agent-less system and application monitoring with hp openview

© 2004 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.The information contained herein is subject to change without notice

Agent-less system and application monitoring with HP OpenView

HP Universe 2005

Stefan BergsteinSoftware Architect, HP

August 28, 2015 2

Agenda• Comparison of agent based and agent-less

approaches• Remote monitoring with OVOW and OVOU• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

based remote monitoring with OVO/Windows• Remote monitoring with Next-generations

operations management

Comparison of agent based and agent-less approaches

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Agent-less conceptsConsoles

Remote Monitoring Station

Management Server

Agent-less Managed Nodes


… …

•Managed node has no OVO agent installed

• Remote monitoring usually done from a proxy system

•Monitoring based on standard protocols like WMI, SNMP, etc

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Comparison of agent based and agent-less

Agent-less

• Provide easier and quick deployment• No agent maintenance and upgrade

effort needed• No additional resources (software,

memory) needed on the managed system: Some business critical servers are ‘untouchable’ - NOTHING can be installed on them

• Low-cost solution• Can easily be combined with agent-

based• To be applied to less mission-critical

environment• May be used to monitor “unsupported

platforms”, low-cost utility servers (e.g. print servers) or devices you cannot install addition software (printers, routers)

Agent based

• More functionality, especially actions• Autonomous control of the environment –

even if network is down• Secure communication between server

and managed node• Superior asynchronous event processing• Message suppression at the agent – less

operational communication to server• Full access to monitoring data• Well suited for mission-critical server

management

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Strengths and weaknesses of agent-less monitoring

Feature Weaknesses Strengths

Cost x

Maintenance x

Deployment Speed x

Depth of Function x

Network Load x

Local Server Load x

Continuous Operations x

Command and Control x

Remote monitoring with OVOW and OVOU

Overview

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Background• OVOU and OVOW products offer agent-based

system and application management−Deep monitoring, sophisticated command & control−Autonomous control of the environment −Secure communication between server and managed

node−Agent and instrumentation deployment requires time and

effort• Agent-less monitoring is “good enough” for some

systems−Use OVOU and OVOW remote monitoring features−Next-generations operations offers comprehensive agent-

less monitoring

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Remote monitoring with OV Smart Plug-ins• Smart Plug-ins (SPI) for OVOU and OVOW are

usually doing agent based monitoring• Novell Netware SPI (part of OVOW OS-SPI) and

the SPI for VMWare are remote agent-less Smart Plug-ins

• SAP, Oracle, and J2EE SPIs can manage applications remotely.

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Agent-less monitoring with OVOW and OVOU• SNMP Monitoring−SNMP Traps and event−SNMP MIB Values

• WMI for MS Windows nodes−Based on embedded scripting and advanced threshold

polices

• Remote monitoring using SSH, remsh, or Open Source probes− Retrieve data from remote system using OVO’s scheduled

commands− Feed collected data into open APIs

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) based remote monitoring with OVO/Windows

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Set-up Agent-less Monitoring Overview

1. Determine architecture and deployment model2. Configure proxy node(s) and remote nodes3. Deploy agent to proxy node(s)4. WMI remote monitoring:

• Develop VB Scripts• Develop schedule task policies, task type “Command”• Develop threshold monitoring policies with source type

“External”• Deploy VB Script to proxy agent(s) via instrumentation

deployment• Deploy policies to proxy agent(s)

5. Fine-tune environment

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Deployment Architecture 1:Agent Hosted on Central Management Server

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Deployment Architecture 2: Dedicated Proxy System

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Deployment Architecture 3:Large Environments

November 12th-14th, 2003 HP Software Universe 16

Agent-less set-up: Configure nodes (1)

Two Options:

1. Agent-less Proxy Node(s) Only2. All Remote Nodes Individually

Proxy and/or remote

nodes need to be configured,

otherwise messages would be

filtered out at the OVOW

management server!

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Two Options:1. Agent-less Proxy Node(s) Only

• Regular agent node (self management and remote management)• Agent node can be management server node• Loads agent-less policies and scripts• All messages use originating nodename = proxy• (Automatic and operator-initiated) commands naturally executed

on proxy – no need to specify proxy node with these actions• Optionally, specify remote node in other message properties

(object, message text) so that information is not lost• Optionally, maintain disjoint service trees per remote node

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2. All Remote Nodes Individually• Proxy node needs to have agent installed• Remote node will not install an

OVO agent• Node must be configured with system type

“Other” with OS set to “SNMP” other “Unknown” • Messages use originating nodename = remote node, so

messages will show up under the correct node in the message browser, node status propagation will work as expected

• Hosted services are possible, correctly hosted on the remote nodes

• (Automatic and operator-initiated) commands executed on proxy – need to specify proxy node with these actions

• Use discovery options with the node configuration editor to bulk import nodes into OVOW

Avoid system types other than “Other” as with automatic

deployment enabled these agent would implicitly be deployed an agent and hence become agent-

based nodes

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Set-up Agent-less: Using WMIWMI• Prevalent on Windows systems• Will not use the WMI policy type – as it can only monitor local

objects• Typically a combination of a scheduled task policy (collector)

launching a VB Script and a threshold monitor policy (analyzer) will do the job

• Scripting API allows standardized access to managed objects, both locally and remotely, e.g. via VB Scripts

