NetMaster Monitors
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Most products in the Unicenter Mainframe Network Management family of products include monitors in their user interface to provide status information of managed resources in real-time. Generically, there are three types of monitors: the alert monitor, the resource monitor, and the graphical monitor. This article takes a high-level look at these monitors and discusses the value of each of them in your environment.
All Unicenter NetMaster products use the alert monitor and resource monitor. These are available on both the 3270 and WebCenter interfaces (if the product uses WebCenter). The graphical monitor is used by Unicenter NetMaster File Transfer Management and Unicenter NetMaster Network Automation and will be available in Unicenter NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP in the upcoming r11.5. The graphical monitor is only available on the 3270 interface.
A number of features are included in all monitors, for example, asynchronous update. This means that changes are displayed immediately, without operator interaction to refresh the display.
All monitors also support multisystem visibility. If you are running your product on multiple LPARs and have linked the product regions together, your monitors will show a consolidated view of alerts or resources from all linked systems.
The following sections discuss each monitor in more detail
Alert Monitor
The alert monitor allows for monitoring by exception. The alert monitor shows what problems you have in your environment at the moment.
The alert monitor is the primary monitor for Unicenter NetMaster Network Management for SNA. It contains the NEWS alerts.
- In Unicenter NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP, the alert monitor shows alerts generated from performance monitoring of TCP/IP resources, and from TCP/IP event detectors.
- In Unicenter NetMaster Network Automation, the alert monitor generates alerts from EventView and from the monitoring of SNA Group resources.
- In Unicenter NetMaster File Transfer Management, the alert monitor generates alerts from EventView and from the monitoring of File Transfer resources.
Most alerts support drill downs and displays to help you diagnose the problem directly from the alert monitor. For alerts raised from a resource, you can use the diagnostic actions from the resource monitor. Other common actions are as follows:
- TT automatically generates a trouble ticket from the alert
- N allows you to add notes to the alert
- T adds your user ID to the alert to show others that you are tracking the issue
- C closes the alert
Resource Monitors
Resource monitors, also known as status monitors, give you the whole picture. They allow you to view and manage all resources defined to your Unicenter NetMaster region, not just those with problems. Each Unicenter Mainframe Network Management product provides a resource monitor which is tailored to the needs of its own resources. However, the underlying monitoring technology is common to all products, which means that disparate resources from multiple products can be combined for an enterprise view of your TCP/IP, SNA, and File Transfer resources.
The resource monitors provide a central point of management for your product, providing an at-a-glance status of your resources. You can enter many commands against each resource to display diagnostic information and performance data, and control the resource itself.
The following resource monitors are available in the Unicenter Mainframe Network Management family of products:
- Unicenter NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP contains the IP resource monitor and the IP node monitor. The IP resource monitor is where you view the resources comprising your IP network on the mainframe. The IP node monitor displays the critical nodes out in the network, and makes sure they are accessible from your mainframe.
- Unicenter NetMaster File Transfer Management contains the file transfer monitor for viewing file transfer applications, and the Active File Transfer Monitor for viewing of current file transfer activity.
- Unicenter NetMaster Network Automation uses a resource monitor to display SNAGRPs.
- Unicenter NetMaster Network Management for SNA uses the resource monitor for NCP monitoring.
All resource monitors require you to first define the resources of interest to you, using express setup (if available), or by manually adding resources from the monitor itself or from administration panels. After you have defined the resources, the resource monitors can be a vital tool for network management.
On the 3270 interface, primary commands are issued from the command line on the resource monitors. Some of the most relevant primary commands are as follows:
Filter - Allows you to apply a filter to the resources that you are most interested in. Filtering can be performed on almost any criteria, most commonly, on resource type, name, or status.
Format - Allows you to add, remove, or reorder the columns on the resource monitor.
Sort - Changes the sort order of resources on the monitor.
You can save your format, filter, and sort preferences in your user profile (/ASADMIN.UP) so they are reused every time you display the monitor.
All resource monitors support line commands that are entered next to each individual resource. To view a list of the most common line commands on the 3270 resource monitors, place a ? next to a resource and press Enter. To view a list of all available commands for a resource, enter ? next to an individual resource.
Graphical Monitor
On the 3270 interface, the graphical monitor provides another way of viewing resources by using colored icons representing groups of resources. The icons update in real-time based on the status of the resources assigned to the icon, working as a traffic light display showing the overall health of your system. You can issue a Zoom command from an icon to display the resources in the normal resource monitor format. From there, all network diagnostics and management actions can be performed.
The graphical monitor has been provided with Unicenter NetMaster Network Automation and Unicenter NetMaster File Transfer Management for several releases. The graphical monitor will be introduced in the upcoming Unicenter NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP r11.5.
Default graphical monitors are provided with the product. However, a key feature of the graphical monitor is that users can build their own icons to represent any group of resources, across any licensed product. The graphical monitor is useful if you want to see a rolled-up summary of resources on a single panel. Many organizations use the graphical monitor in their data centers to give its operations and support staff an easy-to-understand display of overall systems and network health.
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