System Monitoring

The System Monitoring application in SAP Solution Manager provides an overview of the current status of technical systems, including their associated instances, databases and hosts.

System Monitoring is based on automated checks in regular time intervals in the four categories Availability, Performance, Exceptions, and Configuration. In each of these categories, several metrics and corresponding thresholds can be defined per managed object.

The configuration is based on a template concept. Pre-defined templates can be used as a starting point to derive own customer specific templates.

The System Monitoring application provides information about the current status according to the last measurement of each metric. In addition, alerts will be created and can be handled via the Alert Inbox in case thresholds are violated.

System Monitoring provides the following features:

  • Status overview regarding technical system including instances, databases and hosts
  • Visualization of metrics and events with their current rating and last reported values
  • Drill down capabilities from status information on technical system to single metrics
  • Visualize metrics and events including thresholds and current rating/value

  • Jump-in capability into metric monitor to display historical metric values including interactive selection of the timeframe to be displayed

This application is now based on SAPUI5 technology. The user interface has been enhanced considerably compared to the previous version in SAP Solution Manager 7.1 and is now harmonized with the other monitoring functionalities.

Main Use Cases

System Monitoring allows to detect issues early and prevent major disruptions by proactively monitoring the general health of the IT landscape. The goals addressed by System Monitoring include:

  • Transparency: visibility of the overall health of the landscape
  • Proactive monitoring: detect upcoming problems before they become critical for the business
  • Single Source of truth: collects alerts from all systems in your landscapes in one central place


Benefits

  • Mass-configuration via templates
  • Seamless integration with Alert Inbox and reporting/dashboard capabilities 
  • Landscape awareness: relationships between managed objects belonging to the same technical system are taken into account
  • Support of most of the technologies in an SAP system landscape
  • Integrated Self-Monitoring capabilities to detect issues with collection and processing of monitoring data
  • Integration with IT Calendar and Work Mode Management


Mobile FIORI Application

The SAP Fiori application "Monitor Systems" is optimized for mobile devices (for more information check the SAP Help).

Initial Setup

Navigate to the Guided Procedure for configuration of System Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager configuration and execute the setup activities.

Entry Point: Starting from the SAP Fiori Launchpad of SAP Solution Manager, navigate to the tile group SAP Solution Manager Configuration and open the tile Configuration (All Scenarios). Alternatively, run the transaction SOLMAN_SETUP.

Navigate to Application Operation > System Monitoring

To set up System Monitoring, you have to follow the steps in the Guided Procedure.


General Approach:

  • If you configure System Monitoring the first time, start by performing the sub-steps under step 2. These steps only have to be performed in the beginning or whenever changes to the settings configured in this section are required.
  • If you want to maintain monitoring templates (e.g. adding or removing new metrics/alerts, changing thresholds etc.), you can start directly with step 4. To activate any changes, continue with steps 5 and 6 afterward.
  • If you want to activate monitoring of a system (or several systems) using already existing templates, start directly with step 5.

Step 1: Overview

This step is the entry point and overview page of the system monitoring configuration. System Monitoring includes technical systems, DBMS and hosts.

The traffic light reflects the current configuration status of the monitoring infrastructure.
 

Step 2:  Configure Infrastructure

In the sub-steps of step 2, you configure the monitoring infrastructure, including important global settings for alerting, housekeeping etc.

Under Steps, you see a list and a status overview of the sub-steps of the Configure Infrastructure step.
 

Step 2.1: Check Prerequisites

In this step, you use the automatic activities to check the prerequisites for the configuration of the System & Application Monitoring infrastructure.
 

Step 2.2: Configure Manually

In this step, you perform manual activities to configure the System and Application Monitoring infrastructure.

All activities in step 2.2 are optional. For more information, see the documentation (click on Display). For more information on the activity Extractor Framework see here. The activity Content Customization is used to change the content and appearance of notifications (email or SMS) and the Analysis Report (by default attached to email notifications).
 

Step 2.3: Default Settings

In this step you can enable or disable certain functions for the System & Application Monitoring on a global level (i.e. these settings affect all alerts from System Monitoring). It is possible to overwrite these settings on the level of templates as well as alerts

- Incidents: Maintain settings for automatic incident creation in SAP Solution Manager ITSM.
- Notifications: Maintain settings for automatic creation of notifications (email or SMS).
- Third-Party components: Only relevant if the Alert Consumer BAdI interface is used.
- Automatic Alert Confirmation: Alert groups are automatically confirmed when they are 'closed' (i.e. when the --status of the underlying event changes).

Caution: Please be aware that activation of these functionalities by default affects all alerts in System Monitoring. In most cases, it is better to activate them on the level of individual alerts.
 

Step 2.4: Reporting Settings

In this step, the BI content for BI-based reporting is activated. When entering the step, a health check is executed checking the readiness of the SAP Solution Manager internal BW. Afterward, you can continue with the BI content activation.
 

Step 2.5: Housekeeping

In this step, you can specify the lifetimes of the metrics in the BI and the data in the Alert Store and Event Store.

BI retention times: Metrics are stored in BW InfoCubes for different aggregation levels. For each aggregation level, there is a pair of 'twin cubes'. The time specified is the time interval after which the data loading will be switched from one to the other InfoCube of one pair. The retention times are minimum times. Note that this a global setting and cannot be changed for individual managed objects.

Alert Store housekeeping: You can specify after which time alert groups are confirmed automatically. This is defined as the number of days after the alert group was 'closed', i.e. after a status change of the underlying event (red or yellow to any other status). When confirmed, the alert group will disappear from the alert inbox, but can still be found via the Alert Search. Furthermore, you can specify when the alert group is finally deleted (after prior confirmation).
 

