ITCAM Agent for J2EE consists of two components: the Data Collector and the Monitoring Agent. These components are deployed on every monitored host. For interaction with IBM® Tivoli® Monitoring, the Agent provides application support files that are to be installed on servers and clients in the IBM Tivoli Monitoring infrastructure.
BCI monitoring requirements can differ. On a production system, request level monitoring might be sufficient; however, on a test or development system, or when a problem is being investigated, BCI can be used to instrument application method entry and exit, synchronized methods, and object allocation. BCI uses a certain amount of system resources, depending on the amount of injected calls. The level of detail, and thus the use of resources, is determined by the monitoring level, which can be set for every monitored application server.
With IBM Tivoli Monitoring, levels L1 and L2 are supported; with ITCAM for Application Diagnostics Managing Server, the additional level L3 is available. The monitoring level can be set for each application server instance, independently on the Tivoli Monitoring components and the managing server.
You must configure the Data Collector for every instance of the application server that you need to monitor.
The monitoring agent collects information from the data collector, processes the information, and aggregates it for presentation to the user. It also parses application server logs. For some application servers, the monitoring agent uses JMX to retrieve performance information; with other application servers, the monitoring agent relies on the data collector for this information.
The Monitoring Agent sends monitoring information to the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server. It also receives Take Action commands from the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server. When these commands involve server management actions (starting, stopping, or restarting the application server), the monitoring agent performs these actions.
To enable ITCAM Agent for J2EE interaction with IBM Tivoli Monitoring, the application support files shipped with the Agent must be installed on all hub Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Servers, all Tivoli Enterprise Portal Servers, and Tivoli Enterprise Portal clients except browser-based clients.
On the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server, support files provide the ITCAM Agent for J2EE data tables and situations.
On the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server, support files provide the ITCAM Agent for J2EE workspaces that display the monitoring information and include code that processes situation information for the Summary workspaces.
On the Tivoli Enterprise Portal client, support files provide the ITCAM Agent for J2EE Helps and Language Packs.