Monitoring servers from the Product Insights service on IBM Cloud

You can register your on-premises or cloud-based WebSphere® Application Server servers to report usage metrics to the IBM® Cloud Product Insights service on IBM Cloud®. On the Product Insights dashboard, you can view the server information and usage metrics from all of your registered servers and other products in a single place.

Before you begin

Create a IBM Cloud account. To create your account, see Sign up for IBM Bluemix®.
In IBM Cloud, create an instance of the Product Insights service.
After you create the service instance, go to Service credentials and expand the credentials for the service. Make note of the API host and key values, which you will use to register your servers with the particular service instance.
Decide whether to route the reported server data through the Product Insights gateway, which you can learn about and install from IBM Cloud Product Insights. By routing data through the gateway, you can review the data before it is sent to the Product Insights service.
Whether you use the gateway impacts how you configure SSL communication to the Product Insights service on IBM Cloud:
- If you install the gateway, you must use the server certificate from the Product Insights gateway. If you have the .pem file that contains the certificate of the gateway, create a .jks file that contains the certificate, such as by using the Java keytool command.
```
keytool -importcert -file <pem file> -keystore <filename.jks> -storepass <new password>
```
  For information about the certificate, see the IBM Cloud Product Insights documentation.
- If you do not use the gateway, download the digicert.jks file from IBM Cloud. This file contains a certificate from a well-known certificate authority.

About this task

From a single Product Insights service on IBM Cloud, you can track many WebSphere Application Server servers that are hosted on-premises, in IBM Cloud, or in other cloud environments. When a server is registered with a Product Insights service instance, that server connects to the service on IBM Cloud and periodically reports the following usage metrics.

Number of active servers
Host location of each server
Product edition and version of each server
How busy each server is

Tip: You can configure Product Insights at the server, cluster, node, or cell level, so that all servers that are included under the particular level report usage metrics to the Product Insights service. Note that only the servers in each level are registered, and node agents and deployment managers are not registered.

If your product installation does not have direct access to the internet, you can configure your installation to route data through an HTTP proxy.

Only you and other users that you authorize on IBM Cloud can control the Product Insights service instance.

Procedure

Create a was-product-insights.properties file with the following contents, customizing the properties depending on whether you are also using a gateway or proxy.
```
## required
url=<apihostFromBluemix_or_gatewayURL>
apiKey=<apikeyFromBluemix>

## gateway only - to use, remove # and define gateway truststore
# trustStore=<trustStoreJKSFileName>
# trustStorePassword=<trustStorePassword>

## proxy only - to use, remove # and define proxy configuration
# proxyUrl=<proxyURL> 
# proxyUser=<proxyUserName> 
# proxyPassword=<proxyPassword>

## optional - to use, remove # and define groups
# groups=<groups>
```
- On the url and apiKey properties, specify the API host and key credentials that you noted when you created the Product Insights service. If you installed the Product Insights gateway, specify the URL of the gateway on the url attribute instead.
- If you installed the gateway, specify the name of the .jks truststore file that contains the gateway certificate on the trustStore property, and specify the truststore password on the trustStorePassword property.
- If you are not using the gateway and the server does not have direct access to the internet, define the HTTP proxy on the proxyUrl, proxyUser, and proxyPassword properties. The proxy URL must be in http://hostname:port format, and the proxy user name and password are needed only if your HTTP proxy server requires authentication.
  If the server has internet access or you are routing data through the gateway, you do not need to define proxy settings.
- On the optional groups attribute, you can define sets of servers to be grouped together for reporting purposes. You can define multiple nested group levels, and each server can be included in multiple groups by separating the group names with a comma. Specify highest-level groups without a forward slash (/), and specify nested groups in the format <parentGroup>/<nestedGroup>, as shown in the following example.
```
groups=WASGroup1, WASGroup1/subgroupA, subgroupA/smallGroupx
```
  In this example, smallGroupx is nested inside subgroupA, which is nested inside WASGroup1. Grouped servers are displayed hierarchically in the Product Insights service.
Add the was-product-insights.properties file your installation in any of the following directories, depending on whether you want to register servers at the server, cluster, node, or cell level.
If you are using the Product Insights gateway, add the .jks truststore file to the same location.
- Server directory: <profile_root>/config/cells/<cellName>/nodes/<nodeName>/servers/<servername>
- Cluster directory: <profile_root>/config/cells/<cellName>/clusters/<clusterName>
- Node directory: <profile_root>/config/cells/<cellName>/nodes/<nodeName>
- Cell directory: <profile_root>/config/cells/<cellName>
If your environment uses a deployment manager, place the file in the directory tree for the deployment manager profile. Then, propagate the file to each of the managed nodes by starting wsadmin and running the following commands:
```
repository= AdminControl.queryNames('type=ConfigRepository,process=dmgr,*')
AdminControl.invoke(repository, 'refreshRepositoryEpoch')
AdminNodeManagement.syncActiveNodes()
```
If your environment does not use a deployment manager, place the file in the corresponding directory for each server, node, or cell that you want to register.

After you add the files, if the server is running or the next time it starts, the server registers with the Product Insights service instance.

Results

Each registered WebSphere Application Server server reports usage metrics to your Product Insights service instance.

If you no longer want a server to report metrics to the Product Insights service, remove the was-product-insights.properties file for the server from your product installation.