Step 2.6: Workmode Settings

In this step, you configure the standard behavior of System Monitoring, depending on the work mode. The settings affect all metrics and alerts within System Monitoring.

By removing the check mark for any work mode, the monitoring will completely be switched off during the active period of the work mode for any managed object for which the corresponding work mode has been scheduled, i.e. metrics/events will not be updated anymore on the level of the Event Calculation Engine. In particular, no alerts will be generated during that time.

It is recommended to remove the flag for one or several work modes (e.g. Planned Downtime, Maintenance) to be able to have  a 'switch' available for deactivating monitoring temporarily by scheduling the corresponding work mode for the affected managed object(s).

However, this is a global setting only - if the flag is removed, this setting cannot be overwritten on template/alert level! (Individual metrics/alerts can be deactivated for specified work modes in the templates.)

Warning: Do not remove the flag for No workmode configured - it will deactivate the monitoring for all managed objects for which no work mode has been scheduled.
 

Step 2.7: Update Content

A content version contains SAP monitoring content for all System and Application Monitoring scenarios. When a content version is applied, it updates the content for all scenarios, so this step need not be performed for each scenario separately.

The monitoring content contains monitoring templates (pre-defined lists of metrics/alerts for the different supported technologies) and corresponding data collector templates. When required, SAP publishes a new content. Changes in the new content version can include:

- New metrics/alerts
- Changes to existing objects (typically corrections for incorrectly defined metrics/alerts).

New content versions are implemented using the Rapid Content Delivery. This requires - among other prerequisites - connections from your SAP Solution Manager to the SAP Service Marketplace. If your security policy does not allow this, it is also possible to download the content and apply it manually in your SAP Solution Manager.

When to apply a new content? There is no recommended strategy how frequently to check for a new content version and apply it. In general, content updates are not required as long as monitoring is working. A content update should be performed before starting to create custom templates for System Monitoring. Sometimes new metrics/alerts are shipped with a content update; in case you want to make use of the latest innovations, a content update needs to be performed. You may also be asked by SAP support in a customer incident to apply the latest content.

What are possible side effects when applying a new content? The new or changed monitoring settings are not automatically active. However, whenever you activate monitoring for one or several systems, the new content version will be used for the managed objects affected. Consequently, the monitoring could theoretically behave differently than before. This is also the case if you are using custom templates, because all objects (metrics/events/alerts) which have not been changed are just referencing to the SAP delivered templates! All changed objects, however, are not affected by the content update. You can also copy objects to the customer namespace by deliberately changing settings (see the section about template maintenance below) if you want to protect them against unwanted changes triggered by content updates. A possible side effect could be that you get new alerts.
See also SAP Note 2213849 - OSS Connection Issue when Updating Solution Manager Technical Monitoring Content.
 

Step 3: Template Maintenance

A managed object (MO) is an entity in the system landscape of a customer; you can see the MO types available for this monitoring use case in the Configuration Explorer displayed below. For every MO type SAP provides templates that contain the definitions or values of metrics, events, and alerts (MEA) of incidents and notifications.
 

Create Custom Metrics

This section explains how you can create a custom metric in a custom template.

- Navigate to custom template
- Change to expert mode
- Select "Create metric"
- Fill the necessary fields (Overview, DataCollection, Threshold, Others) and finish the wizard
 

Create Custom Alerts

- Select "create alert" 
- Fill the necessary fields (Overview, Others)
- Assign custom metric to your alert and finish the wizard
 

Step 4: Define Scope

In this step you select the managed object you want to configure for system monitoring. Without selecting a managed object you cannot proceed to the next setup steps. 

Please note that selecting a managed object and configuring monitoring (in step 6) creates a so-called entry point. If you select a technical system in step 5, a corresponding entry point will be created for this technical system, and System Monitoring will be activated for all associated managed objects (including technical instances, database and hosts). This allows you to remove monitoring for the whole entry point in one go, if required. If you would select an additional managed object for the same technical system, e.g. the database under the Databases tab, an additional entry point would be created, and removing the monitoring for the technical system would not remove the monitoring for the associated database (and the database host), because they are part of a different entry point. Hence, it is recommended to always select the technical system on the Technical Systems tab. In particular, databases and hosts should only be selected in step 5 in the case of stand-alone databases or stand-alone hosts.
 

Step 5: Setup Monitoring

In this step monitoring templates will be assigned to the managed systems in scope.

Each technical system is associated with several managed objects (e.g. technical instances, database(s), database instances, database replication group, hosts), which logically form a hierarchy below the technical system level. This hierarchy is pulled from the LMDB and displayed in step 6. Note that the assignment of managed objects to the technical system cannot be changed in step 6. If any wrong information is displayed here (e.g. outdated or missing technical instances etc.), the root cause is to be searched on LMDB/SLD level (e.g. data supplier not updating the information).

Based on the information about installed products as maintained in the LMDB, default templates are automatically assigned to the different managed objects. The current assignment can be seen in the column Assigned Templates. The assignments can be changed per managed object and per product via Assign Templates. Only templates matching the corresponding product (either the SAP delivered standard template or corresponding custom templates) can be assigned. Per product, only one template can be assigned at the same time.

After verifying the correct assignment of templates, click Apply and Activate to write the monitoring configuration to the directory tables and activate monitoring. This is required after each change within an assigned template or in case the template assignment was changed. Depending on the number of selected systems, the activation may take few seconds until several minutes.

