CA Access Gateway (SPS) monitoring tools

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SITEMINDER

Issue/Introduction

How to monitor the CA Access Gateway (SPS) in order to get the count of the current threads in use at a given moment, and how to keep them historically to consult the thread amount for yesterday at a given time?

Resolution

There's no out of the box tool to monitor the amount of threads that the CA Access Gateway (SPS) is using an instant.

When running on Linux OS, using OS tools will help to determine the amount of threads the process is using.

Note that the CA Access Gateway (SPS) has several processes, corresponding to the embedded component Apache, and Tomcat.

So, running ps command, get the PID for both Apache (httpd) and Tomcat (java):

# ps auxww
nobody 1868 0.0 0.4 855464 8936 ? Sl 16:42 0:00 /{home_sps}/httpd/bin/httpd -d /{home_sps}/httpd -k start -D SSL
nobody 2432 57.9 24.1 3129848 448636 ? Sl 16:42 1:21 /{home_java}/bin/java -ms256m -mx1024m -server -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=256M -Dcatalina.base=/{home_sps}/Tomcat -Dcatalina.home=/{home_sps}/Tomcat -Djava.io.tmpdir=/{home_sps}/Tomcat/temp -DHTTPClient.log.mask=0 -DHTTPClient.Modules=HTTPClient.RetryModule|org.tigris.noodle.NoodleCookieModule|HTTPClient.DefaultModule -Dlogger.properties=/{home_sps}/Tomcat/properties/logger.properties -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/{home_sps}/Tomcat/endorsed -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 -DIWACONFIGHOME=/{home_sps}/proxy-engine/conf/sts-config/globalconfig -DNETE_WA_ROOT= -DPWD=/{home_sps} -classpath /{home_sps}/Tomcat/bin/proxybootstrap.jar:/{home_sps}/Tomcat/properties:/{home_sps}/resources:/opt/jdk8u275-b01/lib/tools.jar:/opt/jdk8u275-b01/lib/tools.jar:/{home_sps}/Tomcat/bin/bootstrap.jar:/{home_sps}/Tomcat/lib/smi18n.jar:/{home_sps}/agentframework/java/bc-fips-1.0.2.3.jar com.netegrity.proxy.ProxyBootstrap -config /{home_sps}/proxy-engine/conf/server.conf

Using the watch command, and filtering the "Threads" line, to get each second how many threads the component runs:

For the above Apache 1868 process:

# watch -n 1 'cat /proc/1868/status | grep Threads:'

Every 1.0s: cat /proc/1868/status | grep Threads: sps.example.com: Tue Feb 6 16:47:18 2024

Threads: 27

For the above Tomcat 2432 process:

# watch -n 1 'cat /proc/2432/status | grep Threads:'

Every 1.0s: cat /proc/2432/status | grep Threads: sps.example.com: Tue Feb 6 16:44:10 2024

Threads: 41

# ls /proc/2432/task | wc -l
41

These are rudimentary tools and they don't allow to keep historical data about the performances of the CA Access Gateway (SPS) and the Policy Server, as both are dependent.

As such, Broadcom offers 2 tools to monitor liveness and keep track of the historical data. The amount of threads is only available for the Policy Server. But for the CA Access Gateway (SPS), to get a bunch of interesting performance data, APM (Wily - Application Performance Management) (1)(2)(3), OneView monitor (4), and SNMP (5).

With SNMP, from other tools from the market, pull the Policy Server snmp mib base data to get current values and stock them.

In the Policy Server mib file:

/{home_policy_server}/mibs/NetegrityMIB.mib:

policyServerMaxThreads Integer32,
policyServerAvailableThreads Integer32,
policyServerThreadsInUse Integer32,

Additional Information

Data Monitoring Using DX Application Performance Management
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/symantec-security-software/identity-security/siteminder/12-8/configuring/access-gateway-configuration/data-monitoring-using-ca-application-performance-management.html
CA SSO Policy Server Metrics
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/it-operations-management/apm-for-siteminder/13-4/metrics/ca-sso-policy-server-metrics.html
CA SSO Web Agent Metrics
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/it-operations-management/apm-for-siteminder/13-4/metrics/ca-sso-web-agent-metrics.html
Use OneView Monitor to Analyze Performance
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/symantec-security-software/identity-security/siteminder/12-8/administrating/use-oneview-monitor-to-analyze-performance.html
Monitoring SiteMinder Using SNMP
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/symantec-security-software/identity-security/siteminder/12-8/administrating/monitoring-siteminder-using-snmp.html