System Monitoring for WebSphere Application server service

You can deploy the System Monitoring for WebSphere Application server service in a cloud group to collect performance and availability data from applications that are running on virtual systems and virtual appliances within that cloud group. The shared service uses a monitoring agent and a data collector to collect the data from these applications.

The monitoring agent and data collector are dynamically installed and configured on supported platforms if you deploy the shared service in the target cloud group. You do not need to take any additional action to enable the monitoring agent.

For example, suppose that your organization has a development cloud group in which the System Monitoring shared services are not deployed, and a production cloud groups in which the services are deployed. If you deploy the same pattern to each of these cloud groups, monitoring is installed only for the deployment to the production cloud group.

You can deploy the System Monitoring for WebSphere Application server service in a cloud group at any time. For supported patterns that are deployed after the shared service is deployed, the monitoring agent and data collector are added to those patterns at deployment time. For supported patterns that are already deployed in the cloud group, those patterns can discover the shared service and install the monitoring capabilities later. This discovery of the shared service happens with a background process running in the deployment. This background process periodically checks for any monitoring shared services that are not detected at deployment time. Running this background process can lead to a delay of up to one hour before an existing deployment reacts to the deployment of the System Monitoring for WebSphere Application server service.

The System Monitoring for WebSphere Application server service does not have any virtual machines associated with it. Without this association, you cannot stop, start, or upgrade the service. You can only deploy or delete the service.

The version of the System Monitoring for WebSphere Application server service that you deploy determines the version of the monitoring agent and data collector that are running on every deployment in the cloud group. When you deploy the service, the monitoring agent is installed in the appropriate virtual machines. When you delete the service, the monitoring agent is also deleted from those same virtual machines. To upgrade to a new version of the service, you must delete the existing service and then deploy the new version.

You can control the restarting process of application server instances by selecting an option on the user interface when you deploy the System Monitoring for WebSphere Application server service. The option is enabled by default so there is no need to restart servers manually every time they perform a deployment or upgrade. If you disable the option when deploying the service, you must manually restart every individual application server instance so that the monitoring agent can reconfigure itself.

You can stop the monitoring agent manually and restart it later. When you manually stop the agent, the state of monitoring is stopped. This is important because, after you manually stop monitoring on a deployment, the IBM® Cloud Pak System Software service does not automatically restart monitoring on that deployment. This behavior is different from a lifecycle-initiated stop of monitoring, which triggers a paused state. The service provides a deployment option to force all deployments on the cloud group out of the stopped state, returning them to the normal lifecycle management process of system monitoring.