IBM DB2 PowerPack Release Notes, version 103

Version 103 of the IBM: DB2 PowerPack includes new Dynamic Applications, adds support for tablespaces with multiple containers, and adds new device classes.

  • Minimum Required SL1 Version: 10.1.0

Before You Install or Upgrade

NOTE: Historic data is not preserved when upgrading from version 100, 101, or 102 to version 103 or greater. See Known Issues for more details.

Ensure that you are running version 10.1.0 or later of SL1 before installing "IBM: DB2" PowerPack version 103.

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

Installation or Upgrade Process

To install version 103 of the IBM: DB2 PowerPack, perform the following steps:

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. 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 10.1.0 or later release.
  3. Download the "IBM: DB2" version 103PowerPack 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: DB2" version 103.
  5. Click the Install button. For details on installing PowerPacks, see the chapter on Installing a PowerPack in the PowerPacks manual.

See the manual Monitoring IBM DB2 for instructions on using the new PowerPack.

Features

This release includes the following features:

  • Dynamic Applications to discover, model, and monitor performance metrics and collect configuration data for IBM Db2 devices
  • Event Policies that are triggered when Db2 devices meet certain status criteria
  • Example Credentials that you can use to connect to IBM Db2 databases and instances
  • A Run Book Action and Run Book Automation policy for aligning Dynamic Applications
  • A device dashboard to display information about Db2 instances

Enhancements and Issues Addressed

The following enhancements and addressed issues are included in version 103 of the "IBM: DB2" PowerPack:

  • The following Dynamic Applications were added to the PowerPack:
  • IBM DB2: Database Discovery
  • IBM DB2: Tablespace Discovery
  • The following Dynamic Applications were updated to collect by tablespace ID and now align with Db2 Tablespace devices:
  • IBM DB2: Tablespace Capacity Performance
  • IBM DB2: Tablespace Configuration
  • IBM DB2: Tablespace Container Configuration
  • IBM DB2: Tablespace Container Performance
  • IBM DB2: Tablespace Performance
  • The following device classes were added to the PowerPack:
  • IBM: DB2 Database
  • IBM: DB2 Tablespace
  • Support was added to the "IBM DB2: Tablespace Container Configuration" and "IBM DB2: Tablespace Container Performance" Dynamic Applications for tablespaces with multiple containers.
  • The "IBM DB2: Instance Status" Dynamic Application was renamed to "IBM DB2: Database Status".
  • The "DB2 Soap with PowerShell Example" and "DB2 Soap with SSH Example" credentials were updated to remove "DB_Name" from the credential headers as all available databases will now be discovered.
  • The "IBM: DB2 Instance" device dashboard was renamed to "IBM: DB2 Database" and now aligns to Db2 database devices.
  • The following libraries were updated in the PowerPack:
  • silo_ssh_requests version 0.1.0
  • silo_apps version 1.25.0
  • silo_ibm_db2 0.0.86
  • Logging for nightly discovery was improved to include only the most relevant information.
  • The "IBM DB2: Diagnostics Log Configuration" Dynamic Application was updated to address an issue in which the Dynamic Application would crash when there were a large amount of log entries. The logs will no longer be shown in the Configs tab of the device, but will display the time and date of the last log read from db2diag.log. If there are no new logs, it will display the message "No new logs for current poll ({date and time})".

  • An issue was addressed in the "IBM DB2: Server Discovery" Dynamic Application in which Linux instance devices were not being discovered. The silo_ssh_requests library has been updated to version 0.1.0 as a fix for this issue.

  • The "IBM DB2: Summary Performance" Dynamic Application was updated to address an issue in which the SQL query used in the Dynamic Application was causing errors that prevented data from being collected. (Case: 00190241)

Known Issues

The following known issues affect version 103 of the IBM: DB2 PowerPack:

  • Historic data is not preserved when upgrading from version 100, 101, or 102 to version 103 or greater of the PowerPack. Databases are discovered under Instances and Tablespaces are discovered under Databases. As a result, some Dynamic Applications have been relocated to the Database and Tablespace level. Due to the relocation of these Dynamic Applications, historical data will be lost.
  • You may see the message "<Metric Name> is not valid in the context where it is used. SQLSTATE=42703 SQLCODE=-206" in the component log. This could happen in certain versions of Db2 such as version 9.7, in which some metrics monitored do not exist.
  • This PowerPack does not currently support Military Unique Deployment (MUD) systems.
  • When using the IBM DB2 PowerPack, some errors are logged to the collector syslog due to missing permissions. These errors will not cause any collection issues, but can be bothersome if you are monitoring the syslog. To clean up the errors, run the following commands on the collector you will be using to monitor your DB2 servers:

sudo chmod o+w /usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/clidriver/

sudo chmod o+w /usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/clidriver/cfgcache/conlic.bin

  • For Linux and Unix users, the user profiles that you create on the database will likely need to use a shell. If that is the case, Linux users should use Bash and Unix users should use KornShell. You should not use Shell (sh) as the user shell, as doing so could result in shell-related errors appearing in the Device Log.