Monitoring SLES with Health Monitoring Services

An important aspect of managing SLES is simply being aware of how your server is performing. OES Linux reduces the complexity of this task through leveraging the capabilities of Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM). WBEM is a standard, Internet-based technology designed to consolidate the various tasks of enterprise server management. Through WBEM, Health Monitoring Services (HMS) can be used to easily monitor many important server health-related factorsincluding CPU utilization, system memory, running processes, and network utilization.

OES Linux uses the Common Information Model Object Manager (CIMOM) daemon, from the OpenWBEM project, to manage the health monitoring environment. The CIMOM daemon performs this function by accessing one or more Providers that conform to WBEM standards. These Providers facilitate the gathering of SLES and OES statistics used by HMS. For administrative use, this information is then gathered and consolidated for display in iManagerso you can easily keep tabs on your server health while performing day-to-day administrative routines.

One of the great things about HMS is its potential for future capabilities. This is the first release of HMS and is geared primarily at monitoring essential health-related information. In future releases, system alerts and robust analysis should further enhance the capabilities of HMS and make this one of the most important server monitoring tools in your arsenal.

Installing HMS

Health Monitoring Services can be installed as an optional component during the OES Linux installation. HMS can also be installed later through YaST.

NOTE

Basic server health is available for any server throughout your organization, but for complete health monitoring, Health Monitoring Services must be installed on all your OES Linux servers.

To install Health Monitoring Services using YaST, complete the following steps:

1.	Access YaST from a terminal using yast, or from a graphical environment using yast2 or the YaST launcher from the application menu.
2.	Select the Network Services category in YaST. From within this category, locate and select the Novell Health Monitoring module. This module will detect that the RPMs for HMS are missing and ask if you want to install them. Select Continue to install the necessary packages.
3.	At the conclusion of the software installation, SuSEconfig is executed to update the system configuration. When this completes, the configuration of the OES component will begin automatically.
4.	At the Novell Health Monitoring LDAP Server Configuration screen, enter the following information and click Next to complete the installation: Local or Remote Directory Server Select the radio button that indicates whether eDirectory is running on the local server or a remote server. Directory Server Address If a remote eDirectory server is in use, enter the IP address for this server. Admin Name with Context Enter the eDirectory administrator's credentials using fully qualified dot notation, for example, cn=admin.o=novell. Admin Password Enter the password for the administrator user. Port Details If necessary, select this button to change the configured ports for the eDirectory server you specified earlier. The default LDAP port for unencrypted communications is 389 and port 636 is used for SSL-encrypted communications.

After installing HMS, the OpenWBEM CIMOM daemon can be manually started, stopped, or restarted using the main daemon startup script /etc/init.d/owcimomd. To start the CIMOM daemon, execute the following command:

 # /etc/init.d/owcimomd start 

Configuring HMS

Configuring and accessing HMS is performed through iManager. All HMS- related capabilities can be found under the Monitor Servers link, in the Servers category of the left navigation frame.

The first time this page is accessed, you must select a container where your HMS configuration will be stored. Although not required, it is normally a good idea to select the container in which your OES Linux server exists for this purpose. After the HMS objects have been created in eDirectory, you are then able to configure a list of servers to monitor.

The first server you should add to your server list is your OES Linux server. To add your server to this list, select Add, and then provide the required information (server name and IP address or DNS name). You are also given a choice of the type of monitoring you would like to perform. The two options you have are as follows:

• Robust Health If the server you are monitoring has OpenWBEM installed, Robust Health will provide the monitoring capabilities for the following categories:

  Memory

  Operating System

  Process/Threads

  Network

  CPU

• Simple Server Status If OpenWBEM is not available on the specified server, this option can be used to provide a simple UP/DOWN status of the server.

After a server has been added to your server watch list, the Monitor Servers page will be refreshed with an overview of the server's health, as shown in Figure 6.8.

Figure 6.8. The Monitor Servers overview page in iManager.

To display the Quick Status of a server's health, click on the server icon in the server watch list. For detailed information on server statistics, click the server name itself. You can then drill down on each monitored category further for complete diagnostic of your server.

NOTE

For additional information on Health Monitoring Services, see the online OES documentation.