Dashboards display real-time information from CA NSM agents. A dashboard lets you combine on one screen multiple metrics from one or many agents and one or many hosts. Each metric is presented in an individual tile. Dashboards poll the data from the agents and show the metrics "as is."
The Management Command Center supports two types of dashboards:
To display dashboards, a CA NSM Web Reports and Dashboards server must be installed and running on a host that the Management Command Center can access. If a dashboard server is found, a Dashboard viewer option becomes available for agent objects in the Topology and DSM view trees. After selecting an agent object, you can open the Dashboard viewer using the Add or Open Viewer context menu (available by right-clicking the object). You can also click the right pane drop-down list and choose Dashboards.
The first time you request a dashboard a connection dialog appears, which allows you to select the dashboard server you want to use. The connection dialog also contains user name and password fields for specifying the credentials to use when the server is accessed. The information you enter is saved and used for subsequent access to the same server for the remainder of your session.
Discovery Classic refers to the traditional Windows-based user interface. Discovery Classic includes the Discovery program group accessed through Start, Programs, CA, Unicenter, NSM, Discovery. Procedures based on the Discovery Classic GUI are contained in the CA Procedures located in the Online Books program group.
Unicenter WorldView offers a highly visual and intuitive approach to enterprise management with the 2D Map available through the Management Command Center, the Unicenter Browser Interface, and the WorldView Classic GUI. The 2D Map works as an infrastructure navigator, allowing you to view any part of your enterprise with the click of a button. For example, you can view all assets in your network-from the global network to the local subnets, hubs, bridges links, the servers and workstations connected to them, their processors and drives, all the way down to the databases and applications.
WorldView provides support for the Desktop Management Interface (DMI) specification. This feature lets you manage the installed hardware and software on your PCs. This can be accomplished locally, as well as remotely across your network. DMI is available on Windows only.
Business Process View Management (BPVM) lets you use Business Process objects to view and manage your network. You can use Business Process objects to apply new rules to your system to determine how states are propagated from existing WorldView objects using methods that include simple counters and complex correlation rules. BPVM is available on Windows only.
Note: The BPVM service manages all BusinessProcessObjects so If it is not created by the service, the object is deleted upon restart of the service.
Smart Business Process View Management (SmartBPV) lets you automatically create and dynamically update Business Process Views. Through analysis of network activity, SmartBPV identifies infrastructure elements that support a specific application and automatically builds and continuously updates a focused view for management. SmartBPV is available on Windows only.
Unicenter Management Portal provides role-based, dynamic, and personalized views of management information securely over the web. Integration with Unicenter Management Portal lets CA NSM components and other CA solutions consolidate data from numerous and disparate data sources, querying, reporting, and presenting it in a unified view that suits each viewer's needs.
Note: For more information, see the chapter "Customizing Your Business Views."
To facilitate comprehensive and integrated network polling and administration, CA NSM uses Agent Technology to automate manager tasks and responses to events. Agent Technology monitors and reports the state and status of machines and applications. Agent Technology lets you monitor resources (also called managed objects) as well as the applications. The status of these devices is displayed on the 2D Map.
Note: For more information about Agent Technology, agent dashboards, Unicenter Configuration Manager, and Unicenter Remote Monitoring, see the chapter "Monitoring Your Enterprise."
You can manage agent configurations centrally and automatically using the Unicenter Configuration Manager.
Unicenter Configuration Manager is a stand-alone utility for the scheduled auditing of existing, or delivery of legitimate configuration data, for Unicenter product components.
To access the Unicenter Configuration Manager using a web browser, enter the following URL:
http://UCMServerName:port/wiser
Specifies the name of the computer on which Unicenter Configuration Manager is installed.
Specifies the port for the Unicenter Configuration Manager server.
To access the Unicenter Configuration Manager agent configuration tool from the Management Command Center, a Unicenter Configuration Manager server must be installed and running on a host that the Management Command Center can access.
Unicenter Remote Monitoring is a component of CA NSM that provides you the ability to remotely monitor the health and availability of your network resources, including production servers and workstations.
The key distinguishing feature of Remote Monitoring is that it works by using non-intrusive technology. This technology lets you monitor network resources without installing an agent on each monitored device. Instead, the Remote Monitoring Agent is installed on a single remote machine that probes the monitored resources for data, status, and other information used to assess the health and availability of that resource. This type of monitoring is particularly useful in these situations:
Unicenter Remote Monitoring can monitor the following resource types:
CA NSM lets you administer critical events throughout your network using the Event Management component and the Alert Management System (AMS).
Note: See the chapter "Administering Critical Events" for more information about Event Management and the Alert Management System.
Event Management, the focal point for integrated message management throughout your network, can monitor and consolidate message activity from a variety of sources. It lets you identify event messages that require special handling and initiate a list of actions for handling an event. Through support of industry-standard facilities, you can channel event messages from any node in your network to one or more monitoring nodes. You can centralize management of many servers and ensure the detection and appropriate routing of important events.
For example, you may want to route message traffic to different event managers:
By filtering messages that appear on each console, you can retrieve specific information about a particular node, user, or workstation.
Wireless Messaging provides alternate channels for operator input in situations where the operator cannot access a CA Event Console. The supported messaging protocols are email and pager. Using the SMTP/POP3 mail messaging protocol, you can send and receive pager messages from two-way pager devices. An incoming message can trigger any series of actions you define for Event Console to perform in response to it.
You can install the Event Manager on Windows and UNIX or Linux platforms. For more information about installation options, see the Implementation Guide.
The Alert Management System (AMS) is a tool for organizing and tracking the most important events in an enterprise or a logical segment of an enterprise. It lets you focus on and manage the highest severity IT events.
