ehealth Element and Poller Management Guide

Transcription

1 ehealth Element and Poller Management Guide MN-EHADMPM-001 October 2006

2 This documentation (the "Documentation") and related computer software program (the "Software") (hereinafter collectively referred to as the "Product") is for the end user's informational purposes only and is subject to change or withdrawal by CA at any time. This Product may not be copied, transferred, reproduced, disclosed, modified or duplicated, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of CA. This Product is confidential and proprietary information of CA and protected by the copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. Notwithstanding the foregoing, licensed users may print a reasonable number of copies of the Documentation for their own internal use, and may make one copy of the Software as reasonably required for back-up and disaster recovery purposes, provided that all CA copyright notices and legends are affixed to each reproduced copy. Only authorized employees, consultants, or agents of the user who are bound by the provisions of the license for the Software are permitted to have access to such copies. The right to print copies of the Documentation and to make a copy of the Software is limited to the period during which the license for the Product remains in full force and effect. Should the license terminate for any reason, it shall be the user's responsibility to certify in writing to CA that all copies and partial copies of the Product have been returned to CA or destroyed. EXCEPT AS OTHERWISE STATED IN THE APPLICABLE LICENSE AGREEMENT, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, CA PROVIDES THIS PRODUCT "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT WILL CA BE LIABLE TO THE END USER OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE, DIRECT OR INDIRECT, FROM THE USE OF THIS PRODUCT, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, LOST PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, GOODWILL, OR LOST DATA, EVEN IF CA IS EXPRESSLY ADVISED OF SUCH LOSS OR DAMAGE. The use of this Product and any product referenced in the Documentation is governed by the end user's applicable license agreement. The manufacturer of this Product is CA. This Product is provided with "Restricted Rights." Use, duplication or disclosure by the United States Government is subject to the restrictions set forth in FAR Sections , , and (c)(1) - (2) and DFARS Section (c)(1)(ii), as applicable, or their successors. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. Copyright 2006 CA. All rights reserved.

3 Table of Contents Preface 5 Audience About This Guide Reading Path Revision Information Documentation Conventions Technical Support Chapter 1 Managing the Data Collection Process 7 Understanding the Polling Process: Important Concepts After You Save Discover Results Controlling the Polling Rates and Intervals Stopping and Starting the Poller Changing the Statistics Poll Rates Changing the Conversation Poll Rate Viewing the Poller Configuration Using OneClickEH Using the ehealth Console Managing Poller License Consumption Freeing Licenses Using DCI to Modify Element Information Your Resource Management Roadmap Chapter 2 Resolving Polling Errors 13 OneClickEH Status Summary Understanding the Cause of Common Polling Errors Identifying Polling Problems Investigating the Problems Taking Action

4 4 Table of Contents Chapter 3 Modifying Your Element Configuration 21 Updating Element Properties Agent Type SNMP Index Interface Speed Element Values (Discovered Information) Specifying User Strings to Use as a Filter in OneClickEH Making Element Names More Intuitive Element Names Aliases Excluding an Element from Live Exceptions Monitoring Recording Statistics Data for an Element Tracking Changes to the Poller Configuration Monitoring Administration Changes Chapter 4 Adding New Elements to Your Configuration 29 Adding a Statistics Element Creating a Modem Pool Element Adding a Permanent Virtual Circuit Element for a Frame Relay Element Managing Alternate Latency Understanding Alternate Latency Collection Configuring the Alternate Latency Ping Process Disabling Alternate Latency Data Collection Chapter 5 Organizing Your Elements by Grouping 35 The Purpose of Grouping Creating Groups and Group Lists Controlling Access to Groups and Group Lists Editing and Copying Groups and Group Lists Deleting Groups and Group Lists of Elements Focusing ehealth Console Administration on One Group.. 40 Chapter 6 Troubleshooting Common Problems 43 ehealth Misses a Scheduled Poll Unable to Report on Router Interface Elements ehealth Reports the Speed of Elements as Zero Cannot Save Data for an Element in the Database Index 45 ehealth Element and Polling Management Guide

5 Preface This guide describes the ehealth element and poller management process collecting, modifying, and maintaining data on the health of the resources that ehealth is monitoring. Element and poller management is one of several primary tasks that an ehealth administrator performs. This guide supports ehealth Release 6.0 and later. Audience This guide is intended for anyone who must perform element and poller management or is responsible for managing one or more aspects of this administrative function. Before you use this guide, you should become familiar with network terminology, general ehealth concepts, and the resource discovery process. About This Guide This section describes the reading path that you should follow, as well as the revision history of this guide. It also includes the documentation conventions used in this guide. Reading Path Prior to reading this guide, you should review the Introduction to ehealth guide and the ehealth Administration Overview Guide. You can refer to the ehealth Resource Discovery Guide for detailed information about the process that ehealth uses to find the resources to monitor. These guides are available in PDF format in the ehealth Web Help and on the Support web site. Revision Information This is the first release of this guide. 5

6 6 Preface Documentation Conventions Table 1 lists the conventions used in this document. Table 1. Documentation Conventions Convention File or Directory Name code emphasis enter Name New Term Variable NOTE Description Text that refers to file or directory names. Text that refers to system, code, or operating system command lines. Text that refers to guide titles or text that is emphasized. Text that you must type exactly as shown. Text that refers to menus, fields in dialogs, or keyboard keys. Text that refers to a new term, that is, one that is being introduced. Text that refers to variable values that you substitute. A sequence of menus or menu options. For example, File Exit means Choose Exit from the File menu. Important information, tips, or other noteworthy details. CAUTION WARNING Information that helps you avoid data corruption or system failures. Information that helps you avoid personal physical danger. Technical Support If you have a Support Contract ID and password, you can access our Support Express knowledgebase at the following URL: If you have a software maintenance contract, you can obtain assistance with ehealth. For online technical assistance and a complete list of primary service hours and telephone numbers, contact Technical Support at

7 1 Managing the Data Collection Process Managing element data that ehealth collects on your resources is a critical administration task. Over time, your infrastructure changes, so it is important to proactively maintain it to ensure that ehealth can continue to collect data on the health of your resources. This chapter begins by describing the important concepts associated with managing the process of data collection (the polling process), and explains how to control the collection rate. It follows with procedures for viewing your element data and managing your poller license consumption. Understanding the Polling Process: Important Concepts To monitor and manage the performance of networks, systems, and applications, the ehealth software locates resources, or elements, within your infrastructure through a process referred to as discovery. To find the resources, ehealth uses Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agents to search for the IP addresses that you specify. It then obtains information from the management information base (MIB) of each device and creates elements based on that data. After You Save Discover Results When you save the discover process results, ehealth stores the element information in its database and its poller configuration. The ehealth poller automatically collects performance and availability statistics data from the network, system, and applications elements in the ehealth poller configuration through a process referred to as polling. The poller configuration defines the information that is specific to each element such as the name, any configuration information that ehealth obtained during discovery, the polling rate (the frequency with which ehealth polls the element), and the agent type (the type of element that ehealth discovered). While discover can keep the majority of your poller configuration up-to-date automatically, the discover process works most effectively when you maintain your configuration by correcting polling problems, deleting resources that have been removed from the infrastructure, and adding new ones. When resources change so drastically that discover cannot match any of their attributes to existing elements, you need to manually update the element information to prevent or resolve discover errors and duplicate elements. If you do not actively manage and maintain your poller configuration, ehealth will not be able to successfully collect data on your resources. Managing Discovered Elements ehealth provides two administrative interfaces that you can use to manage the poller and your elements: the ehealth console and the OneClick for ehealth console (OneClickEH). Not all functions are available through both interfaces; some are only available in one. This document provides guidelines for performing each task. 7

8 8 Chapter 1 Managing the Data Collection Process Controlling the Polling Rates and Intervals The ehealth poller runs continuously to regularly collect data from elements. You can stop the poller to troubleshoot problems, and you can control how it runs. If you do not want to collect data all day or every day of the week, you can configure the poller to run only during certain hours of the day and also control the collection intervals. Stopping and Starting the Poller Using the Poller Controls option in the Setup menu of the ehealth console, you can turn the poller on or off for all of your resources, set it to run continuously, or set it to run between two specific times of the day. You can also control the amount of data that you collect by customizing the polling interval the rate at which ehealth collects statistics data and conversation data. When you turn off polling, you are turning off the statistics, import, and conversation pollers, so ehealth does not poll any elements. As a result, reports show a gap during periods when the poller is off. Changing the Statistics Poll Rates By default, ehealth polls all elements at the Normal rate (every 5 minutes). With the exception of alternate latency elements, the statistics poller can also poll statistics elements at two other rates: Slow (every 30 minutes) and Fast (every minute). When ehealth polls an element at the Slow or Normal rates, it saves the data in the database during each poll. For those elements that are polling at the Fast rate, ehealth collects one-minute samples and saves the aggregate 5-minute sample (the normal poll interval) as a single sample in the database. For individual elements, you can also set a fourth rate, Fast Store, to collect data with a higher granularity. When you poll elements at the Fast Store rate, ehealth collects data at the Fast rate and stores the samples in the database without aggregating them. For example, if you have set the Fast poll interval to 30 seconds (using the Poller Controls dialog), ehealth collects 30-second samples for those elements and saves the individual samples every 5 minutes (at the Normal poll interval) without aggregating the data. To set the poll rate for individual elements, use the Edit Element window in OneClickEH. To set global controls that impact all elements that you are polling, use the Poller Controls dialog in the ehealth console. Modifying the Polling Interval. You can use the Poller Controls dialog to change the Fast rate to 30 seconds or 2.5 minutes. You can change the Normal rate to 10, 15, or 30 minutes, and change the Slow rate to 60 minutes. By increasing the Normal and Slow polling intervals, your database does not grow as quickly, but the data in the reports has less granularity. As a result, you might not observe peaks because ehealth averages them over a longer sample time. If poll intervals are too long or you have a complex polling environment, the devices may lose data or discard it before ehealth can collect it from them. As your ehealth element configuration becomes larger, you may need to tune your statistics poller to ensure that the poller operates more efficiently, reduce the SNMP polling impact on shared system resources, and allow the ehealth installation to maximize its element configuration size. For instructions, refer to the Tuning the ehealth Statistics Poller White Paper, which is available on the Support web site. For additional guidelines on changing the polling interval, refer to Guidelines for Changing to the Fast and Fast Store Rates on page 17.

