IBM AIX Server

Application Version Details

Introduction

IBM’s Advanced Interactive executive, or AIX, is a series of proprietary UNIX-based operating systems built by IBM. AIX is the open standards-based UNIX operating system providing secure, scalable, and robust infrastructure solutions for enterprise.

Monitoring Use Case: IBM AIX helps to collect the metric values with respect to time and alerts your team to act immediately in case of any threshold breach or unexpected metric behavior observed based on configurations. In a way it helps you with smooth functioning of business with minimal or zero downtime in case of any infrastructure related issues occurring.

Prerequisites

• OpsRamp Classic Gateway 14.0.0 and above.
• OpsRamp Nextgen Gateway 14.0.0 and above.
  Note: OpsRamp recommends using the latest Gateway version for full coverage of recent bug fixes, enhancements, etc..
• Should be able to connect to IBM-AIX portal via SSH with the provided IpAddress/Hostname and the credentials
• Credential Set: root users & non-root users member of system user group.
• Non-root users should have a home directory and make sure the user has read, write & execute permissions to that directory for log file monitoring.
  (As part of log file monitoring, the application will copy the .sh script file into the AIX device which is responsible for log file monitoring . This will copy the file into user’s home directory)

Roles and Permissions

Users with read permissions are required to fetch service status related data.

Application Migration

1. Check for the gateway version as a prerequisite step - classic gateway-12.0.1 and above.
   Notes:

   • You only have to follow these steps when you want to migrate from sdk 1.0 to sdk 2.0.
   • For first time installation below steps are not required.
     • Application name should be the same.
     • Disable all installed integrations configurations for that application. This is to make sure no discovery and monitoring requests are processed.
     • Install and Add the configuration to that sdk 2.0 application.
       Note: refer to Configure and Install the IBM AIX Integration & View the IBM AIX Details sections of this document.
     • During the migration from SDK 1.0 to SDK 2.0, ensure that you uncheck the Bypass Resource Reconciliation checkbox.
       

2. Once all discoveries are completed with the sdk 2.0 applicaion, follow any one of the approaches.

   • Direct uninstallation of the sdk1.0 adaptor application through the uninstall API with skipDeleteResources=true in the post request

End-Point: https://{{host}}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/integrations/installed/{installedIntgId}

Request Body:

{
    "uninstallReason": "Test",
    "skipDeleteResources": true
}

• Delete the configuration one by one through the Delete adaptor config API with the request parameter as skipDeleteResources=true

End-Point: https://{{host}}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/integrations/installed/config/{configId}?skipDeleteResources=true.

• Finally, uninstall the adaptor application through API with skipDeleteResources=true in the post request.

End-Point:

https://{{host}}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/integrations/installed/{installedIntgId}

Request Body:

{
    "uninstallReason": "Test",
    "skipDeleteResources": true
}

Supported Metric

Default Monitoring Configurations

IBM AIX Server has default Global Device Management Policies, Global Templates, Global Monitors and Global metrics in OpsRamp. Users can customize these default monitoring configurations as per their business use cases by cloning respective global templates and global Device Management Policies. OpsRamp recommends performing this activity before installing the application to avoid noise alerts and data.

1. Default Global Device Management Policies

   OpsRamp has a Global Device Management Policy for the Native Type of IBM AIX Server. You can find those Device Management Policies at Setup > Resources > Device Management Policies, search with suggested names in global scope. Each Device Management Policy follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: ibm-aix-server IBM AIX Server - 2(i.e, appName = ibm-aix-server, nativeType = IBM AIX Server , version = 2)

2. Default Global Templates

   OpsRamp has a Global template for the Native Type of IBM AIX Server. You can find those templates at Setup > Monitoring > Templates, search with suggested names in global scope. Each template follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType 'Template' - version}

   Ex: ibm-aix-server IBM AIX Server Template - 2(i.e, appName = ibm-aix-server, nativeType = IBM AIX Server, version = 2)

3. Default Global Monitors

   OpsRamp has a Global Monitors for the Native Type which has monitoring support. You can find those monitors at Setup > Monitoring > Monitors, search with suggested names in global scope. Each Monitors follows below naming convention:

   {monitorKey appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: IBM AIX Server Monitor ibm-aix-server IBM AIX Server 2 (i.e, monitorKey =IBM AIX Server Monitor, appName = ibm-aix-server, nativeType = IBM AIX Server , version = 2)

Configure and Install the IBM AIX Integration

1. From All Clients, select a client.
2. Go to Setup > Account.
3. Select the Integrations and Apps tab.
4. The Installed Integrations page, where all the installed applications are displayed.
   Note: If there are no installed applications, it will navigate to the ADD APP page.
5. Click + ADD on the Installed Integrations page. The Available Integrations and Apps page displays all the available applications along with the newly created application with the version.
   Note: You can even search for the application using the search option available. Also you can use the All Categories option to search.