Via Maintain MO-Specific Settings, you can overwrite template settings (e.g. threshold values) for individual managed objects. However, it is not possible to change template assignments for the managed object without discarding the managed object specific settings. The Directory Browser allows to access the configuration in the Alerting Directory to check details of the currently active configuration.
 

Step 6: Complete

The System Monitoring setup is completed for the managed systems in scope. In this step the status of all previous steps of the configuration is displayed.

The Assignment Status column shows if the settings according to the assigned templates are active (green) or if a further activation via Apply and Activate is required (yellow).


Maintain Custom Templates

When configuring System Monitoring following the procedure described above, it is important to consider whether the assigned monitoring template is sufficient to reflect your monitoring requirement. SAP has provided various monitoring templates over the past years to cover a wide range of products adopted by the most customers. These SAP provided monitoring templates is delivered within the component ST-CONT (details see the section Content Update) and contain the definitions of the metrics, events, and alerts as well as the details of settings such as the assigned threshold value, which can be found under Step 4 - Template Maintenance of the System Monitoring Guided Procedure.

Step 4 - Template Maintenance. There are multiple monitoring templates listed under the corresponding managed objects (e.g. technical instances, database(s), database instances, database replication group, hosts) under the Templates menu at the left hand side of the screen. For instance, under the managed object Database, the monitoring templates for HANA, Oracle and Sybase databases etc. are available. When double-clicking any of these templates, the detailed view is displayed at the right hand side. All the metrics, alerts and their setting details can be checked here.

Nevertheless, it is easy to identify that the already activated metrics or alerts cannot be deactivated or the assigned threshold value cannot be modified anymore (all settings are greyed out), which is made by design. These predefined SAP delivered monitoring templates are called as the standard templates. Of course, standard templates alone could not fulfill the customer's monitoring requirement, considering the fact that each customer has own preferred set of metrics and also it can vary depending on the system role (e.g. production or development system). Therefore, we SAP come up with the concept custom (monitoring) template and each customer can flexibly define own preferred set of metrics in it.

The custom template can be created conveniently by copying the standard template. The user needs to first mark the corresponding standard template and press the button Create Custom Template. 

Once the button is pressed, the newly created custom template will be listed under the standard template with the icon in front and its details will be shown in the template details view at the right hand side. The default name of the custom template is always "Derived from <Name of the Standard Template>" and it can be changed according to the own preference under the tab Template Settings in the template details view. It is important to think about a meaningful name for the custom template, for instance, a suffix "PROD" or "DEV" etc. can be attached to differentiate the monitoring template assigned to production or development system later on. In this example, we named the custom template "Test_SAP HANA DB_DEV".

It is recommended to press Save button to persist the changes before going further. When saving the template, a pop-up will show up to ask for package assignment, which prepares for the possible transportation in the future, since the monitoring templates can be transported. Please press the OK button after specifying the preferred package.

Similar to the default settings as written in the above section Step 2.3, it is possible to configure incidents, notification and third-party settings respectively under the tab Incidents, Notification and Third-Party Components in the template details view. For example, a distribution list (DL) can be maintained under the notification settings so that the members of the DL could receive email notification when there is any alert involved in this template is triggered. 

In the next step, the user can define the monitoring metrics and alerts according to own requirement. So far the custom template still persists the group of metrics and alerts as well as their settings copied from the standard template and they can be viewed under the tab Metrics. All the metrics included in this template are displayed in a scrollable table under the tab Metrics. The user can scroll up and down to check the metrics. What is important to mention is that it is highly recommended to apply Expert Mode to work with the metrics and alerts. The Expert Mode can be entered via pressing the button Expert Mode at the top right corner.

After applying the Expert Mode, more information can be accessed such as metrics, events and alerts hierarchy as well as data collection and usage details of each metric. Depending on own requirement, the user can activate or deactivate the metrics flexibly via checking or unchecking the checkbox under the column Active. Moreover, the metric settings such as the threshold type and value of the metric can be adjusted in the metric details view underneath the metrics table.  

To name an example, the metric "Memory Usage of Main Storage of Column-Store Tables" is about checking the main store memory usage of the column tables, as described under the Overview tab in the metric details view. Additionally, when selecting the Threshold tab, all the threshold related settings of the metric can be checked. The threshold type of the metric "Memory Usage of Main Storage of Column-Store Tables" is set to be Numeric Threshold (Green/Yellow/Red). The threshold value is set as such that when the memory usage of the column-store tables equals or exceeds 25% of the main store memory, a yellow alert will be triggered and when it equals or exceeds 30%, a red alert will be triggered.

Once the metric is modified, the column Modified will be checked, which means that the original metric settings copied from the standard template is overwritten. Correspondingly, a new metric ID distinct from the original ID will be generated for the modified metric, which can be checked under the tab Others in the metric details view.

Apart from the individual metrics, the user can also define the preferred set of alerts and the following activities such as creating email/SMS notification and raising incident under either the tab Alerts or the tab Metrics, Events, Alerts Hierarchy. The alerts can be activated or deactivated in a similar manner by checking or unchecking the checkbox in the column Active. In addition, the incident and notification settings can be configured for each alert under the tab Incidents and Notifications respectively in the alert details view. The idea behind is that an incident or a email/SMS notification can be generated on the occurrence of the specified alert. Third-Party component settings is also possible, which enables the alert forwarding to the third party component. The incidents, notification and third-party component settings in this alert level overwrite the settings in the template as well as global level as stated in the above section Step 2.3. 