9 Viewing the Poller Configuration 9 Changing the Conversation Poll Rate The default polling interval for conversation data (which applies to data collected by Traffic Accountant) is 30 minutes, but you can set it to 15, 45, or 60 minutes. The polling interval is longer than that for statistics data because ehealth polls each Traffic Accountant probe to collect data on every conversation that the probe detected, which can result in a tremendous amount of data being collected at each poll. Probe memory can vary and determines the amount of conversation data that ehealth collects from the probe. Use a polling interval that allows you to retrieve data from the probe before it resets counters or drops data. The number of elements in your database and the amount of disk space available for the database might require you to use a polling interval that is longer than the default. 1 Viewing the Poller Configuration To view all elements that you are monitoring and their associated configuration information, you can use the ehealth console or OneClickEH. Each interface provides unique capabilities. Using OneClickEH To view and modify the poller configuration through OneClickEH, click Find Elements in the Managed Resources folder and select the Element Chooser tab. Table filters Filtering the Table Display By default, OneClickEH immediately shows all of your elements in the table. If you specify matching criteria in the Filter table by field at the top of the console screen, it filters the list as you type. If you have a very large configuration, OneClickEH can require several minutes to show the entire list. To filter your element list before OneClickEH displays the entire element configuration, you can disable these features. To modify the matching criteria before OneClickEH displays all elements: 1. Select Tools Options Advanced at the top of the console to display the Advanced Settings dialog. 2. Deselect Show all elements immediately when displaying element tables. 3. Optionally, if you want ehealth to allow you to finish specifying all matching criteria before it filters the list, also deselect Filter element tables as you specify the filtering criteria. 4. Click OK to close the Advanced Settings dialog. 5. Select the Element Chooser tab. 6. Specify matching criteria in the Filter table by field; then click Go to complete the operation.

10 10 Chapter 1 Managing the Data Collection Process Searching for Elements Additionally, you can filter your element search based on a specific name, alias, or IP address. You can select Name or Alias from the list on the Element Chooser page and specify a portion of the element s name using wildcards (for example, *boston*). You can also specify the digits of one or more of IP address octets in the IP Address field. You can use the * symbol as a wildcard to search for all numbers within the range of 0-250, but you cannot use the wildcard to search for a single digit. All sample formats shown in the following table are valid: Type Examples Range 111.* 111.*.11.* * * * *-30 List ,15,17.* 20,27,32.11.*.11 You can also exclude the element s subcomponents from your search. After OneClickEH finds the elements that match your search criteria, it displays the properties in the element table. In each view, you can sort any column to quickly find elements of particular interest to you. You can move, reorder, and resize the columns. If you want to save the data, you can copy, export, or print it. Using the ehealth Console To view and modify the poller configuration through the ehealth console, select Setup Poller Configuration, as shown in Figure 1. By default, the dialog displays all elements in your configuration sorted alphabetically by name. Using various options, you can reorder and filter the list to show specific elements, and manage all of your element types. If you enable the global setting in the Options dialog to display alias names, the poller configuration shows aliases in the list. To find an element, enter a string in the Search for Name field. You can use wildcards, such as an asterisk (*) to match zero or Figure 1. Poller Configuration Dialog more characters or a question mark (?) to match any single character. If you enter a string without any wildcards, the filter displays the elements that contain that string anywhere in the name. If the Search for Name field is empty, the filter displays all elements.

11 Managing Poller License Consumption 11 Saving the Poller Configuration Information To manage the poller configuration, you can save some or all of the information that appears in the Poller Configuration dialog by outputting it to a file. The resulting ASCII file can be useful for inventory checking and for reviewing the elements that you are monitoring. For example, you could use it to devise a list of alias names. The Save List To File option (located in the lower right corner of the dialog) saves all configuration data that is currently displayed in the dialog and stores it in an ASCII file named poller.cfg.log in the /ehealth/log directory. If the file already exists, ehealth overwrites it with the new information. To simply output a list of element names that exist in your poller configuration, you can run the nhlistelements command. 1 Managing Poller License Consumption You can discover any number of elements; however, ehealth will only poll elements that have a poller license. ehealth uses poller licenses to control the number of elements that you can poll. Although most elements only consume one license, it is important to track the number of licenses that ehealth requires for all of the elements in your poller configuration. You can manage your poller license consumption from the OneClickEH Status Summary window that appears immediately after you log in to your ehealth system. From that window, you can identify the number of poller licenses that are available for use, the total number of licenses that you have, and the total number that you need to poll all of your elements. For instructions on purchasing additional licenses, refer to the Technical Support web site. Freeing Licenses If you do not need to monitor all of your elements, you can free some licenses by turning off polling for them or deleting them. When you turn off polling for an element, it remains in the database, but it does not require a license because ehealth is no longer collecting data for it. These procedures are discussed in detail in Disabling Polling on page 17. In some cases, two elements may share a license. To identify those elements that are the primary consumers of a license, and those that share a license with another element, use the nhlistelementlicenses command. To free a license for use by another element, you need to delete or disable all primary elements that share the same license. The nhlistelementlicenses command also identifies those elements that do not need a license and those that are not consuming a license. Using DCI to Modify Element Information If you have a network management system (NMS) or other source at your site that collects configuration information and data for your resources, you can use the ehealth DataSync application programming interface to import element information. When you need to modify element configuration information in the ehealth database, you can export the information to a Database Configuration Information (DCI) file, modify the information, then import it into the ehealth database. To use DataSync, you must be comfortable creating programs, scripts, and files that use complex syntax and have a working knowledge of ehealth. For detailed instructions, refer to the ehealth Integration Guide.

12 12 Chapter 1 Managing the Data Collection Process Your Resource Management Roadmap This chapter provides an overview of the ehealth polling process and how to access the controls. Managing the process of collecting, modifying, and maintaining the data is a critical administrative function that involves several primary tasks (outlined in Table 1) that are discussed in the remaining chapters. Table 1. Resource Management Tasks Task Description Chapter Resolving Polling Errors Updating Element Information Adding New Elements Organizing Elements Use the OneClickEH Statistics Polling Management interface to identify and resolve polling problems to ensure that ehealth can continue to collect data. Use the ehealth console Poller Configuration dialog and OneClickEH to manually modify element properties and make element names easily recognizable. Use the ehealth console Poller Configuration dialog to manually add elements that discover is unable to find. Use the OneClickEH Managed Resources interface to organize related elements into groups for easier reporting and management. Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

13 2 Resolving Polling Errors To ensure that ehealth can continue to collect data on your resources, it is important to monitor polling, identify errors, and quickly resolve any polling problems that occur. This chapter provides you with guidelines for using the OneClickEH Statistics Polling Management interface to perform those tasks. OneClickEH Status Summary The OneClickEH Status Summary window (Figure 2) summarizes all polling activity that takes place on your ehealth system and updates it every minute. If your web user account has permission to manage statistics polling, you can click All Errors to drill down to the Statistics Polling Management interface from this window and review polling problems and errors. To resolve an error, you can right-click any element and select an option from the pop-up menu. Figure 2. ehealth Status Summary 13

