How to guides: AppManager v7.04 Initial Setup for a trial By NetIQ Prepared by Haf Saba Senior Technical Consultant Asia Pacific 1
Executive Summary This document will walk you through an initial setup of AppManager. It assumes you have read the Installation document How to install AM v7.04 in a trial.pdf. It is designed to get you up to speed rather quickly on basic level Windows Server monitoring and highlighting some of the main features of AM 7.04. This guide is particularly handy for those who have just downloaded the product via the website and are eager to get it installed quickly and see some value from the product. This install document assumes you are providing 1 server to run the Application. Disclaimer: This guide in no way replaces the need for NetIQ Professional Services to assist, plan, deploy, and develop a proper monitoring solution following NetIQ Best Practices. This is purely to showcase the benefits within a trial period. Once the installation has completed, you can run the Control Centre console. 2
You will need to enter the server that you installed the components onto. If you cannot log in, try using the netiq SQL account you created during the install. Uncheck use Windows Authentication to enable the login Once logged in, you will see a menu on the left showing different views. One is for servers. Click on that to see your server that you installed all the components to. Next, we will create a new Management Group (MG) to host the new Windows Servers you would like to monitor for the purpose of the trial. Right-click the Master MG and select New > Management Group Provide a name for your new MG this could be a company name or Lab or PoC 3
Next we will specify what servers with automatically enter into this grouping. To do this, we need to create a rule for this MG. Click, the Members tab and click Add Click Create to designate a new rule 4
Perform the next steps: Provide a Name for the rule Expand NT, Click Windows Version Click Add to Rule twice (once to get focus, once to add the rule) Click the blue link for Windows 2000 or later if you want to choose a different OS version Click OK 5
Uncheck the box Create Standard views Once clicking OK, you will see the Lab group created. Right click on it to create a new Server View As this is a new group, it will be synchronising to populate data. Hence, you will see green arrows on the tabs designating this. Just provide a name for the view (example: Windows Servers) as in the next image. 6
After clicking OK, you will see fetching data on the main screen. 7
Now, let s focus on the bottom right of the windows for the following icons: Click on Administration You will see several views, including one for all the current packages installed in the repository. Note, you will not see any packages listed if you chose to not import any during your install. You can install packages by downloading the latest module and checking in the package. Simply right click in the window and choose check in packages. Then choose the XML file that is included in the download of the latest module. Also use this method to update any previously installed packages (you will need to delete the old package after checking in the new package). Note: One package you must first check in is the Base Windows OS package. You will find this in the \windows_installation\setup\setup Files directory. Choose the XML file, AM70-WindowsAgent- 7.0.10160.0.xml 8
Once the file has checked in you will see it in the Packages list Next, click on Rules on the left side of the screen Note: you will probably not have any rules created if you chose to not import any during your install. You can create a new one by right-click in the Rule window and choosing Add Rule This will create the Rule Wizard shown on the next screen. Note: You must have packages installed before you can create and enable any install rules. 9
The rule wizard will appear and we will need to specify some parameters Click Rule Name and give the rule a name (example: AppManager for WinOS ) Click Packages. As a guide, do not select more than one package per rule 10
Scroll down to the NetIQ AppManager Windows Agent package. Check the box if not already checked. We will need to configure it by clicking the blue link in the white box below. This will bring up the agent installation configuration wizard. In the first window, leave it on the default for Install 11
Configure the rest of the windows as follows over the next few pages: 12
13
14
Enter the name of the server with all the AppManager components as the Primary Management Server Enter the same server that you have installed all the components as the Deployment Web Server 15
You will see a summary at the end. Click Finish. Next, enter the credentials for the deployment service by clicking on Credentials. Click on Configure Options 16
Enter the Domain Administrator account that will run the deployment service. After clicking OK, you will see the account on the Credentials screen of the Rule Wizard. After clicking Next, select the Target Computers to install to. The easiest option is to point this to your Active Directory Domain, but you can also specify a range of IP addresses or direct machine names. 17
Click on Exclusion Filters and enter the server name where you have already installed AppManager under the Computer Names option Click on Notification. If you have access to an SMTP server, you may also allow for notification to be emailed to you for when deployments succeed or fail 18
When you are finished, right click on the rule and click enable rule The icon will change from Disabled to Enabled. 19
Once that is complete, click on Enterprise Layout on the bottom left of the console. Then click on the newly created Management group. You should see Green Check Marks when you click on it to show that synchronisation is complete. Clicking on the Windows servers view will now show at least one computer (the one you installed all the components to) Click on the Knowledge Scripts View. This view shows all the current scripts you have available to you to use. As you monitor more applications, more script categories will appear (for example, SQL Server) 20
Let s do some cleanup. Expand the StartPoint category and delete any script groups that are in that folder. You will see a task appear on the right side of the console showing the action to delete the scripts Now would be a good time to check on your deployment rules. Click on the Administration button on the bottom left and click the Deployment icon on the left side of the screen. You will see Deployments awaiting your approval You can sort the view as needed. For example drag the Computer bar back to the rest of the fields 21
And it will show all the tasks Drag the Status field to the gray area above where it says Drag a column header here. Finally, expand the Status view To push out the agent, highlight all the tasks and click Approve Task(s) 22
Within a minute or so, you will see the status change to Active The agents are now being installed. Wait about 5-10 minutes, and go look at your Server View. You will now see more agents listed in the view with jobs running on each agent click the Jobs tab below to see the jobs running. 23
You will also see the Discovery Jobs that ran to populate the details on the server Simply right-click and Delete the stopped Discovery Job as you do not need it anymore. Looking at the deployment tasks, you will see they change status to Completed 24