What's more, compared to the tab Alerts, the logical relationship among metrics, events and alerts can be viewed under the tab Metrics, Events, Alerts Hierarchy, for instance, the metric "Memory Usage of Main Storage of Column-Store Tables" composes the event with the same name and this event corresponds to the alert "Memory Usage of Main Storage of Column-Store Tables". An event can consist of multiple metrics (1:n), however, and only relates to an alert (1:1). This relationship introduced along with the Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure (MAI) enriches the semantic meaning of the alerts and the user can either activate all the metrics belonging to one alert or just activate a few in the scrollable table under the tab Metrics, Events, Alerts Hierarchy. After specifying the required metrics and alerts as well as configuring the necessary incident, notifications and third-party component settings, the custom template should be ready.

So far we discussed about creating custom monitoring template via copying the standard template. It is also possible to create custom template via copying already existing custom template. The procedure is similar and the difference is to mark the to be copied custom template and press the button Copy Custom Template instead of the button Create Custom Template. It fully depends on the user's requirement to decide how to create own custom template and the two methods will not influence the way to work with the metrics and alerts etc.


Create Custom Metrics

Custom metric is supported in case the SAP delivered standard metrics could not satisfy the user needs. This section explains how you can create a custom metric in a custom template.

  • Navigate to a custom template
  • Change to Expert Mode 
  • Press the button Create and select Metric from the drop-down list. Afterwards, the Custom Metric Creation Wizard shows up at the right hand side. The Custom Metric Creation Wizard consists of two major steps, namely Specify Metric Attributes and Assignments. In the first step Specify Metric Attributes, the user should enter the details of metrics such as metric name and type and, more importantly, determine how the data can be collected (data provider, parameter, collection interval etc.).Then in the step Assignments, the user needs to specify the alert, to which this custom metric is assigned. The custom metric can be either assigned to a already existing standard alert or also to a custom alert. 
  • Fill in the name, category, class, data type and technical name for the custom metric under the Overview tab. The user can give a meaningful name to the custom metric and select a category out of the pre-defined categories Availability, Performance, Exceptions, Configuration and Self-Monitoring. The first four categories are self-explained and the Self-Monitoring category deals with the monitoring of SAP Solution Manager itself such as Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure (MAI) and Extractor Framework. Next, the user can specify the class as either Metric or Metric Group, depending on whether the data provider returns more than one value. The data type is used as usual and can be selected among String, Floating Point and Integer. It is also required to enter a technical name, with which the metric can be checked easily, for instance, in the Alerting Directory. Lastly, do not forget to check the checkbox Active so that the metric can be used in the next step.
  • Select the required data collector from the list of provided data collectors and enter the parameter value. In this example, it is intended to search any warning messages in the dev_icm log file. More details about the usage of data collector File Text Pattern Search can be found in SAP Note 2257249.
  • Define the threshold for alerting
  • Assign the custom metric to a alert. Since in this example, we want to assign this custom metric to a custom alert later on, the assignment here is left empty.
    Lastly, click Finish button to complete creating the custom metric.
  • Do not forget to press Save button to persist the changes made in the custom template before going further. Consequently, the newly created custom metric can be found in the table of metrics under the tab Metrics. It is easy to find out that the checkbox under the column Custom-Created is checked, which indicates that this metric is not SAP delivered standard metric but a custom-made one. 


Create Custom Alerts

  • Navigate to the custom template
  • Change to Expert Mode
  • Press the button Create and select Alert from the drop-down list. Then the Custom Alert Creation Wizard shows up at the right hand side. Like creating a custom metric, the Custom Alert Creation Wizard also consists of two major steps, namely Specify Alert Attributes and Assignments. In the first step Specify Alert Attributes, it is required to enter the alert name and category etc. and also configure the following activities when the alert is triggered, e.g. creating an email notification or raising an incident. Subsequently, in the step Assignments, the alert needs to be linked to a custom metric.
  • Define the alert name, category and severity etc. under the Overview tab. The name should be given in relation to the name of to be assigned custom metric. Likewise, the category should be exactly the same as the category of the to be assigned custom metric. Severity determines the priority of the alert and it varies from 0 (very low) to 9 (most critical), which can be selected according to the organizational requirement. Do not forget to check the check box Active so that the alert can be monitored when applying the template.
  • The incidents, notification and third-party components related settings can be configured under the respective tabs as described in the section Maintain Custom Template, if necessary.
  • Specify the event rule, which will be applied for the custom alert and metric. The event rule serves for the calculation of the ratings for the event so as to decide whether or not to trigger an alert. For instance, an event is constituted of three metrics and two of them have green ratings but one has red rating. In this case, if the Worst-case Rule is applied, the event will get a red rating and thus trigger an alert. Otherwise, the event will get a green rating and no alert will be triggered.
  • Assign the previously created custom metric to the custom alert and click Finish button to complete wizard.
  • Do not forget to press Save button to persist the changes made in the custom template. The newly created custom alert and metric can be found under the tab Metrics, Events and Alerts Hierarchy. Like the case in the custom metric, the check box under the column Custom-Created is checked both for the custom event and alert. 
  • Once the custom template including the custom metric and alert is assigned to the monitoring object, the corresponding monitoring data can be received and displayed in the System Monitoring.

Configuration Examples

Exclude File Systems from Monitoring

See also SAP Solution Manager document: Template Maintenance - File System Variants.pdf

A common request we receive is that customers want to monitor only certain file systems on their hosts. This sounds easy at first but it is not trivial when you keep in mind that you want to use the same host template for all hosts in you landscape if possible.

By default the metrics for file system monitoring include all file systems, it does this with the regular expression ".*". As you usually don't know which file systems to expect and the naming at least for SAP systems is system specific replacing this regex with just a list of the file systems you want to include is a problem. The best way is to exclude the file systems you don't want to see. This is again done by a regex.