14 14 Chapter 2 Resolving Polling Errors Understanding the Cause of Common Polling Errors After successfully discovering your elements, you could encounter some common polling problems such as those described in Table 2. Errors can result from temporary or prolonged network delays or connection problems, element index shifts, and traffic congestion. You can also receive errors if you are polling devices that have not been certified for use with ehealth. Table 2. Typical Polling Errors (Page 1 of 2) Polling Error Device Exceeded Allowable Timeouts Received Large Delta Error No Response (to SNMP) Received an SNMP Error Description When devices with multiple elements such as routers or servers do not respond to SNMP requests, the information that the poller collects is incomplete. In addition, if those elements are consistently unresponsive, the performance of the poller is negatively impacted. To ensure that polled data is accurate and to limit the amount of time that ehealth spends polling one device, ehealth tracks the number of SNMP request timeouts. If it exceeds the value of NH_SNMP_DEVICE_TIMEOUTS, it stops polling any elements associated with that device and proceeds to poll the next device. Resolution: If the device has not responded for one or two polling cycles, the problem could be a temporary one. If you wait another polling cycle or two, the problem may resolve itself. If the device has never responded to polls, the element information could be incorrect or the SNMP agent could be down. Contact the device owner to investigate problems. A counter wrap occurs when one or more MIB variables reaches its maximum value, resets to zero, and begins counting again within one polling cycle. When the delta, which is the difference between the counter values for the last poll and the current poll, reaches or exceeds 50% of its maximum value, ehealth identifies this as a large delta error. It discards the data for that element for that poll because the counter wrap can cause unusual results in reports and performance monitoring. Resolution: Most often, delta errors occur with high-speed links or devices. Their MIB counters increment so quickly that they can wrap within the normal five-minute polling interval. Use OneClickEH to change the statistics polling rate by right-clicking and selecting Fast Poll to Resolve Large Deltas. If the index shifted as a result of a reboot or other configuration change, right-click and select Rediscover or select Rediscover with Rules to rediscover the device and update the poller configuration. If the error persists, verify that the device is certified for use with ehealth. Search for the device at If the polled device does not respond to an ehealth poll within a specified amount of time, ehealth generates an error and does not collect any data for that element for that poll interval. Resolution: If the agent is running, the problem may be due to temporary network delays. Wait a few poll cycles to see if the error persists. If the element has never responded to SNMP requests, increase the time that ehealth waits for an SNMP response and the number of times that it retries by modifying the NH_SNMP_TIMEOUT and the NH_SNMP_RETRIES environment variables. To prevent wasteful increases in the overall poll cycle time, increment the value by one second and then wait to observe the impact. If rediscovery is not successful, refer to the Poller Tuning Guide that is available on the Support web site. If a device was unable to provide an object identifier (OID) in response to an SNMP request from ehealth, ehealth generates a generic SNMP error. This can occur when polling information is out-of-date because the element had an index shift or the device has not been certified by CA. Resolution: Using OneClickEH, right-click and select Rediscover. If the SNMP error persists, ensure that the device responds to SNMP V1 get commands, and then verify that the device is certified for use with ehealth. Search for the device at

15 Identifying Polling Problems 15 Table 2. Typical Polling Errors (Page 2 of 2) Polling Error Description 1 No Response to ping ehealth pings each IP address before it sends an SNMP request. If the device does not respond to the ping request, ehealth considers it to be a missed poll and does not collect SNMP data from the device. Ping failures can occur because of network connection problems that either prevent the ping request from reaching the polled device or prevent the ping response from reaching the ehealth system. Ping failures also occur if the device is off. Also, when traffic on the network is congested, routers and switches may discard ping requests in favor of higher-priority traffic. Resolution: If the ping failure is local to one or more devices, use OneClickEH to ping it. Right-click the element and select Ping from Server. If it does not respond, it may be off. If you determine that the device has been removed from the network, delete or retire the element by right-clicking it. If ping errors are occurring for many elements in your configuration and you have confirmed that the cause is not due to temporary network conditions, you can increase the value of the NH_POLL_PING_TIMEOUT environment variable. If you have network restrictions that would always prevent a successful ping, you can disable the ping operation with each poll using the NH_POLL_PING_DISABLED environment variable. This will allow ehealth to gather SNMP responses, but calculate reachability based on SNMP responses rather than true device reachability using ping. Identifying Polling Problems To access all ehealth elements that have reported polling errors during the last Normal polling period, you can use the OneClickEH Statistics Polling Management interface. The element table displays the name and properties of every element that has an error, and the time period for which ehealth has not collected data, as shown in Figure 3. You can easily sort the data and reorder the columns to find specific problems. Figure 3. Element Table Investigating the Problems If your web user account has permission to manage elements, you can right-click any element (except those that are remotely polled) to access the pop-up menu, as shown in Figure 4. To investigate why ehealth was unable to poll an element, as an initial step, you can ping the element from the server to confirm that the element exists and is active within your infrastructure, and that the network connection from ehealth to the device is working. If the element responds to ping, ehealth should be able to collect data from it the next time that a poll occurs. Ping the element Figure 4. Element Actions

16 16 Chapter 2 Resolving Polling Errors If the element does not respond to ping, you can drill down to an At-a-Glance report or a Trend report to troubleshoot problems. You could also generate an Element Configuration report to review the element s configuration details and identify its relationships, or associations, to other elements. If an element repeatedly does not respond to ping, but you know that it exists, modify the number of times that ehealth will attempt to retry polling and also change the timeout rate. Double-click the element in the table. In the Edit Element window, select Polling, specify the timeout and retries values, and click OK. Taking Action If you are not able to resume polling for the element by manually pinging it, take one of the actions described in Table 3 to resolve the problem. These methods are described in detail in the following sections. Table 3. Element Actions Available Element Action Change the polling rate. Disable polling for the element. Modify the community string. Rediscover. Delete the element. Retire an element. Result Enable ehealth to collect data less frequently to accommodate a device that is experiencing heavy traffic. Stop collecting data from the element temporarily, or allow another element to use the poller license. Update the SNMP password that ehealth uses to control read-write access to data. Update the element in your poller configuration. Stop polling the element and stop reporting on it. Stop polling the element, but continue to include element data in reports. Any changes that you make to statistics or conversation elements take effect during the next poll. The poller does not restart; the changes take effect without interrupting the polling cycle. The following sections provide guidelines. For detailed instructions, refer to the OneClickEH Web Help. Changing the Polling Rate By default, ehealth assigns the Normal polling rate to newly discovered statistics elements. It polls elements every 5 minutes and saves the data to the database during the poll. This is the rate that you should typically use to collect data from statistics elements, but ehealth can also poll at these three other rates: Rate Slow Fast Fast Store Data Collection Process ehealth polls elements every 30 minutes and saves the data in the database during the poll. You can change the default interval to 60 minutes. ehealth aggregates the data from five 1-minute polls into one 5-minute average sample before saving it to the database. This process ensures that the data samples are consistent. You can change the default interval to 30 seconds or 2.5 minutes. ehealth collects data at the Fast rate and stores the samples in the database without aggregating them. If you poll parent elements at the Fast Store rate, you must change the poll rate of each individual child element to Fast Store. Otherwise, ehealth polls their children at the Fast rate and does not store the data.

17 Identifying Polling Problems 17 If an element that is being polled at the Fast rate consistently shows missed polls in the OneClickEH Status Summary window, the element agent might not be able to respond to the SNMP polls during the fast interval. To enable the agent to respond, you should assign the Normal rate to the element. In contrast, the Slow polling rate allows you to poll elements that require even more time to respond, as well as to poll those elements that you want to poll less frequently because you do not expect their utilization rates to change. This rate is also effective for elements that are not located close to the ehealth system and cannot respond during the Normal poll interval. 1 Guidelines for Changing to the Fast and Fast Store Rates. To resolve a polling problem, OneClickEH allows you to quickly change any element to the Fast or Fast Store rate. Double-click the element name and select the Polling tab in the Edit Element window; then select a poll rate. Typically, you should only use the Fast rate to collect data more frequently from high-speed devices that do not support 64-bit counters, such as FDDI or ATM interfaces. High-speed element agents collect a significant amount of data during a Normal (five-minute) polling period. If a high-speed interface indicates significantly less volume than you expect, or it generates a large delta error, polling it at the Fast rate can ensure that ehealth will not miss data. The Fast rate is also effective for collecting data from modems or ISDN connections that have short-duration connections. NOTE You can poll alternate latency elements at the Normal rate only. To ensure that fast-polled data samples are consistent, ehealth aggregates the data from five 1-minute polls into one 5-minute average sample before saving it to the database. When it polls at the Fast Store rate, ehealth saves the 1-minute samples and does not aggregate them. Therefore, when you use the Fast or Fast Store rate, your system performance requirements increase. Depending on the size of your ehealth system, if you poll too many elements at the Fast rate, the poll might not finish before the next Fast poll is scheduled to begin. To determine the equivalent polling load, multiply the number of Fast-polled elements by the ratio of Normal poll rate to Fast poll rate, and add that number to your total number of elements. For example, if you have 5000 elements, and 200 are polled at the Fast rate, the poller is actually performing (200x5)=5800 polls during a Normal 5-minute polling interval. Disabling Polling Using OneClickEH, you can easily disable polling for one or more elements by right-clicking them in the element table. When you disable polling for an element, it remains in the database and in the poller configuration, but ehealth no longer collects data for it. You may want to disable an element to exclude it from reports temporarily or permanently: If you are unable to determine why an element is generating an error after being polled, you should disable polling for it while you try to resolve the error. If you attempt to poll an element that is not certified, it will generate a Received an SNMP Error or Received Large Delta Error. While your request for certification is being processed, you should disable polling for the element to prevent subsequent errors. If you disable polling for a router or a system, keep in mind that ehealth also disables polling for all elements that belong to that router or system. However, it continues to poll any router or system interfaces that record detail data unless you specifically disable polling for those interfaces.