• VB Script is called from Scheduled Task or Threshold Monitoring policy

• VB Script needs to specify node name• Example:

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts://" & “<remote_node>” & "/root/cimv2")for each Disk in objWMIService.ExecQuery ("select * from Win32_LogicalDisk")WScript.echo Disk.DeviceId & " : " & Disk.FreeSpaceNext

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Further information• White Paper on using OVOW for Agent-less

Monitoring• http://ovweb.external.hp.com/lpe/doc_serv

select product "operations/performance for Windows", version: "a.07.21“

• Includes documentation and example scripts

http://ovweb.external.hp.com/lpe/doc_serv

Remote monitoring with Next-generations operations management

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Reducing Customer TCO with a Component Architecture

HP OpenView Common Management Environment (CME)

The CME benefits for customers:

• GUI-level integration:provides one look and feel andworkflow integration across multipleproducts

• Data-level integration:reduces efforts: you need to set-up andmaintain your managed environment onlyonce

• Common Components:increases security and reduces workloadbecause products are sharing onecomponent infrastructure andcommunication mechanism

common data model

Common components(secure communication, supportability etc.)

common user interface

NNM SD NextGenOVO

Web

Services interface

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HP Service Desk

Common User Interface

NNM

Next-Generation Operations

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•Non-intrusively collects availability and performance data

• Requires no installation and maintenance effort for agent-infrastructure

• Lowers TCO

• Monitors a broad set of systems and applications out-of-the-box, e.g:

•OS Services•Proxy•Web Server •Database•Application Server

Agent-less Monitoring

Applicationserver

Mail server

Web serverDatabase

server

Mobile informationserver

Next-Gen Operations Management server

Console

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Agent-less MonitoringDeployment Architecture

Remote Consoles


Management Server

Agent-less Managed Nodes



…

…… …

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Technical background

• Discovery helps to find and configure managed systems

• Management stations monitors remote systems

• User defines monitoring configuration in new console

• Out-of-the-box polices• Extensible collection architecture• Well-known OVO policies• Ease-of-use through new

configuration concept• Data logged in embedded

performance component• Graphing of metrics• Incident management

Management Station

ThresholdPolicies

Embeddedscripting EPC

OVIS probes

telnetSSH

3rd

party

systems,applications, databases,

Internet, services

Next-Gen Operations Management Server

Configuration Messages and Metrics

Discovery Monitoring

Console

Monitoringparameters

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Out-of-the-box agent-less monitoring

Out-of-the-box monitoring Embedded technology• RedHat OS• SUSE OS• Process, file system, logfile• Oracle• BEA Weblogic• Apache web server• VMWare (2nd release)• Samba• Squid (Proxy Server) (2nd release)• Sendmail (2nd release)

• SSH (Secure shell)• Telnet• NTP (Network Time)• TCP (User defined port)• ICMP (Network Response Time)• POP3 (Post Office Protocol)• SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer)• HTTP/S (Web Servers)• SOAP 1.1• Web services

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Remote Monitoring Components

Scheduled Task

EPC (CODA)

Measurment Threshold

policiespolicies

OV Operations HTTPS Agent

Logfile Entry

policies

Logfile Cache

Probes

SNMP Interceptor

SNMP Event

OV Internet Services- ICMP- HTTP, TCP- SMTP, POP3- NTP

Remote CommandExecutes cmdon remotesystem and returns output

Remote LogfileTransfers logfile to logfilecache

Process / ServiceReturnsprocess listor service list

Custom- Your probe- Nagios plugin- Nessus- syslog-ng- WBEM

policies

Remote Monitoring Station Components

Configure probes and monitoring

Incidents Graphs

RemoteData

Web ServiceGet data fromWeb Servicethat is descibedby WSDL file

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Using further toolsExample: Calls method of web service described by WSDL

• Collections methods are extensible

• OVO’s embedded scripting supports− Retrieving data− Sending data to

• monitor agent• EPC (CODA)• message agent

• Interesting sources− www.nagios.org− search.cpan.org

# --- EXECUTE COLLECTOR ---

use SOAP::Lite;

my $wsdl = "http://www.xmethods.net/sd/StockQuoteService.wsdl";

my $stockSymbol = "<stockSymbol></stockSymbol>";

my $value = SOAP::Lite

-> service($wsdl)

-> getQuote($stockSymbol);

# --- TRACE ---

$ConsoleMessage->MsgText("Output: $value");

$ConsoleMessage->Send();

# --- WRITE VALUE WITH OPCMON ---

$ExecuteCommand->Command("opcmon AgtlPerlWebServiceMonitor<host></host>=$value");

$ExecuteCommand->Start();

# --- WRITE VALUE TO CODA ---

my $src = new Source;

$src->Add("<host></host>", $value);

$Policy->StoreCollection("CODA\\\\AGTL\\\\PERLSOAP\\\\QUOTE\\\\gauge", $src);

http://www.nagios.org/

Summary

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Summary• OVOU and OVOW have agent based history, but

provides the means for agent-less monitoring• Certain SPIs offer remote monitoring• Next-generations operations offers comprehensive

agent-less monitoring

HP OpenView Operations products are offering agent-based and agent-less monitoring to enable IT departments to choose a combination of both

approaches depending on their monitoring needs and requirements

August 28, 2015 32

Questions and Answers