IBM: AIX MonitoringPowerPack Release Notes, version 100

Version 100 of the IBM: AIX Monitoring PowerPack is an upgrade to versions 0.6 and 0.7 of the SLCOE: AIX Base Pack PowerPack. It includes Dynamic Applications, Device Classes, Event Policies, and Run Book Actions for monitoring AIX devices.

  • Minimum Required SL1 Version: 10.2.0

Before You Install or Upgrade

Ensure that you are running version 10.2.0 or later of SL1 before installing "IBM: AIX Monitoring" PowerPack version 100.

For details on upgrading SL1, see the relevant SL1 Platform Release Notes.

Installation and Upgrade Process from PowerPack Version 0.6

You can upgrade to version 100 of this PowerPack from version 0.6 of the SLCOE: AIX Base PackPowerPack. If you are upgrading from that version, you will need to disable all events and alerts from the previous before installing and using this PowerPack to ensure that duplicate events do not occur.

By default, installing a new version of a PowerPack will overwrite all content in that PowerPack that has already been installed on the target system. You can use the Enable Selective PowerPack Field Protection setting in the Behavior Settings page (System > Settings > Behavior) to prevent the new version of the PowerPack from overwriting local changes for some commonly customized fields.

To install this PowerPack:

  1. Familiarize yourself with the Known Issues for this release.
  2. See the Before You Install or Upgrade section. If you have not done so already, upgrade your system to the 10.2 or later release.
  3. Download the "IBM: AIX Monitoring" version 100PowerPack from the Support Site to a local computer.
  4. Go to the PowerPack Manager page (System > Manage > PowerPacks). Click the Actions menu and choose Import PowerPack. When prompted, import "IBM: AIX Monitoring" version 100.
  5. Click the Install button. For details on installing PowerPacks, see the chapter on Installing a PowerPack in the PowerPacks manual.

After upgrading the PowerPack from version 0.6, perform the following steps if you did not enable the Enable Selective PowerPack Field Protection setting:

  1. After running discovery, manually align the "IBM: AIX ICDA Cache" Dynamic Application to your AIX device.
  2. Un-align the "IBM: AIX CPU Utilization (mpstat)" Dynamic Application from your AIX device.

If you did enable the Enable Selective PowerPack Field Protection setting, perform the following steps after upgrading:

  1. Required: After running discovery, manually align the "IBM: AIX ICDA Cache" Dynamic Application to your AIX device and enable it.
  2. Optional: Manually disable and un-align the "IBM: AIX CPU Utilization (mpstat)" Dynamic Application from your AIX devices to avoid multiple events related to CPU coming from the "IBM: AIX LPAR CPU Stats" Dynamic Application.
  3. Optional: Enable alerts related to Virtual Memory Utilization metrics in the "IBM: AIX Memory Stats" Dynamic Application.
  4. Optional: Enable the Summarization State for presentation objects in all AIX Dynamic Applications.

After the upgrade the default AIX credential is overwritten. Ensure that the correct values are entered in the credential.

Installation and Upgrade Process from PowerPack Version 0.7 and Later

You can upgrade to version 100 of this PowerPack from version 0.7 of the SLCOE: AIX Base PackPowerPack. If you are upgrading from that version, you will need to disable all events and alerts from the previous before installing and using this PowerPack to ensure that duplicate events do not occur.

By default, installing a new version of a PowerPack will overwrite all content in that PowerPack that has already been installed on the target system. You can use the Enable Selective PowerPack Field Protection setting in the Behavior Settings page (System > Settings > Behavior) to prevent the new version of the PowerPack from overwriting local changes for some commonly customized fields.

If you are currently using the Dynamic Applications in this PowerPack to monitor devices, collection errors might occur for one or two polling cycles during the installation of a new version. To prevent collection errors during an upgrade, you can optionally disable collection for monitored devices before performing the following steps and re-enable collection after the upgrade.

To install this PowerPack:

  1. Search for and download the PowerPack from the PowerPacks page (Product Downloads > PowerPacks & SyncPacks) at the ScienceLogic Support Site.
  2. In SL1, go to the PowerPacks page (System > Manage > PowerPacks).
  3. Click the Actions menu and choose Import PowerPack. The Import PowerPack modal appears.
  4. Click Browse and navigate to the PowerPack file from step 1.
  5. Select the PowerPack file and click Import. The PowerPack Installer modal displays a list of the PowerPack contents.
  6. Click Install. The PowerPack is added to the PowerPack Manager page.

Features

This release includes the following features:

  • Dynamic Applications that discover and collect configuration and performance data for AIX devices
  • Event Policies and corresponding alerts that are triggered when AIX devices meet certain status criteria
  • Device Classes for each type of AIX device monitored
  • A Device Template for aligning Dynamic Applications
  • A Run Book Action and an Automation policy to assign the proper device classes to AIX devices
  • A Dashboard that displays information about your AIX server

Enhancements and Issues Addressed

The following enhancements and addressed issues are included this release of the "IBM: AIX Monitoring":

  • The metric calculation logic of the "Entitled Capacity (%entc)" collection object was updated in the "IBM: AIX LPAR CPU Stats" Dynamic Application.
  • The Summarization State field was set to Enabled by default for all presentation objects in the PowerPack.
  • The Collector Affinity field has been set to Assigned collector by default for the following Dynamic Applications:
  • IBM: AIX Filesystem
  • IBM: AIX Network Stats
  • IBM: AIX Total Allocated Storage Value (Bootinfo)
  • IBM: AIX Volumes
  • The "IBM: AIX Total Allocated Storage Value (Bootinfo)" Dynamic Application was disabled by default and removed from the "IBM: AIX Dynamic Applications Template" device template as sudo is required to run the "bootinfo" command.
  • The "IBM: AIX CPU Utilization (mpstat)" and "IBM: AIX CPU Utilization (sar)" Dynamic Applications have been disabled by default.
  • Alerts related to Virtual Memory Utilization have been enabled by default in the "IBM: AIX Memory Stats" Dynamic Application.
  • Log messages for alerts were updated in the "IBM: AIX Inodes" Dynamic Application.
  • The format of the "date" command was updated in the "IBM: AIX Error Report" Dynamic Application.
  • The "aix_ic_detail_cache" snippet in the "IBM: AIX IC Detail" Dynamic Application was enabled by default.
  • An issue was addressed in the "IBM: AIX Volumes Performance" Dynamic Application in which performance reports were displaying the same label for each collection object.
  • An issue was addressed in which all configuration and performance Dynamic Applications were having errors appear in logs when run in debug mode.
  • A "NULL" value was added to the NMAP Report XPATH field for AIX device classes to address an issue in which minor errors were appearing device logs.

Known Issues

This release has no known issues.