18 18 Chapter 2 Resolving Polling Errors Redistributing Polling Licenses. You can only poll elements for which you have available poller licenses. If you do not need to poll one or more elements, you can free the licenses by disabling polling for the elements. When you disable an element temporarily, it remains in the database, but it does not consume a license. In some cases, you may just want to free the license temporarily for another element. To free a license for use by another element: 1. Right-click the element in the OneClickEH table and select Disable Polling. 2. Double-click the element that needs the license. 3. In the Edit Element window, select the Polling tab. 4. Select Yes from the Polling Enabled list to enable polling. ehealth automatically assigns the free license to that element and begins polling it. Changing the Community String The community string is used by administrators to grant read and write access to various device MIBs. ehealth typically uses a read-only community string to poll devices. If you change the read-write community string or the read-only community string of a device, you must change the community strings that ehealth uses for the element that represents the device. Otherwise, ehealth cannot poll the device. If your web user account has permission to manage community strings from the OneClickEH interface, you can easily change both the read-write and read-only community strings for an element that you are monitoring. To quickly change the read-write community string for an element, right-click the element name and select Modify Read-Write Community. Specify a maximum of 64 single-byte or 32 double-byte characters using the letters A through Z and a through z, backslashes, and the numbers 0 through 9. Do not use the word All, spaces, and commas. If you include a backslash (\) in a community string at the command line on a UNIX system, you must supply an additional backslash as an escape character. On a Windows system, do not supply the extra backslash escape character. To change both the read-write and the read-only community strings for an element, double-click it to display the Edit Element window; then select the General tab. Specify a read-write community string for SNMP Gets and Sets, which includes creating, modifying, or deleting MIB monitoring rows, and automatic licensing; then specify a read-only community string for SNMP Get requests. Rediscovering an Element If an element generates a Received Large Delta Error, the index may have shifted as a result of a reboot or other configuration change. To resolve the problem, you can right-click the device name in the OneClickEH element table and select Rediscover to try to update the poller configuration. (If you are using DCI rules files to filter your discoveries, you can select Rediscover with Rules to specify the rules for your rediscovery). Large delta errors may also occur if you have not applied the latest device certification patch. Once you have applied it, you need to rediscover using the same method. When you rediscover an element using OneClickEH to correct polling problems, OneClickEH runs the same discover process that is available from the ehealth console based on some default guidelines for determining the type of discovery to run, and the level of changes to make. For those devices that may have more than one element, it rediscovers the entire device, not just the one element that is having polling problems. As a best practice, always review the Discover log carefully before saving the results to confirm the changes that OneClickEH identifies.

19 Identifying Polling Problems 19 Changing the Retries and Timeout Rate If you receive a No Response (to SNMP) error for an element that has never responded to SNMP requests, you can increase the time that ehealth waits for an SNMP response by double-click the element in the OneClickEH table. In the Edit Element window, select Polling, specify the poll timeout value, and click OK. By default, ehealth waits four seconds ( microseconds) before timing out, based on the value of the NH_SNMP_TIMEOUT environment variable. To prevent wasteful increases in the overall poll cycle time, increment the value by one second and then wait to observe the impact. By default, ehealth attempts to retry polling three times (based on the NH_SNMP_RETRIES environment variable setting) before skipping the element and recording the poll as a missed poll. You can specify a value in the Poll Retries field to increase or decrease the number of times that ehealth will attempt to retry polling an element before giving up on the poll. 1 Removing Elements That You Do Not Want to Monitor Over time, you may remove resources from the infrastructure or determine that you no longer want to monitor them. If you continue to poll elements that do not exist, ehealth will generate No Response to Ping polling errors, and future discoveries will list those resources as Missing Elements in the discover log. To keep your poller configuration up-to-date, and prevent ehealth from polling these elements, you must delete or retire them from your poller configuration. Deleting an element is a permanent action. You will not be able to resume polling for that element in the future, and ehealth will no longer include that element in its reports. When you retire an element, you remove it from polling, but ehealth will continue to include it in reports. In the future, you can unretire the element if you want to begin collecting data for it again. The following sections explain why you might want to retire an element rather than delete it. Deleting Elements. A deleted element is one that you no longer want to poll and that you do not want to include in reports. When you delete an element, ehealth removes all data associated with that element from the database. However, ehealth could attempt to rediscover it the next time that you run the discover process for the same IP address. As a best practice, if you do not want to rediscover existing elements that you have deleted, add the IP addresses to an IP exclusion file to filter it out. Follow the instructions provided in the ehealth Resource Discovery Guide. When deleting elements from your poller configuration, keep in mind the following: If you delete a router element, ehealth also deletes all elements associated with that router, such as CPUs, interfaces, and so on. If you delete a system element, ehealth also deletes all elements associated with that system, such as CPUs, disks, partitions, interfaces, process sets, and processes. If the Record detail data option is set in the Modify Element dialog for a system element, you can delete the interface as a subcomponent of the parent as well as an interface element, or retain one of the elements. If you delete a process set, ehealth deletes all of its associated processes as well. If you rediscover the system and choose to find processes, ehealth rediscovers the process set. If you delete an application service element, ehealth also deletes all process sets that are associated with that element.

20 20 Chapter 2 Resolving Polling Errors Before you delete an element, use OneClickEH to right-click it and select Ping from Server. If the element does not respond, confirm that the network has not experienced an outage that could be preventing the element from responding. Ping problems can result from temporary connectivity problems. The element will stop returning ping errors once the network problem is resolved. Once you are certain that the element does not exist and you are sure that you do not want to monitor it, right-click and select Delete; then click OK. Retiring Elements. A retired element is one that you no longer want to poll, but that you want to include in reports until its data ages out or you delete the element. When you retire an element, you retain the old element but do not collect new data for it. You may want to retire an element when you upgrade to a new technology so that you can compare the improvement for the new technology type. The discover process ignores retired elements when it compares newly discovered elements to those in the poller configuration. When you no longer need the element or when data is no longer available for it, you can retire it by right-clicking it and selecting Retire from the OneClickEH menu. Once you have retired an element, ehealth grays out its entry in all OneClickEH element tables. If you want to return a retired element to an active status, right-click the element and select Unretire from the menu. When retiring elements, follow these guidelines and practices: If retired elements still exist in your network and you discover them again, ehealth creates new elements. If you do not want to rediscover them, add their IP addresses to an IP exclusion file for your scheduled Discover jobs. When retiring a parent element, keep in mind that ehealth automatically retires all related child elements that do not consume their own polling licenses. It does not retire child elements for which you have specified Record detail data in the Modify Element dialog. When retiring response source elements, you must first disassociate or remove any Service Availability tests associated with the agent and retire the response source element associated with the agent. Otherwise, you will need to manually edit the svcrsp.cf file to prevent active tests from running on the Service Availability agent. If a different element has been retired with the same agent type and index values, the status bar indicates that an element already exists with these properties. To resolve this problem, change the IP address of one of the retired elements. The information for retired elements must be unique.

21 3 Modifying Your Element Configuration In most cases, interactive and scheduled discovery keeps your element information up-to-date with the latest information from the devices. However, you can manually change the configuration to perform the following tasks: Update element properties. Specify user-defined data to use as an element filter. Make element names more intuitive. Exclude an element from Live Exceptions monitoring. This chapter provides you with guidelines for modifying element information manually and tracking the changes that you and other administrators make to the poller configuration. Updating Element Properties Although discover is able to update elements automatically, you may need to manually update element properties to prevent or resolve discover errors and duplicate elements. Typically, you perform manual updates when the element has changed so drastically that discover cannot match any of its attributes to an existing element, so it considers it a new element. Also, you can perform these changes manually when you need to override the device settings. This might happen when the device configuration is incorrect, but you do not have permission to change the device, or you want to monitor the device in a special way. Any changes that you make to statistics or conversation elements take effect during the next poll. The poller does not need to restart; the changes take effect without interrupting the polling cycle. You can quickly examine the primary properties of an element by selecting Properties from the right-click menu to display the Properties window, as shown in Figure 5. To change a subset of the element s properties, you can double-click the element to display the Edit Element window, as shown in Figure 6. However, to change most element properties, such as agent type, speed, index, you must use the ehealth console. Figure 5. Element Properties Figure 6. Edit Element Window 21

22 22 Chapter 3 Modifying Your Element Configuration To change an element, select Setup Poller Configuration; select the element that you want to modify and click Modify to display the Modify Element dialog (Figure 7). When you make changes to the poller configuration, it is important to follow these guidelines: Do not modify the poller configuration while a scheduled discover job or a configuration import is running. If the poller configuration changes after you open the dialog, an error message appears, and you cannot save your changes. You must close the window, reopen it, and make the changes again. If you change the information for an existing device, make the corresponding changes to Figure 7. Modify Element Dialog the information for any component element. For example, if you edit the system name setting for a router, edit the setting for the interfaces and CPUs on that router, as well. If you change the polling status, agent type, or identification information of a parent element such as a router, system, RAS, or modem pool, ehealth also modifies the information for the child elements of that parent. You do not need to make these changes. Agent Type The discover process uses the information that is supplied by the agent at the polled device to select an agent type for each element that it creates. The agent type specifies the type of element, and thus, the data that ehealth collects from it. NOTE You can change the agent type of an element to tailor the way that ehealth identifies and manages the element. However, use care when doing so; if you select a type that the device cannot support, it could prevent ehealth from polling the element.