6. Click ADD on the IBM AIX Server tile and select the version.
7. From the Configurations page, click + ADD. The Add Configuration page appears.
8. Enter the below mentioned BASIC INFORMATION:

Notes:

• Ip Address/Host Name and Port should be accessible from Gateway.
• Select the following:
  • App Failure Notifications: if turned on, you will be notified in case of an application failure that is, Connectivity Exception, Authentication Exception.
  • Log File Monitoring: configure the values for below fields as per your log file monitoring use case:
    • Log File Configuration:[ { “Name”: “”, “File Name”: “”, “Rotated File Name”: “”, “Expression”: “”, “Check Type”: “”, “Threshold”: “”, “Severity”: "" } ].

9. Select the below mentioned Custom Attribute:

Note: The custom attribute that you add here will be assigned to all the resources that are created by the integration. You can add a maximum of five custom attributes (key and value pair).

10. In the RESOURCE TYPE section, select:

    • ALL: All the existing and future resources will be discovered.
    • SELECT: You can select one or multiple resources to be discovered.

11. In the DISCOVERY SCHEDULE section, select Recurrence Pattern to add one of the following patterns:

    • Minutes
    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly

12. Click ADD.

Now the configuration is saved and displayed on the configurations page after you save it.
Note: From the same page, you may Edit and Remove the created configuration.

13. Under the ADVANCED SETTINGS, Select the Bypass Resource Reconciliation option, if you wish to bypass resource reconciliation when encountering the same resources discovered by multiple applications.

    Note: If two different applications provide identical discovery attributes, two separate resources will be generated with those respective attributes from the individual discoveries.

14. Click NEXT.

15. (Optional) Click +ADD to create a new collector by providing a name or use the pre-populated name.

16. Select an existing registered profile.

17. Click FINISH.

The application is installed and displayed on the INSTALLED INTEGRATION page. Use the search field to find the installed integration.

Modify the Configuration

• See Modify an Installed Integration or Application article.

  Note: Select the IBM AIX Server application.

View the IBM AIX Details

To discover resources for IBM AIX:

1. Navigate to Infrastructure > Search > OS > IBM AIX Server.
2. The IBM AIX SERVER page is displayed, select the application name.
3. The RESOURCE DETAILS page appears from the right.
4. Click the ellipsis (…) on the top right and select View details.
5. Navigate to the Attributes tab to view the discovery details.

• Click the Metrics tab to view the metric details for IBM AIX Server.

Resource Filter Input Keys

IBM AIX server application Resources are filtered and discovered based on below keys.

Supported Alert Custom Macros

Customize the alert subject and description with below macros then it will generate alerts based on customization. Supported macros keys:

Risks, Limitations & Assumptions

• Application can handle Critical/Recovery failure alert notifications for below two cases when user enables Notification Alert in configuration:

  • Connectivity Exception
  • Authentication Exception

• Application will send any duplicate/repeat failure alert notification for every 6 hours.

• Application cannot control monitoring pause/resume actions based on above alerts. Metrics can be used to monitor aix-server resource and can generate alerts based on the threshold values.

• OpsRamp has provided 22 as default SSH Port value for connecting to aix end device via SSH. Users can modify this value from the application configuration page at any point of time if required.

• No support of showing activity log and applied time.

• This application supports both Classic Gateway and NextGen Gateway .

• Currently we do not have monitoring support for below things.

  • Hardware metrics.
  • Programmable Resource Monitoring.
  • Processes (We provided one metric for each process RunningStatus. i.e, ibmaix_server_process_RunningStatus)

• For log monitoring, we expect below json payload as input:

  • “Name” can be any string used to identify individual log configuration.
  • “File Name” is a combination of folder path and file name. Folder path should contain the exact path for the file as prefix. File name can be any valid string or regular expression.. In case of file not found with specified file name, alert will be generated with the severity specified by the user.
    Example 1: /var/adm/ras/Age.?t.log
    Matches: Agent.log, Ageat.log ,..
  • “Rotated File Name” is similar to filename field but specifying the rotated file. This field is optional.
  • “Expression” can be any valid string or regular expression used to specify the search string. It’s a mandatory field.
  • “Check Type” can be either “exists” or “not exists”(case insensitive). It’s a mandatory field.
  • “Threshold” can be any valid integer. Alert will be generated in case of specified threshold breach happens.
  • “Severity” used to specify the alert type to be created in case of expression found. Possible values are CRITICAL,WARNING,INFO and OK (case insensitive).
  • Atmost we can monitor only two log files including rotated file.

• Log File configuration

      [{   "Name":"",   "File Name":"",   "Rotated File Name":"",   "Expression":"",   "Check Type":"",   "Threshold":"",   "Severity":""   }]
      

• We do not process logs of size greater than 1GB.

• We do not process logs for the first request, since it leads to performance issues due to huge data. We will consider the latest logs ( logs generated between first and second polls) from the second request and process accordingly.

• No recovery alerts are generated for expression related alerts. You will get recovery only for file not found alerts