Creating and managing custom server templates

You can create custom servers to discover and categorize servers that are not, by default, supported by TADDM. This is an advanced technique for configuring TADDM to discover servers that it does not know about by default.

Your infrastructure might contain software applications and server types, such as custom Java™ servers, that are not automatically categorized by TADDM. Any server process with a TCP listening port that is not recognized is categorized into an Unknown Server category. Unknown servers are not displayed in the topology and cannot take advantage of most of the functions. You do, however, get basic information such as the name and runtime data about the unknown server.

You can define a custom server to create a template that sets up the membership rules for the custom server. During a discovery, any unknown server is automatically categorized as a custom server of this type if the runtime information matches the criteria that you defined in the template. Any configuration files used by the custom server are also automatically captured if specified in the templates.

A predefined custom server template, called "Ignore all unmatched processes", ignores any processes that are not matched by another template. A performance improvement is gained by using this template, but if you want to search for unknown servers using the Unknown Processes functionality, you must ensure that this template is not enabled. By default, the "Ignore all unmatched processes" template is not enabled.

Custom servers are displayed in the topology, and you can view details about them. Although these details are not as complete as those provided for supported servers, defining custom servers allows all components in your infrastructure to participate in the topology and comparisons. You can manage custom servers in the Custom Servers window.

Fix Pack 8When we define and enable a Custom Server, then basic information for example name, runtime data, etc, can be captured along with the configuration files defined in the custom server template. The Object created is of the type defined in the custom server template definition. Some examples to configure and capture configuration files are also given at https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/219859. We can also extend a custom server to collect additional information, refer to Extending custom server and computer system templates.

For example, in order to discover and categorize java servers if not discovered by default in TADDM, a custom server template can be defined with:
  1. Type as an AppServer
  2. The Identifying Criteria as “Program Name contains Java”

With the above configuration, a CustomAppServerSensor will be invoked corresponding to each java process running on the target (ps -eaf | grep -i java)

Fix Pack 2 In TADDM 7.3.0.2, and later, the hierarchyType attribute is set for each custom server template. It is used to define in more detail the source and target objects of the relationships to traverse in the traversal section of the grouping pattern configuration. The value of this attribute is created based on the templates names. All spaces are removed and the first letters of separate words are set to upper case. For example, the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console template has hierarchyType attribute set to IBMTivoliEnterpriseConsole, and the CA iTechnology iGateway template has the hierarchyType set to CAITechnologyIGateway.

Fix Pack 3 In TADDM 7.3.0.3, and later, you can enable the creation of placeholders, which is useful in creating custom server templates. For details, see Configuring for discovery of placeholders..