23 Updating Element Properties 23 Typically, you can modify the agent type to change system user partitions to system partitions, or to change interfaces to collect MIB2 rather than RMON data: ehealth uses different thresholds for system and user partitions because the utilizations and problems are usually very different. System partitions are not expected to change size, and they are often stable even with a high utilization percentage (80% or greater). User partitions often change and grow quickly, and problems can occur if the user partitions are more than 60-70% utilized. If interface elements discovered as RMON (Ethernet) agents support MIB2 variables, you can change the agent type to MIB2 (port) to take advantage of the additional information that is collected for MIB2 interfaces. 1 SNMP Index The SNMP index is a unique identifier for similar elements of a device (for example, all interfaces of a router). A device index can change, or shift, as a result of adding or removing interface cards in a router, upgrading router firmware, changing system elements, or rebooting a device. Index changes can result in an SNMP polling error. If they occur, you can usually rediscover to resolve the problem and update the elements. However, if the changes are too complex for discover to resolve, you may need to manually update them. Index changes can affect all elements of a device. For example, if you remove an interface card from the first card slot of a router, the indexes for the remaining interface elements could all decrease by one. To ensure that ehealth can successfully poll these devices, manually change the index for these elements. If the element has more than one index, you can change all of them using the Modify Element dialog. Interface Speed During the first poll, ehealth obtains the speed of LAN elements, and both the incoming and outgoing speeds of full-duplex interface elements as configured at the device. If the device s configuration does not report the correct speed, you may need to manually modify the element speed to ensure that ehealth can produce meaningful reports. You may also need to modify it if ehealth sets the speed of Frame Relay devices to 0 because they did not have any speeds configured. You can specify a number, which sets the rate in bits per second, or a number and the letter k (to specify kilobits per second) such as 56 k for 56,000 bits per second. You could also specify m (to specify megabits per second) such as 16 m for 16 Mbits per second (Mbps). ehealth does not accept a speed of zero (0). Element Values (Discovered Information) The Discovered Information values listed in Table 4 are the values that ehealth obtains from the element agent during a discover. You can use the Modify Element dialog in the ehealth console to change these values. CAUTION Use caution when changing these values a subsequent discover process may reset them to the device values or create duplicate elements. As a best practice, only change these values to prevent or resolve duplicate elements that resulted from a discover process, or to update the information to match the associated attributes that have changed at the device level.

24 24 Chapter 3 Modifying Your Element Configuration Table 4. Discovered Information Fields Field Name System Name System Description Location Discover Key Interface Type Contact Hardware ID Description sysname variable obtained from the device sysdescr variable obtained from the device syslocation variable obtained from the device Unique value that the discover process assigns to the element ifdescr variable obtained from the device (for CPUs, disks, and partitions, it is the device or partition name) iftype variable obtained from the device syscontact variable obtained from the device Unique device ID for the device Before you change the Discovered Information values, carefully consider the following: If you change the values of System Name, Discover Key, Interface, or Hardware ID, but not at the agent level, a subsequent discover process could reset them to the agent values or create duplicate elements. If you change the values of System Description, Location, Type, or Contact, a subsequent discover will reset the values to the values at the agent. If you change the Interface value, and it is used in the discover key, ehealth also changes the discover key. You must confirm this change when you click OK or Apply/Next. Specifying User Strings to Use as a Filter in OneClickEH The User String column displays a custom string that you can specify to uniquely describe your elements. Typically, the string is created in the Element section of the DCI file using the DCI element configuration input tools; but with OneClickEH, you can view, specify, and filter based on those strings. The Element section specifies configuration information for the elements that you want to import in to the ehealth poller configuration and database using the DataSync programming interface. You can use the fields in an element definition to filter or group elements, and to modify element information during importing. To add the User String column to your element tables, right-click a column name and select Select Fields. If you have not used DataSync to import your elements, you can specify a user-defined string to use as a filter in OneClickEH. You can also modify or append to the string that you have already defined. To define a userstring value to use as a filter in OneClickEH tables: 1. Double-click the element name in the element table. 2. In the Edit Element window, select the General tab. 3. Specify text in the User String text box or append additional text to the existing string. 4. Click OK.

25 Making Element Names More Intuitive 25 Making Element Names More Intuitive When you perform a discovery, ehealth automatically assigns a name to each element that it creates. It follows the naming conventions described in the ehealth Resource Discovery Guide. ehealth reports often truncate element names that are longer than 30 characters. In other cases, the names are not very meaningful, so it is difficult for users to quickly identify the elements. Once you have saved elements in the poller configuration, you can make the element names more intuitive by editing the names or creating alias names using the OneClickEH Edit Element window. 1 Element Names You might want to change the name of an interface to be more meaningful to administrators or report consumers. If you leave the Element Alias field blank when you modify the element name, ehealth saves the old element name in that field to help you match the old element name with the new one. When renaming an element, follow these guidelines: Do not duplicate another element name in your database. Element names must be unique. Specify a maximum of 64 single-byte or 32 double-byte characters using the letters A through Z and a through z, the numbers 0 through 9, dashes (-), periods(.), underscores (_), colons (:), and slashes (/). Do not specify a name that exceeds 64 bytes or is composed entirely of numerical characters. If you change the name of a router or a system, ehealth automatically updates the elements of that router or system with the new name of the device to which they belong. You do not have to make those changes yourself. Aliases To quickly identify elements in your report, you can assign shorter and more meaningful alias names to them after you discover them. For example, you might want to change the name of one or more interfaces to indicate the names of the cities to which the interfaces connect or to show that the interfaces are leased lines. To change the alias name of a single element, double-click the name in the OneClickEH table and select the General tab. Specify the alias name by following the character limitations for element names and click OK. Alias names do not have to be unique. To change or assign an alias substring for multiple elements, select the elements in the Poller Configuration dialog and click Modify; then specify a regular expression with which to replace all of them. If you do not assign an alias name to an element, ehealth displays the element name in the Alias Name field of the OneClickEH element tables and the Poller Configuration dialog. Parents. A parent is a device (such as a router, system, modem pool, or remote access server) to which an element belongs. For example, a modem can belong to a modem pool. If you move an element from one device to another, you should modify its parent setting in the poller configuration. If the element is on a router, system, or remote access server (or is part of a modem pool), double-click the name in the Poller Configuration dialog and update the name that appears in the Parent Element Name field of the Modify Element dialog. NOTE When you modify a parent element, ehealth modifies certain properties of the child elements to match. If you attempt to modify properties of the child element that cause inconsistencies with the parent element, ehealth rolls back the change to maintain consistency with the parent element.

26 26 Chapter 3 Modifying Your Element Configuration Excluding an Element from Live Exceptions Monitoring If you have a license for Live Health, the Live Exceptions field appears in the Modify Element dialog. Live Exceptions monitors ehealth elements to detect conditions defined by alarm rules. When Live Exceptions monitors a group or group list, it monitors all elements in the group or group list; however, you can exclude an element from Live Exceptions monitoring by deselecting Monitor in the Modify Element dialog. You can also select the time zone within which Live Exceptions should monitor the element. Recording Statistics Data for an Element To ensure that ehealth reports on individual statistics in LAN/WAN reports and aggregate statistics in Router or System reports, you can modify a router interface or system interface element by selecting Record detail data in the Modify Element dialog. This option appears for all router or system interface elements. Tracking Changes to the Poller Configuration You can review changes that you and other administrators make to the poller configuration by examining the polleraudit.date.time.log in the log directory of the ehealth installation. Table 5 describes the information that is provided for each change: Table 5. polleraudit.date.time.log File Field date-time-timezone username src DBID action element "info" Description Specifies the date and time of the poller configuration change, and the time zone in which it was made. Specifies the name of the ehealth user who made the change. Specifies the source of the change: i i s u indicates that a user made the change from the Poller Configuration dialog. indicates that an interactive discover process made the change. indicates that a scheduled discover process made the change. indicates that an unspecified process made the change (this is based on the value of the nmssource field in the GlobalInfo section of the Element DCI file). Specifies a unique numerical identifier that ehealth assigns to the element. Specifies that the process or user performed one of the following actions: add delete modify disable Added an element to the poller configuration. Removed an element from the poller configuration. Replaced the value in a field. Turned polling off for this element. Specifies the name of the element in the poller configuration. Specifies the changes that were made.

