Monitoring eXtreme Scale with Hyperic HQ

Hyperic HQ is a third-party monitoring solution that is available freely as an open source solution or as an enterprise product. WebSphere® eXtreme Scale includes a plug-in that allows Hyperic HQ agents to discover eXtreme Scale container servers and to report and aggregate statistics using eXtreme Scale management beans. You can use Hyperic HQ to monitor stand-alone eXtreme Scale deployments.

1. Start your eXtreme Scale servers.
   The Hyperic plug-in looks at the local processes to attach to the Java™ virtual machines that are running eXtreme Scale. To properly attach to the Java virtual machines, each server must be started with the -jmxServicePort option. For information about starting servers with the -jmxServicePort option, see Starting and stopping stand-alone servers.
2. Put the extremescale-plugin.xml file and the wxshyperic.jar file in the appropriate server and agent plug-in directories in your Hyperic configuration.
   To integrate with Hyperic, both the agent and server installations must have access to the plug-in and Java archive (JAR) files. Although the server can dynamically swap configurations, you should complete the integration before you start any of the agents.
   1. Place the extremescale-plugin.xml file in the server plugin directory, which is at the following location:

      hyperic_home/server_home/hq-engine/server/default/deploy/hq.ear/hq-plugins
      

   2. Place the extremescale-plugin.xml file in the agent plugin directory, which is at the following location:

      agent_home/bundles/gent-4.0.2-939/pdk/plugins

   3. Put the wshyperic.jar file in the agent lib directory, which is at the following location

      agent_home/bundles/gent-4.0.2-939/pdk/lib

3. Configure the agent.
   The agent.properties file serves as a configuration point for the agent runtime. This property is in the agent_home/conf directory. The following keys are optional, but of importance to the eXtreme Scale plug-in:

   • autoinventory.defaultScan.interval.millis=<time_in_milliseconds>

     Sets the interval in milliseconds between Agent discoveries.

   • log4j.logger.org.hyperic.hq.plugin.extremescale.XSServerDetector=DEBUG

     : Enables verbose debug statements from the eXtreme Scale plug-in.
   • username=<username>: Sets the Java Management Extensions (JMX) user name if security is enabled.
   • password=<password>: Sets the JMX password if security is enabled.
   • sslEnabled=<true|false>: Tells the plug-in whether or not to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). The value is false by default.
   • trustPath=<path>: Sets the trust path for the SSL connection.
   • trustType=<type>: Sets the trust type for the SSL connection.
   • trustPass=<password>: Sets the trust password for the SSL connection.
4. Start the agent discovery.
   The Hyperic agents send discoveries and metrics information to the server. Use the server to customize data views and group logical inventory objects to generate useful information. After the server is available, you must run the launch script or start the Windows service for the agent:
   • agent_home/bin/hq-agent.sh start
   • Start the agent with the Windows service.
   After you start the agents, the servers are detected and groups are configured. You can log into the server console and choose which resources to add to the inventory database for the server. The server console is at the following URL by default: http://<server_host_name>:7080/
5. Statistics must be enabled for Hyperic to collect statistical data.

   Use the SetStatsSpec control action on the Hyperic console for eXtreme Scale. Navigate to the resource, then use the Control Action drop-down list on the Control tabbed page to specify a SetStatsSpec setting with ALL=enabled in the Control Arguments text box.

   Catalog servers are not detected by the filter set in the Hyperic console. See the information about the statsSpec property in Server properties file, which enable statistics as soon as the containers start. Various options for enabling statistics are described in Monitoring server statistics with managed beans (MBeans) and Sample: xsadmin utility

6. Monitor servers with the Hyperic console.
   After the servers are added to the inventory model, their services are no longer needed.

   • Dashboard view: When you viewed the resource detection events, you logged into the main dashboard view. The dashboard view is a generic view that acts as a message center that you can customize. You can export graphs or inventory objects to this main dashboard.
   • Resources view: You can query and view the entire inventory model from this page. After the services have been added, you can see every eXtreme Scale server properly labeled and listed together under the servers section. You can click on the individual servers to see the basic metrics.
7. View the entire server inventory on the Resource View page.
   On this page, you can then select multiple ObjectGrid servers and group them together. After you group a set of resources, their common metrics can be graphed to show overlays and differences among group members. To display an overlay, select the metrics on the display of your Server Group. The metric then displays in the charting area. To display an overlay for all group members, click the underlined metric name. You can export any of the charts, node views, and comparative overlays to the main dashboard with the Tools menu.