Let's say I want to exclude all file systems with the name /media and /scratch. As you cannot change or delete the SAP standard variant, you have to create an additional custom variant for the file system metric and deactivate the SAP standard one.

Go to your custom template and select the metric group for the file system monitoring you want to change. Switch to Expert mode and create a new metric variant.


Data Collection: Enter the regex ^(?!/media.*)(?!/scratch.*).*$ in the Filesystem column.

Save your template. Now only activate the new custom Variant.

The main difficulty in this is finding the correct regex to exclude what you want. Here are some useful examples:

  • Exclude file systems that contain media:  ^(?!.*media.*).*$
  • Exclude all file systems that contain sda or sdb or sdc: ^(?!sda|sdb|sdc).*
  • Exclude file systems that start with /media: ^(?!/media.*).*$
  • Exclude two file systems /media and /scratch: ^(?!/media.*)(?!/scratch.*).*$ ... to add more file systems just add more (?!/<file system name>.*)

Monitor OS Processes

Even though the content of the SAP delivered templates in the Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure is based on proven best practices for technical monitoring, from time to time customers miss metrics they consider necessary for their customer specific monitoring. Also the integration of 3rd party monitoring can be based on the metrics for the 3rd party system in Wily Introscope Enterprise Manager.

This guide describes how you can create own metrics and alerts out of metrics that are available in Wily Introscope Enterprise Manager but not in the SAP delivered templates of the Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure.

How to create custom Introscope metrics - Part 1

How to create custom Introscope metrics - Part 2


Custom Introscope Metrics

See also SAP Solution Manager Document: How to create custom Introscope metrics


Log Files

See also SAP Solution Manager Document: Monitoring of Log Files


Custom OS Scripts

See also SAP Solution Manager Document: Monitor by using OS scripts on Diagnostic Agent


Custom CCMS Metrics

Even though the content of the SAP delivered templates in the Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure is based on proven best practices for technical monitoring, from time to time customers miss metrics they consider necessary for their customer specific monitoring. The guide How to create custom CCMS metrics in MAI.pdf describes how you can create own metrics and alerts for MTE classes which are available in the CCMS monitoring infrastructure (RZ20) but not in the SAP delivered templates of the Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure.

See also SAP Help section

How-To Guides for Advanced Configuration

This section lists guides for specific tasks in the System Monitoring applications.

This section lists set up guides for specific SAP systems:

This section lists the available how-to guides which are useful in context of non-SAP monitoring.

Advanced Monitoring

Advanced Monitoring is a functionality on top of System Monitoring, which addresses certain inflexibilities in the template approach. Some areas of monitoring are typically very specific, and the monitoring settings are different for each managed object. Using Advanced Monitoring, you can easily configure certain monitoring objects directly for selected managed objects, without having to configure them in the System Monitoring template used. Advanced Monitoring should not be regarded as a completely new use case, but rather a complementary functionality in the context of System Monitoring. 

Configuration of Advanced Monitoring is performed using dedicated Guided Procedures for the currently available areas of monitoring:

  • Oracle Tablespace Monitoring
  • ABAP Transaction Monitoring
  • File System Monitoring
  • URL Availability Monitoring

Within the configuration, you can easily add/remove/change metrics, maintain thresholds (individually or for several metrics at once), define settings for automatic creation of incidents and notifications etc. Advanced Monitoring is fully integrated with the Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure (MAI). The monitoring status is integrated into the System Monitoring UI. Alerts are shown in the Alert Inbox. 

Configuration

Starting Point

  • Transaction GPA_ADMIN (or via SAP Fiori Launchpad, tile Guided Procedure Catalog in the tile group Guided Procedures):
    • Type: Guided Procedure
    • Application Area: Advanced Monitoring Configuration
    • Select the appropriate Guided Procedure and execute it

ABAP Transaction Monitoring

The principle is the same in all four cases. ABAP Transaction Monitoring shall be used to demonstrate the configuration procedure.

Step 1:

In the first step of the Guided Procedure, select the ABAP system for which monitoring is to be configured and click Next to go to step 2. You will be asked to activate monitoring if not done so already. You can also click Activate Monitoring. This is a prerequisite to configure metrics in step 2.

Step 2:

Via the button Create, you can create new metrics. Provide all necessary details and click OK.

Example: 

  • Key Figure = Transaction Response Time
  • Transaction = SM50
  • Client = *
  • User = *
  • Time Granularity = 5 Minutes
  • Yellow = 500   
  • Red = 1000

The metric will be added under the alert Bad Transaction Response Time. In the UI, you can change metric definitions including thresholds. Note that you have to be in the Metric View to be able to maintain all metric settings.

You can change the severity of the alert and maintain settings for automatic incident creation via SAP Solution Manager ITSM, automatic notifications (email or SMS) and forwarding of the alert via the Alert Consumer BAdI interface. Currently, it is only possible to maintain this via variants (click on Maintain Variants... on the respective tab to create or change variants).

You can manually check the data collection using the Test button.

When the configuration is complete, click Save. The monitoring will be active afterwards.

Oracle Tablespace Monitoring

The configuration of Oracle Tablespace Monitoring is similar to ABAP Transaction Monitoring. Important aspects are:

  • In step 1, only Oracle databases can be selected.
  • In step 2, a button Add Tablespace is offered, which allows to pull the information about available tablespaces directly from the connected database. You can decide for which tablespaces monitoring shall be configured.
  • Alternatively, you can configure metrics via the Create button (name of tablespace has to be inserted manually).
  • The available key figures are Free Space (MB) and Used Space (%).