27 Tracking Changes to the Poller Configuration 27 You can access this log by selecting Server Files in the System Information folder of the OneClickEH console window. The file contains any changes that have been made to the poller configuration through OneClickEH and the ehealth console. OneClickEH also provides an activity log that includes all activity generated by OneClickEH administrators. 1 Monitoring Administration Changes The ehealth OneClick Activity option (in the ehealth History folder of the OneClickEH console) identifies the administrators who recently made changes to the poller configuration using OneClickEH, the tasks that they performed, when the activity took place, and the IP addresses of the clients on which the tasks were performed. The table distinguishes each message based on type: informational messages appear in white, warnings appear in orange, and errors appear in red. By default, the log displays all activity that has occurred within the last hour, but you can obtain a full log of activity that has occurred within specific time periods. NOTE This log itemizes all actions performed by users through OneClickEH; it does not report any actions performed through the ehealth console. The ehealth OneClick activity log also allows you to manage the size of the OneClickEH log file. Click the Log Administration tab to determine the amount of disk space that the OneClickEH activity log is consuming. If the log file is becoming too large and you do not need to retain the data, you can clear all data or reset the default.

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29 4 Adding New Elements to Your Configuration Under most circumstances, the discover process will find all of your resources and add them to your poller configuration automatically. In a typical ehealth environment, you should not have to use the ehealth console to manually add elements. However, when discover is unable to add an element, you can add the element manually to avoid generating multiple no response to ping errors and ensure that you can poll it. You also need to use the manual process to do the following: Create a modem pool element for a discovered RAS device. Add a permanent virtual circuit (PVC) element for a discovered Frame Relay circuit element. This chapter provides guidelines for performing these tasks using the Poller Configuration user interface through the ehealth console. It also discusses the process that ehealth uses to collect alternate latency, configure the ping process, and specify latency partners for discovered devices. Adding a Statistics Element If you are unable to discover an element that you want to monitor, you can add it to your poller configuration manually using the Add option in the Poller Configuration dialog. The element name cannot duplicate another element name in the database and should not be composed entirely of numerical characters. If you are adding an element that is on a router, system, or remote access server (or part of a modem pool), specify the router, system, remote access server, or modem pool element name as the parent name. After you create the element, at the next scheduled poll, ehealth polls it and updates the Poller Licenses Required information. Creating a Modem Pool Element To report on modem pools that might span one or more RAS devices, you can discover the devices using the Modem Pool mode. ehealth searches the specified IP addresses for RAS devices and creates an element for each of the following: Each modem pool configured at the device Each modem in the device Each ISDN interface in the device If the RAS device agent does not have a modem pool definition, ehealth creates a single modem pool element for the RAS device and assigns all modem and ISDN elements in the device to it. If the default modem pool does not reflect your modem pool configuration, you can create modem pool elements and assign the modem and ISDN elements to the correct modem pools. When you run reports for the 29

30 30 Chapter 4 Adding New Elements to Your Configuration modem pool, ehealth combines the total data collected for each modem and ISDN element in the pool to report on the health of the modem pool. You can also run reports on the individual modem and ISDN elements in the modem pool. To create a modem pool element: 1. In the Add Element dialog, specify a unique element name and select Modem Pool from the Agent Type list. 2. Specify a parent name that is exactly the same as the element name. 3. Specify a unique combination of an IP address and one or more MIB indexes to uniquely identify the modem pool element. You can specify any combination of values. For example, you could use the same IP address for all of your modem pools and change the MIB index values to uniquely identify each modem pool. 4. Click OK; then select one or more modem or ISDN elements in the Poller Configuration dialog and modify them to specify the modem pool element name as their parent name. This associates the selected elements to the same pool. Adding a Permanent Virtual Circuit Element for a Frame Relay Element After discovering Frame Relay elements, you can add permanent virtual circuit (PVC) elements using the Path/PVC Manager option in the Poller Configuration dialog. With the exception of the path components, the information is similar to the properties that you specify for a statistics element. In the Path/PVC Manager dialog, select Frame Relay Circuit; then click Add PVC. Complete the fields in the Add PVC Element dialog, and click OK. The elements should now appear in the Poller Configuration dialog and OneClickEH. To modify a PVC element, click Modify in the Path/PVC Manager dialog. You can change the element name or alias, specify a new protocol (agent type) and new path components, and disable Live Exceptions monitoring.

31 Managing Alternate Latency 31 Managing Alternate Latency ehealth obtains latency data about elements in the poller configuration. By default, ehealth calculates round-trip latency, the time it takes for data to traverse your network from the sending system (ehealth system) to a receiving system (monitored element) and back. The round-trip time indicates the degree of activity in your network. However, ehealth can also collect alternate latency data from another source such as a Cisco router to a configured destination and back. 1 Understanding Alternate Latency Collection Latency charts can indicate whether delays are caused by the network, an application, the user s personal computer (PC), or the Internet connection. The alternate latency source is an element that can collect latency data from another device in your network, called the latency partner, as illustrated in Figure 7. ehealth system Element ehealth latency Alternate latency source Latency partner Alternate latency Latency partner Latency partner Figure 7. ehealth Latency versus Alternate Latency Sources ehealth supports Cisco Systems, Inc. router agents with management information bases (MIBs) that support the Cisco Ping group as alternate latency sources. Typically, these MIBs are installed on Cisco devices that run IOS Release 10.2 or greater. If the Cisco router MIB supports the Cisco Ping group, you can use Cisco Ping as the latency data source instead of ehealth latency. When ehealth polls the Cisco router, it asks the agent to start a ping process for each element that has a specified latency partner. For example, if you have one router parent element and 10 router interface elements, and all 11 elements have a latency partner, ehealth requests that the Cisco Agent start 11 ping processes. The Cisco router issues the ping requests and receives responses. Later, ehealth sends another SNMP request to the Cisco router to obtain the latency data. Thus, when you use alternate latency, you double the number of SNMP messages sent between ehealth and each latency source. The ping processes from each latency source also increase network traffic. Configuring the Alternate Latency Ping Process By default, at the alternate latency source, ehealth requests a ping test with default parameters for the ping packet size, number of ping packets, and the timeout rate. To modify these settings, you can define the environment variables described in Table 6. Table 6. Changing Ping Parameters (Page 1 of 2) Default Parameter Setting Ping packet sizes of 100 bytes Modification Define the NH_CISCO_PING_PKTSIZE environment variable and specify the size of the packet in bytes. If you do not define this variable, ehealth uses the value of NH_POLL_PING_PKTSIZE, which is 100 bytes by default.

32 32 Chapter 4 Adding New Elements to Your Configuration Table 6. Changing Ping Parameters (Page 2 of 2) Default Parameter Setting Modification 5 ping packets Define the NH_CISCO_PING_PKT_COUNT environment variable and specify the number of packets to send. Timeout value of 2,000 milliseconds (2 seconds) for the ping request Define the NH_CISCO_PING_TIMEOUT environment variable and specify the maximum number of milliseconds that the latency source should wait for a response to the ping request. By default, ehealth bases ping latency calculations on a high-resolution Windows system clock. If you have systems with multiple CPU systems, skewed data can result if each CPU bases its calculations on a different clock. For multi-cpu systems, you can base all of the calculations on a low-resolution Windows system clock by setting the environment variable NH_USE_LOW_RES_CLOCK to off. Modifying Alternate Latency Elements When you discover LAN/WAN or router elements, ehealth automatically detects whether a discovered device supports alternate latency. To use alternate latency, you must specify a latency partner for the element. A latency source can have only one latency partner. If you want to measure latency from the same source to different partners, you must create a copy of the source element. To examine the alternate latency configuration: 1. In the Poller Configuration dialog, select the types of elements under List Elements of Type that you would like to display (such as LAN, WAN, or Router); then click Latency. NOTE The dialog lists only those elements currently shown in the Poller Configuration dialog that have Capable of Alternate Latency selected. The dialog is empty if the elements shown in the Poller Configuration dialog are not capable of alternate latency.