When all agents are deployed, we can upgrade them to the latest version. This is also useful if you are monitoring any Windows 2008 servers. To do this, disable the previous Windows Agent Install rule Note: This next step requires the latest module available from the Module Trial Page or the Module Upgrade page on the NetIQ website. If you installed AppManager by using the document How to install AM 7.04 in a trial.pdf you would have downloaded this module already. Click on Packages and right-click in the window to check in a new package Select the XML file called AM70-WinOS-7.5.159.0.xml from the module download once extracted (this is for the module for Windows released Jan 2009 a newer version may be available to you at this time) The module will check in and you will see a confirmation 25
You will see the module listed in the packages list Click on Rules and Add a new rule by right-clicking in the same window 26
Name this rule AppManager Windows Agent Upgrade and click Packages. Choose the AppManager for Microsoft Windows package Click on Target Computer and use the selection Domain (enter the Domain name) 27
Click on Exclusion Filters and exclude the server where all the AppManager components are installed (and where the agent has already been upgraded to the latest version) Click Finish 28
Within a few minutes, more Deployment Tasks will appear You may approve them. As you approve each one, you will see the status change on the right side Clicking on the Deployment view will show the updated status of each task 29
While this upgrade is being deployed, click on Enterprise Layout and then click on the Knowledge Script View Right click on any script category and choose Create a new KSG (knowledge script group) Expand the NT grouping and select the following 5 scripts in the screenshot below, then click Add>>. Provide the name as follows: Specifying the name Lab_Windows Montioring creates a script category called Lab 30
We will now configure each script. First, double click the NT_SystemUptime Script. This script will collect uptime data and alert when a server reboots. The first tab in any script is the Schedule tab which will define how often the job runs. Leave the default options on this window: Next is the Values tab. This is where you will define thresholds and whether or not to collect data. Change the option for Collect Data to a Y 31
The Actions tab allows you to invoke actions once an alert has been generated. If you have access to an SMTP server, we will add a basic action to email you when a server reboots. Click New and from the pull down menu select Action_SMTPMail 32
Click on Properties to configure this action similar to what is below but entering your specific details for your SMTP server and email recipients Click OK and you will see the following and then choose the Advanced tab so you can see advanced alerting options. We will take the defaults for this script. 33
Click OK and choose the next script, NT_ServiceDown, which will monitor Windows Services and alert if they stop (optionally, we can automatically restart them too). Set the Values tab to the following: Click OK, then next, double click NT_MemUtil and set the Values tab to the following changing the script to collect data for Physical Memory by changing the value to Y 34
Next, click the Advanced tab and set the options as follows: 30 minute event collapsing window alerting on the condition of 6 times within 6 job iterations. What this will do is only alert if we have breached the default memory utilisation threshold for a period of 30 minutes (as the job runs every 5 minutes by default). This will avoid any spikes in memory utilisation that could set off an alert causing false positives. Click OK and double click the NT_LogicalDiskSpace script. Change the schedule to every 4 hours. 35
In the Values tab, expand Data Collection and check the box for Collect Data for Used Disk Space (%) Next, click on the Advanced tab and set the following options: 240 minutes for the event collapsing window 36
Finally, click OK and double click the NT_CPUUtil script. Click the Values tab, expand Data Collection, and check the box for Collect Total system utilization data Again, we will define an advance event collapsing schedule to avoid false positives. Click the Advanced tab and set the options as below: 30 Minute Collapse Time, 6 times within 6 job iterations 37
Click OK twice. Hit F5 to refresh the screen, and you will see a Lab category (based on our naming convention) with the Windows Monitoring script group within that category. We will now assign this script group to the Windows Management Group so that any server that appears in that Management Group will automatically receive these monitoring rules. To do this, right click on your Lab Management Group and choose properties Select the Policy tab and click Add This will pull up all the script groupings available to you. 38
You should clearly see your script group you have just created. Highlight this and click OK. This will populate the Policy window with your script grouping. Next click OK. These jobs will automatically be deployed to the servers. Within a few minutes, you may start to see events generated as a result. Click on the Servers view will show the servers and if any events are generated, they 39
will change in event status. The Severity column shows some informational alerts. Clicking the Event tab will show more details: Clicking the Event tab below shows the current events Double Click the alert to provide more details: 40
You can choose to acknowledge or close the event at this time. We will now modify the default event view for the environment. Right click the event view and choose properties Rename the view to Critical Events 41
Go to the Filters tab and choose SeverityCode from the Field Column as shown below. Next, type in the value Severe and click Add Filter. Then type in Warning and Add Filter so the view looks like this. You should see a screen with both these options 42
Clicking okay will show the following prompt, click Yes Next, right-click on the Master Management Group and create a new Event View Enter the name Informational Events 43
Add the following filters Click OK and you have 2 filtered views. One for High Priority Events, and one for Low Priority Events Next, we will modify the default Job view. Drag the Status column to the grey area to sort the list of jobs by their status. This will make it very easy to determine which jobs are running, stopped, or pending. 44
If you have been noticing the Deployment Tasks, they will switch to Completed once the agent has installed. This means that the servers will automatically appear in the Management Group that you created with the rule to populate it. Because there is a job policy within that group, the servers with automatically pick up the jobs to monitor the servers. This is seen in the next screenshot with the other servers now in the view and also with the number of jobs running on each server. You have now setup basic monitoring! You may repeat the same procedures for other applications. Congratulations! Please Contact your NetIQ Representatives to learn about more features with AppManager v7.04 including reporting, service dashboards, and smart monitoring! 45