File System Monitoring

The configuration of File System Monitoring is straightforward. In step 1 you select the host for which File System Monitoring is to be configured. In step 2 you can create metrics via the Create button. Via Upload Filesystems you can also import a list of file systems as a CVS file. Create one line per filesystem and use the syntax filesystem,metric_name (where metric_name is optional).

The key figure is File System Used, measured as a percentage.

The name of the filesystem(s) to be monitored can be defined using regular expressions.

URL Monitoring

In URL Monitoring you can define a list of URLs which should be additionally monitored in the context of a technical system. Typical use cases are URLs for a Web Dispatcher or 3rd party load balancers which need to be available to access a system. For the maintained URLs you can check the availability and the https certificate of the URL.

Note: The setup is performed in the context of a technical system. I.e. a Diagnostics Agent assigned to that technical system is used to perform the measurement. The URL to be checked can be any URL which can be reached from the host where this Diagnostics Agent is installed. The result will be displayed in the availability category of the system.

The procedure to configure the URLs you want to monitor on a technical system is similar as explained for the other scenarios above:

  • In step 1 of the respective Guided Procedure, select the system where the URL checks should be performed.
  • Click Activate Monitoring, if not done yet.
  • Click the Next button (or select the step 2 Monitoring Configuration on top).
  • Click on Create.
  • Choose the key figure type. Possible options are: 
    • URL Availability: Checks if the URL is available.
    • URL Certificate Check: Checks if the certificate is currently valid.
    • URL Certificate Lifetime: Returns the number of remaining days until the certificate expires. It will provide a red rating if the certificate is valid for less than 30 days.
  • Enter the URL to be monitored.
  • Click OK
  • You can repeat this step to monitor multiple URLs or different key figures for a URL

Click "Save" after you have added all your metrics. This will activate the metrics and start data collection.

Result

The events and metrics from Advanced Monitoring are integrated into the technical system hierarchy in the System Monitoring UI. They are visible in the respective category of the managed object to which they refer:

  • ABAP Transaction Monitoring: category performance for technical system
  • Oracle Tablespace Monitoring: category exceptions for database
  • File System Monitoring: category exceptions for host
  • URL Monitoring: Availability for technical system

In case thresholds are exceeded, alerts will be created and shown within the Alert Inbox. The above said about categories and managed objects also refers to alerts. 

As an example, the integration of ABAP Transaction Monitoring into System Monitoring is shown below:

Release Notes and Support

Release Notes

  • Solution Manager 7.2 SP03: SAP Note 2623457 Collective note for System Monitoring - Solution Manager 7.2 SP03
  • Solution Manager 7.2 SP04: SAP Note 2625999 Collective note for System Monitoring - Solution Manager 7.2 SP04
  • Solution Manager 7.2 SP05: SAP Note 2626061 Collective note for System Monitoring - Solution Manager 7.2 SP05
  • Solution Manager 7.2 SP06: SAP Note 2626503 Collective note for System Monitoring - Solution Manager 7.2 SP06

Support Components

Here is a list of relevant support components, based on different problem areas:

Problem Area Support Component

Managed System Setup

SV-SMG-INS-CFG-MNG

Diagnostic Agent

SV-SMG-INS-AGT

SAP Host Agent

BC-CCM-HAG

System Monitoring Setup (e.g. Content Update, Template Maintenance, Template Assignment)

SV-SMG-MON-ALR-CFG

Alert Inbox Application

SV-SMG-MON-ALR-CNS

System Monitoring Application

SV-SMG-MON-SYS

The ratings of metrics or alerts are not calculated correctly

SV-SMG-MON-ALR-CLC

Metrics are not collected correctly (e.g. grey metrics)

SV-SMG-MON-ALR-PRV
HANA Database Metrics HAN-DB-MON

DB2 Database Metrics

BC-DB-DB2-CCM
DB6 Database Metrics (DB2 Universal Database) BC-DB-DB6-CCM

MaxDB Database Metrics

BC-DB-SDB-CCM

MSSQL Database Metrics

BC-DB-MSS-CCM

Oracle Database Metrics

BC-DB-ORA-CCM
Sybase Database Metrics BC-DB-SYB

EarlyWatch Alert

SV-SMG-SER-EWA
CCMS / RZ20 BC-CCM-MON

FAQs

General Questions

You can find the list of provided monitoring templates in the Solution Manager Configuration work center (transaction SOLMAN_SETUP). They are displayed in the area "Technical Monitoring", step 3 "Template Maintenance". If you do not yet have a Solution Manager installed, you can also find a list of supported products here.

Configuration

The reason you are not able to change the template assignment for the managed Objects is, MO-Specific setting flag is ON. Meaning, there are some specific settings maintained for the managed objects specifically.

If you would like to change the template assignment, following steps  need to be followed.

  1. Select the Managed Object for which the MO-Specific flag is ON.
  2. Click on "Maintain MO-Specific settings" link. Managed Object template would be launched. 
  3. Click on Expert Mode button on Managed Object template.
  4. Ensure you are in edit mode.
  5. Click on the "Reset all settings" button.
  6. Save the changes made.
  7. On the Setup Monitoring step, click on the Refresh button.
  8. MO-Specific flag would be OFF.

Now you can change the template assignment.

Check the package assignment of your template on the "Template Settings" tab. Your template most likely is assigned to the package $TMP.

Custom Templates created in $TMP (Local Object) are only local to that system. They cannot be transported to any other systems.