33 Managing Alternate Latency Examine the fields in the Latency column: Device to Partner indicates that the element is collecting alternate latency. Disabled indicates that it does not report latency information at all. Poller to Device indicates that it collects ehealth latency. 3. Examine the Partner field, which shows the IP address of the configured latency partner. This field is empty if the element uses ehealth latency or if latency collection is disabled. To modify elements that are capable of alternate latency, select an element in the Elements Capable of Alternate Latency dialog and click Modify. Specify the latency partner or change the latency collection settings as applicable. Make sure that the alternate latency source can ping the specified partner IP address. 1 Alternate Latency Guidelines. When you use alternate latency, follow these guidelines and practices: When you run Trend reports for latency, the element names include the IP addresses of latency partners. However, including the latency partner name in the element name can help you identify the element s latency partner in reports. For example, if an element is named router-enet-port-1, and its latency partner is the device at , you could rename the element router-enet-port-1-to or router-enet-port-1-to-nyrouter. If you change the element name, confirm that the name uses the supported element name characters. You can specify a maximum of 64 single-byte or 32 double-byte characters using the letters A through Z and a through z, the numbers 0 through 9, dashes (-), periods(.), underscores (_), colons (:), and slashes (/). In Health reports, ehealth usually truncates the element name at 30 characters. Be sure to select Device to Partner to enable the collection of alternate latency information for this element and specify the IP address of the latency partner. To configure alternate latency, ehealth requires a read-write community string for the latency source. You might need to rediscover the source with a read-write string or modify the element to specify it. If you are modifying a router interface element to collect alternate latency data, select Record detail data to save the data for the interface. Creating Multiple Latency Partners for an Element You can specify only one latency partner for an alternate latency element. If you would like to generate Trend reports that show the latency from one interface element to multiple latency partners, you can create copies of the elements to specify a different latency partner. Each additional latency partner element that you create adds another element to the database disk space requirements and causes ehealth to poll the source device again. To create an additional latency partner for an element: 1. Click Latency in the Poller Configuration dialog and select an interface element. You cannot copy a router parent element to create additional latency sources. 2. Click Copy and specify the properties of the element. The default element name is copy-of-element. If this element exists in your poller configuration, you must specify a unique name. You might want to use a name that indicates the latency partner. For example, if the original element is named ChiRtr-enet-port-1, and the latency partner is the accounting server, you could name the element ChiRtr-enet-port-1-to-AcctServer. This element name also clarifies the latency partner in reports.

34 34 Chapter 4 Adding New Elements to Your Configuration Deleting Alternate Latency Elements When you delete an element that supports alternate latency, you also delete any additional latency copies that you created for the element. For example, assume that you have a router interface element named CityRouter-enet-port-1, and you copied this element to make two additional latency partner elements: CityRouter-to-London and CityRouter-to-NYC. If you delete the original element, ehealth also deletes the copied elements. However, you can delete a copied element without deleting the original element. Disabling Alternate Latency Data Collection If you are troubleshooting network utilization problems, you can disable alternate latency data collection for all elements that are configured to use Device-to-Partner alternate latency to stop that extra traffic. Set the NH_CISCO_PING_DISABLED environment variable to yes. If you change the variable value from yes to no, ehealth restores the latency data collection as specified in the configuration of each element.

35 5 Organizing Your Elements by Grouping OneClickEH provides a grouping capability that helps you to organize your elements effectively, facilitate administration, and simplify reporting for your users. By focusing on a subset of elements rather than all elements in your infrastructure you can manage them more easily as well as create effective reports that address specific user needs. This chapter explains the purpose and benefits of grouping your elements, how to manage groups effectively, and how to control user access to reports based on the groups that you create. For specific information on creating and managing groups of nodes for Traffic Accountant reports, or creating and managing agent sets of response elements, refer to the Web Help. The Purpose of Grouping To manage your infrastructure, you can organize related elements into groups based on the geographic region, customer, organization, or department that they support. To organize your groups, you can associate them to group lists. For example, if you wanted to monitor the systems supporting your business within Europe, you could create a group called England (composed of systems that support offices in that country), another group called Germany, and a third group called Italy. You could then add those groups to a group list called Europe and generate report data on the entire group list. To simplify reporting and administration, you can also filter your element lists based on your grouping strategy. Creating Groups and Group Lists As soon as you discover any elements, ehealth creates a default group called All that includes all elements that it found. If your web user account has permission to manage groups, you can then use OneClickEH to organize subsets of your elements into specific groups. ehealth offers flexible grouping. Elements can belong to multiple groups, and groups can belong to multiple group lists. As you create and manage your groups and group lists, follow the best practices outlined in Table 7. Table 7. Group Management Best Practices (Page 1 of 2) Procedure Naming groups and group lists Best Practice Always adhere to ehealth naming restrictions. Use a maximum of 64 single-byte or 32 double-byte characters using uppercase or lowercase letters, the numbers 0 through 9, periods (.), dashes (-), and underscores (_). Do not use all numbers, and do not include the word All, FirstSense, forward slashes (/), or spaces. 35

36 36 Chapter 5 Organizing Your Elements by Grouping Table 7. Group Management Best Practices (Page 2 of 2) Procedure Creating a grouping hierarchy Simplifying reporting and administration Adding elements to groups Adding groups to a group list Naming group lists Deleting groups or group lists Managing groups on a remote polling site Enabling group access for a user account Using sub-admin user accounts Best Practice You can use the SmartTree feature to view ehealth groups in a hierarchy based on the naming convention that you use rather than showing them in default alphabetical order. You can name groups using a format such as location (for example, boston-1, boston-2, atlanta-1, and atlanta-2) to indicate the geographic regions in which the elements reside. OneClickEH then displays them in a logical hierarchy in the tree, creating the virtual groups Boston and Atlanta based on the naming convention. To enable a user account to view smart groups, doubleclick the user account name in the User Administration list, select the SmartTree tab; then select a delimiter such as - (dash) from the list and click OK. (Once you have created your groups, you can enable or disable this feature at any time by selecting the SmartTree Setting tab in the By Group window.) By filtering your element lists based on your grouping strategy, you can simplify the reporting and administration processes. To group elements quickly, use the Element Chooser feature to filter the number of elements and display a manageable list. This reduces the number of elements that ehealth displays in a OneClickEH element table at one time. Before adding an element to a group, quickly identify any other groups to which an element belongs by double-clicking the element name and selecting the Group Membership tab in the Edit Element window. Before adding a group to a group list, quickly identify the group lists to which it belongs by right-clicking the group name and selecting the Group Membership tab. Always use a unique name for each group list. Due to ehealth naming restrictions, you cannot create two group lists with the same name. The same restriction applies to groups. Before deleting a group list or group, delete any scheduled reports that use the group or group list, and move any associated elements to another group. If you intend to reuse the name immediately, consider renaming the group before you delete it. Otherwise, you must wait until the ehealth FSA Scrubber system job removes the file from the database. By default, this job runs every four hours. If you need to reuse a group or group list name immediately, run the nhscrubfsa command to force the removal of the file. If you created a group or group list on a remote polling site, you cannot edit it from the central site. You must log in to the remote polling site in your OneClickEH World View to make your changes. When enabling group or group list access to a user account, keep in mind that users have access to all elements in the group and all elements associated with them. For example, if a system element is in the group, users also have access to the LAN, WAN, CPU, and disk elements. In some large ehealth environments, multiple administrators manage groups and reports for a subset of report consumers to limit visibility to certain resources and ensure better system performance. In those cases, you can use OneClickEH to create sub-admin user accounts with limited management permissions (for example, element and group management, but not user administration) and selected group access (limiting them to a subset of all elements). As a best practice, create a master group for each sub-admin that defines the domain of elements for which they are responsible. As you discover new elements, you can add them to these master groups automatically or manually by using the Elements Not Grouped tab in the Find Elements window of the OneClickEH console. Once you have added an element to a master group, the sub-admin has visibility to it, and can then run scheduled and on-demand reports on the group.

37 Creating Groups and Group Lists 37 To create a new group: 1. Select Find Elements in the Managed Resources folder. 2. Select the elements that you want to include. Select Element Chooser to filter the list. Include a wildcard such as an asterisk (*) to match characters, or a question mark (?) to match a single character Right-click and select Create Group with Selected Elements. 4. Specify the first group name and a description. Use a maximum of 64 single-byte or 32 double-byte characters using uppercase or lowercase letters, the numbers 0 through 9, periods (.), dashes (-), and underscores (_). Do not use all numbers, and do not include the word All, FirstSense, forward slashes (/), or spaces. If SmartTree is enabled, append a label to the group name that reflects the location of the elements and use the selected delimiter (for example: Boston-1, Atlanta-1, or Chicago-1). 5. Click OK. The group immediately appears under By Group. 6. Repeat Steps 2 through 5 to create other groups with the same suffix. For example: Boston-2, Atlanta-2, Chicago Under Managed Resources, select By Group. If SmartTree is enabled, the element tree displays two separate tiers in an alphabetical hierarchy based on that naming convention, as shown in Figure 8. In this example, Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago appear in the World View as virtual groups to reflect your grouping hierarchy. Although you did not actually create these groups, OneClickEH assumes, based on your use of hyphens in the names, that this is the appropriate grouping hierarchy and Figure 8. SmartTree Configuration creates it. It labels each group with the total number of elements that it contains. If the SmartTree feature was not enabled for this account, the group names would appear as is in alphabetical order in the OneClickEH tree without Boston, Atlanta, and Chicago. To create a new group list: 1. Right-click By Group List in the Managed Resources folder and select New Group List. 2. Specify a name and a description. Follow the naming guidelines provided for groups in Step 4 above. 3. Optionally, enable the group list to be visible in the Business Service Console (BSC); then click OK.

