease severity, open, close), it is necessary to incorporate a rule to treat each incident differently based on the type of incident. If you do not, BPPM’s default behavior is to treat every incident as a new/open incident.

1. To create a rule, place the mcsnmptrapd.mrl file (a copy of the updated file is accompanied with this document) in the pw/server/etc/<cellname>/kb/rules folder.

2. Edit the .load file in the same directory and add:

Mcsnmptrapd

3. To compile the new file, open a command prompt and enter:

C:> mccomp –n <Cell Name>

You can turn on tracing and logging levels with the parameters –t and –v if the new rule you have created is not compiling properly.

Restart the ProactiveNet Event Adapters and the Proactivenet Impact Manager.

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Viewing Data in the BPPM Console

With the configurations set above to the Core Event slots, you will be able to view Aternity incident alerts via the BPPM console under the All Event Collectors tree view (Image 4). This view shows the time of the incident, the severity, a brief description of the issue (which includes the application and activity), the host/host address (which is the Aternity management server), and details which are laid out in the panes below. The highlighted area “A” identifies the link which you can select to open the Aternity incident dashboard, for more detailed information about the incident. The “Others” tab, marked by “B”, can be expanded to show more detailed information about the incident, including the group that has been affected, and the number of endpoints affected.

Image 4

A

B

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Viewing Detailed Incident Information from Aternity

This is a view of the Aternity Incident Dashboard, which is displayed when the link from the previous image is selected. This contains detailed information about the incident, including time of incident, measurements, and detailed information about the endpoints affected (Image 5).

Image 5

(Note: It is recommended to create a default username and password to pass with the URL to avoid

credential prompts by Aternity. For the BPPM console to be able to link directly to the Aternity incident

console, you will have to set up user credentials to be supplied in the URL on the BPPM console page. In this case, the URL syntax will be:

http://ManagementServer:Port/Management/#/incident/impact?username=defaultUser&pass

word=defaultPassword&incidentId=incidentID )

Image 6

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Appendix

File Names and Descriptions Aternity 5.0 MIB This file contains the MIB information that is sent from Aternity as an SNMP

trap during external incident notification.

IANA-ITU-ALARM-TC-

MIB file

This is an MIB file that is referenced by the Aternity MIB file that contains a

more comprehensive list of probable cause reasons

Knowledge Base Reference

Guide

User guide provided by BMC for advanced cell behavior/rule creation

Impact User Guide User guide provided by BMC for general administration

mcsnmptrapdmibe.baroc Class file required for SNMP integration

mcsnmptrapdmib.baroc Class file required for SNMP integration

mcsnmptrapd.mrl Rule file required for SNMP integration

mcsnmptrapd.map Mapping file for Aternity MIB file

mcsnmptrapd.dat Enumeration data for the Aternity MIB file

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About Aternity Aternity redefines real end user experience management by delivering the industry’s first Frontline Performance Intelligence (FPI) Platform, effectively transforming every device – mobile, virtual, and physical – into a self-monitoring platform that is user experience aware. By arming organizations with user-centric, proactive IT management capabilities, the Aternity FPI Platform dramatically reduces business disruption and increases user productivity. With Aternity’s 360 degree view of end user experience, advanced analytics for preemptive problem detection and cause analysis, and right-time decision support capabilities, Global 1000 enterprises finally have the empirical evidence on how application performance and usage impacts business results, providing them with a path for constant improvement. Aternity has received prestigious industry recognition from the American Business Awards, the International Business Awards, Best in Biz Awards, The Boston Business Journal, The Marker and NetworkWorld Magazine. The company was recently positioned by Gartner in the 2011 Visionary Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring and was recognized in Enterprise Management Associates’ 2012 Cloud Application Performance Management (APM) Radar Report™ as the top vendor providing an APM point solution earning EMA’s “Value Leader” distinction, while also being recognized as an APM elite vendor providing the market’s “Most Comprehensive Endpoint Diagnostics.” To further evaluate how Aternity can bring winning performance to your frontline and to find out if you qualify for a free evaluation and proof of concept, visit www.aternity.com. EndUserExperience2Day, sponsored by Aternity, is a freely available, award-winning news and blog portal that can be accessed at www.enduserexperience.info. Follow Aternity on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook, recommend us on LinkedIn, join us on Google+, and see us on YouTube.