The package assignment of a template once created can never be changed. The only solution would be to use the 'Copy Custom Template' functionality to create a copy of the custom template and assign a different package.

If the use case is to create the custom template in development system and then transport it to production system, then while creating the custom template, they should be assigned to a valid customer package.

Please check SAP Help

Please perform the following steps to activate email notification only for alerts of a particular Category.

  1. Navigate to Solman_Setup -> Technical Monitoring -> System Monitoring -> Template Maintenance step.
  2. Select the template you are planning to assign to the managed object.
  3. Select Notifications tab.
  4. Select the option Inactive for "Auto-Notifications".
  5. Select Alerts tab.
  6. Select the Alert related to the Category.
  7. Select Notifications tab on Alert Details table.
  8. Make the Auto-Notification active. Add the required recipient/recipient list IDs.
  9. Click on save button.
  10.  On the Define Scope step, select the managed object required and navigate to Setup Monitoring step.
  11. Assign and apply the template to the Managed Object.

There is a way to set up notifications system-wise, this can be necessary if different support groups need to be notified for systems that use the same monitoring template.

On system-level you can use business partner functions on system level (see the Setup and Configuration Section for details). For Technical Instances, hosts and databases this is not possible so far. For these MO types you can use MO-specific configuration to do this.

  1. In the Setup Monitoring step, after performing the auto configuration (Apply and Activate), click on "Configure Managed Object" button.
  2. The template for the selected managed object will be opened in a new window.
  3. Make the required settings on the Notifications tab of selected Alert or/and on the Notifications tab in the managed object template based on your requirement.
  4. Save the changes made and close the window.
  5. Refresh the Setup Monitoring step.
  6. MO-Specific flag for the managed object will be ticked.
  7. Click on Apply and Activate button to activate the changes made at the Managed Object level.

What ever settings you made in the Managed Object template, will be specific to the Managed Object. Likewise you can do the required configuration for all the required managed objects.

Once the Managed Specific settings are maintained, the template level settings will be ignored by run time and only Managed Object settings will be taken into consideration.

In case, you need maintain notification setting at a different level then follow the standard SAP Help.

To remove the duplicate assignment, please perform the following steps.

  1.  Select the managed system in "Define Scope" step and navigate to "Setup Monitoring" step.
  2. Select the system managed system and click on "Restore Defaults" button.
  3. Once the Default is restored, the duplicate assignment will be lost.
  4. Click on Apply and Activate button to start monitoring the system with the current template assigned.

No, monitoring templates are not client-specific.

If you do not want to monitor the system anymore, you can remove the system from Monitoring.

This can be done on the "Define Scope" step. Select the system (or more than one system) and click on "Remove Monitoring" button. Click on yes on the confirmation pop-up. The system won't be monitored any more and you will not receive any alerts for that system. After this, if you want to monitor the system again, re-run the configuration by clicking on "Apply and Activate" button on the Setup Monitoring step for the corresponding managed system.

Please perform the below mentioned steps to create custom template and disable the unwanted metrics for Reporting.

  1. Launch SOLMAN_SETUP -> Technical Monitoring -> System Monitoring -> Template Maintenance.
  2. Select the SAP Template which you have assigned to managed object for monitoring.
  3. Click on Create Custom Template button.
  4. Custom template is created and shown in the display area.
  5. Click on Metrics tab.
  6. Select the Metric which is not required for reporting.
  7. On the Metric details table, select "Data Usage" tab.
  8. Deselect the check box "Send Values to SAP Netweaver Business warehouse".
  9. Click on Save button to save the changes.
  10. Navigate to Define Scope step and select the required managed object
  11. Navigate to Setup Monitoring step.
  12. Assign and apply the custom template to the managed object.

Once the auto configuration is successful, reporting for the metrics will be disabled.

The Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure provides the enhancement spot ALERT_REACTION where you can specify custom alert reactions. This enhancement spot and the corresponding Business Add-In (BAdI) BADI_ALERT_REACTION are described in the document "Alert Consumer BAdI Interface" on the following page: MAI_AlertInbox_Home.

This functionality can be used to trigger additional events in case of an alert like for example:

  • Calling an external web service on a 3rd party incident management tool
  • Write information to a log file
  • Execute additional OS scripts on the SAP Solution Manager

  1. What is the difference between “Maintain Recipient Lists” and “Maintain Global Recipients”? Recipients have to be maintained for Alerting. Only those people who have been maintained as a recipient can be assigned to receive notifications, it is not possible to send a notification to a normal SolMan User, only recipients. It is possible to maintain and assign individual Users as Recipients but also you can create a list of recipients if you have a group of people (e.g. Senior Managers) who need to be assigned to several alerts for several systems. Maintain Global Recipients is to maintain individual users and Maintain Recipient Lists is for the lists.
  2. What is the Add and Delete for? Once you have defined a Recipient or Recipient List you can assign them here to receive notifications.
  3. When I go into recipient lists or global recipients it shows me a separate listing then displayed bellowed these buttons? This is showing the available recipients or recipient lists that can be assigned.
  4. Are the distribution lists, SAP office distribution lists? I cannot see or access distribution lists, only recipient lists, can you send another screen shot?
  5. Is there documentation on the My notification settings? I cannot find anything specifically on My Notification Settings. What is not clear, do we need some documentation here?
  6. Is an activation required after changes? Once you have added a recipient or recipient list no further activation is required.

Please check SAP Note 1738283. It contains the necessary prerequisites for the monitoring of clustered database solutions.

Please check the page section Configuration Examples which contains an example how to exclude file systems form monitoring. 