38 38 Chapter 5 Organizing Your Elements by Grouping 4. Double-click the group list name under By Group List and select the Groups Not in This Group List tab. 5. Select the groups from the list, right-click, and select Add Selected Groups to Group List. Controlling Access to Groups and Group Lists You can automatically generate reports on the ehealth web user interface against groups and group lists that you create yourself. To view reports against groups and group lists created by other users, your user account must have access to those subjects. To determine which users have access to a group or group list, select the User Access tab in the Group or Group List window. To give a user account access to a group or group list: 1. Click User Administration and double-click the user account name. 2. Select the Groups or Group Lists tab. 3. Select All or choose the groups or group lists that you want the user to view; then click OK. NOTE If a user account has access to a group list, the account has implicit access to all of the groups and elements contained within it. Editing and Copying Groups and Group Lists For any group that you select in the tree, OneClickEH identifies the elements that it contains, the web users who have permission to view reports based on that group, and the Live Health profiles associated with the group, as shown in Figure 9. It also provides a list of all elements that are not associated to any group and those that are not in the selected group. To rename a group or group list, select the Properties tab in the group window. To rename several groups, select By Group; then right-click each group name in the list and select Edit Group. Select this tab to identify the users who have access to the group. Select this tab to rename the group. Selected group Select this tab to identify the members of the group. Figure 9. OneClickEH Grouping User Interface

39 Creating Groups and Group Lists 39 To modify the membership of a group, double-click a group name and do one of the following: Add elements by selecting the Elements Not in This Group tab. Select the elements, right-click, and select Add Selected Elements to Group. You can also drag and drop selected elements from the table into the group in the tree. Remove elements by selecting the Elements tab. Select the elements, right-click, and select Remove Selected Elements from Group. To modify the membership of a group list, double-click a group list name and do one of the following: Add groups by selecting the Groups Not in This Group List tab. Select the groups from the list, right-click, and select Add Selected Groups to Group List. You could also drag and drop one or more groups from the list into the group list in the tree. Remove groups by selecting the Groups tab. Select the groups from the list, right-click, and select Remove Selected Groups from Group List. 1 NOTE If you created a group or group list on a remote polling site, you cannot edit it from the central site. You must log in to the remote polling site in your OneClickEH World View to make your changes. To copy a group or group list: 1. Right-click the group name or group list name in the tree and select Copy. 2. Specify a name and description. 3. Optionally, do the following: Include the same elements (or groups). Associate the same Live Health profiles. Allow the same users to access it. 4. Click OK. Identifying the Groups to Which an Element Belongs You can quickly identify the groups to which an element belongs by double-clicking the element name and selecting the Group Membership tab in the Edit Element window. To identify the resources that you have not yet associated to any groups, select the Elements Not in Any Group tab in the group window, or select Find Elements in the tree and select the Elements Not Grouped tab. To add ungrouped elements to the group, you can drag and drop them into the group in the tree. Identifying the Group Lists to Which a Group Belongs You can quickly identify the group lists to which an element belongs by selecting the group in the tree and selecting the Group List Membership tab. This table lists all group lists that you are managing and indicates whether the selected group is a member of each one.

40 40 Chapter 5 Organizing Your Elements by Grouping Deleting Groups and Group Lists of Elements You can quickly remove any group or group list by right-clicking it in the OneClickEH tree. However, before you do so, you should delete any scheduled reports that use the group or group list, and move any associated elements to another group. NOTE After deleting a group or group list, you cannot re-use the name immediately because it takes a few hours for the name to be cleared from the ehealth database files. If you need to remove all elements, groups, and group lists associated with a customer, follow this procedure to ensure that you also remove the related scheduled jobs. To remove a set of groups associated with a customer: 1. In the ehealth console, select Setup Options; then specify the names of the groups in the Set Element Filter field. 2. Select Setup Poller Configuration on the console. ehealth displays the elements for the selected groups only. In the Poller Configuration dialog, delete all elements. 3. Select Setup Schedule Jobs on the console. In the Schedule Jobs dialog, do the following: a. Sort the jobs by subject, or use another method. b. Carefully select those scheduled report jobs that apply to the groups and/or elements that you are removing only. c. Delete all scheduled jobs for the groups. 4. Launch OneClickEH for your ehealth server: a. Select Managed Resources By Group. b. Right-click inside the element table. c. Select Select All from the pop-up menu. d. Select Delete Selected Groups. Focusing ehealth Console Administration on One Group If you manage a large number of elements, it might be difficult to focus on a specific set of related elements. If you use groups to organize your elements, you can set a global filtering option to show only the elements in a specific group when you edit the poller configuration, as well as run reports. NOTE The Set Element Filter option does not filter probe elements for the Traffic Accountant application. ehealth displays all probe elements, regardless of the setting.

41 Deleting Groups and Group Lists of Elements 41 To set an element filter: 1. In the ehealth console, select Setup Options. 2. In the Options dialog, select the Set Element Filter field and specify a group name by doing one of the following: Specify the complete name of an existing group (you cannot specify a wildcard). Specify a new group and then run a discover process to populate it. Click Browse to select a group. 3. Click OK. 1

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43 6 Troubleshooting Common Problems This chapter provides guidance on resolving some common problems that you might encounter as you manage polling and your poller configuration. To troubleshoot other problems, you can access the Support Express knowledgebase at the following URL: ehealth Misses a Scheduled Poll If polls are taking longer than the specified polling interval, ehealth displays the following message in the console when the next poll was scheduled to occur: A scheduled poll was missed, the next poll will occur now. The poller might be busy or is processing a configuration update. If you receive this message every time the poller runs, consider doing one of the following: Use a longer polling interval. Tune the poller settings. Consider upgrading the ehealth system to a higher performing system if the system is under-powered. Unable to Report on Router Interface Elements By default, ehealth does not save detailed performance data on router interface elements when you discover them using Router/Switch Discovery mode. It aggregates the data for those interfaces to the total data for the router. If you want to run LAN/WAN reports on a router interface, you must discover the router using LAN/WAN mode or modify the interface element to record detail data. To save data for router interface elements: 1. In the Poller Configuration dialog, select the router interface elements on which you want to report. 2. Click Modify. 3. Select Record detailed data. 4. Click OK. 43

44 44 Chapter 6 Troubleshooting Common Problems ehealth Reports the Speed of Elements as Zero ehealth checks the speed of LAN elements and full-duplex interface elements at every poll. If the device is not configured properly and reports the speed as zero, ehealth does not change the speed settings. As a best practice, make sure that your element speeds are correct. If they are not, reports on bandwidth utilization could report incorrect data. If the speeds are not configured correctly, ehealth sets the default speed values to those values that it polls from the device. To set the correct speeds, select the elements in the Poller Configuration dialog and click Modify. Cannot Save Data for an Element in the Database Although ehealth can discover an element that is unavailable, it does not save data for an element in the database until the device becomes available and the setting of the ifoperstatus field changes to up. If you run reports on the element when this field has always been set to down, the generated reports are blank because the database does not contain any data for the element. For example, if you discover a router, ehealth discovers all of the interfaces configured on that router, regardless of their availability status. ehealth saves the elements in the database, but disables polling for any elements that were unavailable. It will not poll those elements until they are discovered as available, or until you enable polling for those elements.

45 Index A agent type, changing 22 aliases, changing 25 alternate latency configuring 31 disabling 34 managing 31 modifying elements 32 partners 31 creating 33 deleting 34 C community string, changing 18 conversation poll rate, changing 9 D dialog box Path/PVC Manager 30 Poller Configuration 10 discover key, modifying 24 discovered information, modifying discover key 24 interface 24 system name 24 type 24 E ehealth latency 31 element names, modifying 25 elements adding to poller configuration 29 changing agent type 22 alias 25 community strings 18 description information 23 polling status 17 retries rate 19 speed 23 timeout rate 19 exporting a simple name list 11 names, modifying 25 properties, updating 21 rediscovering 18 removing with groups 40 retiring 20 turning off polling 18 environment variables NH_CISCO_PING_DISABLED 34 NH_CISCO_PING_PKT_COUNT 32 NH_CISCO_PING_PKTSIZE 31 NH_CISCO_PING_TIMEOUT 32 F Frame Relay, adding PVC elements 30 G group lists copying 39 creating 37 deleting 40 purpose of 35 removing 40 45

46 46 Index groups controlling access to 38 copying 39 creating 37 deleting 40 editing 38 managing 35 purpose of 35 removing 40 I ifdescr variable, modifying 24 iftype attribute, modifying 24 L latency partners 31 Live Exceptions monitoring, turning off 26 M missed polls, troubleshooting 43 modem pool element, creating 30 N nhlistelements command 11 Normal polling rate, defined 16 P parent name, modifying 25 poll rate conversation 9 statistics 8 poller configuration accessing 9 agent type, changing 22 modifying 22 agent type 22 community string 18 polling status 17 speed, changing 23 tracking changes 26 viewing 9 poller, stopping and starting 8 polling 7 disabling 17 interval, setting 8 process 7 rates changing for all elements 16 controlling for individual elements 8 status, changing 17 polling errors causes 14 identifying 15 resolving 16 polls, missed 43 PVC elements, adding 30 R recording detail data, specifying for an element 26 rediscovering elements 18 retiring elements 20 retries rate, changing 19 S speed, changing for elements 23 statistics poll rate, changing 8 sysname variable, modifying 24 system description, modifying 23 T timeout rate, changing 19 troubleshooting element speed 44 missed polls 43 reporting on router interface elements 43 saving data 44