Runtime

Create a technical scenario of type "workmode management". Insert all relevant systems into this scenario and schedule work modes for it.
Help link 

Please refer to blog for details on Work Mode settings.

With some support packages of SAP Solution Manager there is no template available for SAP HANA on the technical system level. But to monitor SAP HANA standalone databases you need a template on technical system level to see a valid value in the System Monitoring system list and to access the hierarchy for the HANA system.
 Perform the following steps to create a template for you SAP HANA system and turn the monitoring status green for HANA Technical System.

  1. Launch SOLMAN_SETUP -> Technical Monitoring -> Template Maintenance.
  2. Under Technical Systems select the 'Generic Product version.
  3. Create a custom template
  4. Select you SAP HANA system in step "Define Scope"
  5. Finally in step 6 "Setup Monitoring", you can then choose to 'Assign Templates' on the technical system level and from the dropdown menu next to "Generic Product Version" you can choose the custom template you just created.
  6. Then when you apply and activate the monitoring the technical system status will be aggregated from the underlying SAP HANA DB templates and displayed in the system list.

  • Ensure that a valid email Id is available for background user who is triggering the auto-notifications.
  • Check if the user intended to receive the notification is a recipient with a valid email/SMS.
  • Check if the user intended to receive the notification is a recipient list(group) in which case check whether there are recipients in the recipient list. Please understand a recipient list is just a name of a group of recipients and only if there are recipients in it, can we send notifications.
  • Check if the user intended to receive the notification has any notification settings and they are valid(on-duty, absences, substitutes etc).
  • Check if the user intended to receive the notification has any on-Duty notification settings with factory calendar and holiday calendar mentioned. In such a case, please go to transaction SCAL and check if the calendars are up to date. If they are already expired, please refer to Note 501670 (manual update) or 1426524 (automatic update - Not recommended so it is Pilot release - If needed please raise a request against the component XX-CSC-XX) 

If the Assignment status is Yellow for the corresponding managed object on Setup Monitoring step after the Managed Object specific settings are maintained, this means that the settings you maintained at the managed object template level are not activated on the managed object.

Please select the managed object and click on Apply and Activate button for the MO specific settings to be active. Once this is done the Assignment Status and Setup Staus would turn Green for the managed object and managed object specific settings will be taken into consideration during run time.

The alert priority which is displayed in the Alert Inbox is calculated from the alert severity (as defined in the template) and the current alert status:

 

Severity / Current Rating

 

 

0 to 2

 

 

 

 

3 to 5

 

 

 

 

6 & 7

 

 

 

 

8 & 9

 

 

Green

Low

Low

Medium

Medium

Grey

Low

Medium

Medium

High

Red

Medium

High

Very High

Very High

Yellow

Medium

Medium

High

Very High

In the default view, the alerts in the Alert Inbox are sorted by the calculated alert priority. You can also display the defined severity of an alert in a separate column. To do this, you have to click on "Settings" -> "Column Selection" and add the column "Severity".

Common Issues

  1. Check the SAP Notes 1759626 has been implemented in the system
  2. After the note implementation, import the latest SP08 content (steps to import the content has been suggested in SAP Note 1742119).
  3. After the latest content is imported and applied, use the report attached to SAP Note 1696166 to clear any inconsistent entries.

If the software components of the Product Instance you assigned during the managed system setup does not match the software components installed on the managed system, the extractors are flagged as inconsistent. This happens e.g. after the upgrade of a managed system.

• Check these software component versions (in case of ST_PI it is the software component SAP BASIS). • Check in the extractor details, the component version ID (which is the ID of the software component version).

All these versions needs to be consistent.

If any inconsistent versions are found you need to assign the correct Product Instance which includes the Software Component versions installed on the managed system.

Assign the role "SAP_NOTIF_ADMIN" to the user.

If you still have trouble, follow the procedure given in the link. http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SMAUTH/UC00042 . This is described in SAP Note 1648302.

Assign role SAP_NOTIF_ADMIN and e-mail ID to user SOLMAN_BTC. See SAP Note 1581460.

This can happen after a kernel update when the version of sapstartsrv is different from the kernel version. The resolution for this issue is described in SAP Note 1586315.

You have to activate additional settings in your virtualization environment. This is described in SAP Note 1409604.

This issue could occur if more than one ABAP instance is running on the same host.

A fix is available with

  • LMSERVICE SP3 patch3
  • LMSERVICE SP4 patch1
  • LMSERVICE SP5

Also for troubleshooting Technical Monitoring issues please see the Knowledge Base Articles (KBA's) below:

SAP NoteDescription
2184681How to Customize Alert Email Header in Technical Monitoring
2264627How to Troubleshoot Grey HANA Metrics in Technical Monitoring - SAP Solution Manager
2227586How to delete unwanted Managed Objects permanently from Technical Monitoring
2248060File System monitoring - How to exclude File Systems using Windows Regular Expression in Technical Monitoring
2202670File System Monitoring - How to exclude AIX/UNIX file systems using Regular Expression in Technical Monitoring
2178457How to troubleshoot Introscope Metrics (Enterprise Manager) in Solution Manager Technical Monitoring
2257249How to use File Text Pattern Search for File Monitoring in Technical Monitoring
2219816How to troubleshoot Notification issues in Technical Monitoring
2270160How to Identify Issues with the Metric Status propagated from Host, Database & Technical Instance in Technical Monitoring
2218186How to deactivate Automatic Incident Creation in Technical Monitoring, Solution Manager
2153218Responsibility of individual steps in Technical Monitoring under SOLMAN_SETUP
1875905How to Deactivate Earlywatch Alerts in Technical Monitoring