AMS provides tools for defining alert policies and multiple panes in the Management Command Center for viewing alerts. AMS also lets you link to Unicenter Service Desk and Unicenter Service Desk Knowledge Tools, which is a customer support application that manages calls and IT assets, resolves problems, and shares corporate knowledge.
Systems Performance lets you gain control over your computer systems through value-added information related to performance. Systems Performance lets you monitor key parameters that influence performance of your systems and applications, and compare what is actually happening against a set of predefined operational parameters. Systems Performance also lets you determine the most efficient use of your computer resources by letting you examine how busy each server is, which servers are overused or underused, when computers are being used, whether usage is increasing or decreasing, and where bottlenecks occur.
Note: For more information about Systems Performance, see the chapter "Analyzing Systems Performance."
CA NSM lets you analyze network, system, and application events to identify the true cause within a series of related events. You can then set up policies to identify, notify, and respond to problems that may impact end-user service. Escalation and notification policies can be tailored for each group or individual to reduce resolution time. These tasks are accomplished using Advanced Event Correlation (AEC), and Unicenter Notification Services.
Note: For more information about Advanced Event Correlation and Unicenter Notification Services, see the chapter "Correlating Important Events."
Advanced Event Correlation (AEC) integrates seamlessly with Unicenter Event Management to provide powerful Event Correlation, Root Cause, and Impact Analysis capabilities. When used in combination with existing Unicenter features, it lets you rapidly identify the root cause of problems being reported to the event console, by increasing the quality and reducing the quantity of the data that you have to process. Event reformatting and suppression capabilities also help to ensure that existing management procedures implemented through Message Records and Actions are only invoked when applicable, significantly reducing the number of false alarms encountered.
Using AEC, you can do the following:
Unicenter Notification Services lets you send wired and wireless messages using various protocols and devices to get the attention of operators or administrators, wherever they are, who must resolve problems or attend to emergencies.
CA NSM reports are based on a common technology called the Web Reporting Server (WRS).
CA NSM provides a set of predefined scoreboards to report various groups of managed resources according to their status, and the number of events generated from these managed resources. CA NSM also provides report templates that you can use to create a customized report by providing a required parameter. You can also modify the predefined scoreboards to create a customized report.
CA NSM also provides a set of canned WorldView and agent reports that let you view managed resource status, resource inventory, and so forth.
To create reports in CA NSM, you use the Report Viewer. The Report Viewer is a reporting feature of the Unicenter MCC that displays canned reports for the following types of information:
Canned reports are visible when you select Reports from the left pane drop-down list. When you select a report, WRS opens in the right pane viewer. Reports are viewed as HTML in the right pane using a web browser window.
Note: For more information about using WRS, see the WRS online help.
For those customers who choose not to install Unicenter MCC, CA NSM provides the Report Explorer. You can use the Report Explorer to create customized reports just as you can using WRS. The Report Explorer uses the Windows Explorer interface to view, print, edit, and create reports. To open the Report Explorer, choose Start, Programs, CA, Unicenter, NSM, Utilities, Report Explorer.
Note: For more information about using the Report Explorer, see the Report Explorer online help.
The Trap Manager is a component of CA NSM that lets you perform sophisticated trap database and trap filter file management. You can use the Trap Manager to manage trap information and translation messages stored in the Management Database (MDB) and trap filters stored in the trap filter file.
To sign on to the Trap Database, go to Start, Programs, CA, Unicenter, Trap Manager, Unicenter Trap Manager. The Enter window appears. For more information, see the online help.
The z/OS system agent enables you to monitor key resources of your z/OS system and provides status, event, and configuration information. The agent can monitor individual resources as well as the health of an entire system, allowing you to quickly determine the cause of a problem. The z/OS system agent also monitors UNIX System Services (USS) resources.
The z/OS system agent puts you in control by allowing you to determine the warning and critical thresholds for each monitored resource. The agent monitors these resources and, whenever a user-defined threshold is exceeded, sends an SNMP trap.
CA NSM is tightly integrated with other CA products, such as Unicenter Service Desk and eTrust Security Command Center. CA NSM also provides integration with third-party products such as Microsoft Operations Manager and Cisco devices. This section gives you a brief overview of the products you can use to gather information from a wide variety of platforms and architectures.
CA NSM provides a connection to Unicenter Service Desk (Service Desk), which is a customer support application that manages calls, tracks problem resolution, shares corporate knowledge, and manages IT assets.
The integration with Service Desk is through the Alert Management System (AMS) and the Management Command Center (Unicenter MCC) interface. The connection is installed automatically with CA NSM. Interaction with the Service Desk reduces the workload of the customer support staff because some manual tasks are eliminated.
You can also access Unicenter Service Desk in Unicenter Management Portal by publishing a Service Desk portlet, or by performing a Service Desk action on an alert in the Alert Console.
Unicenter Management for MOM (MOM Management) integrates CA NSM with Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM).
Microsoft Operations Manager delivers operations management by providing event management, proactive monitoring and alerting, reporting, and trend analysis. It helps administrators monitor and manage the events and performance of Windows 2000 or 2003 server systems. MOM is similar to CA NSM Event Management.
The integration between MOM and CA NSM provides a central location for performing management functions. You can see the status of MOM servers and managed PCs using WorldView, and you can change the status from there. You can also view open MOM alerts and CA NSM events in one location, the Event Console.
Note: CA NSM provides integration kits to both of Microsoft's management applications, Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and System Center Operations Manager 2007 (SCOM). Although the integrations to MOM and SCOM can coexist on the same management server, each one integrates only with its Microsoft counterpart.
Cisco Integration is a component of CA NSM that lets you manage your Cisco devices. CA NSM provides class definitions for Cisco routers and switches, but does not identify the Cisco device model. Cisco Integration provides object identifiers for each Cisco device, which lets CA NSM automatically discover and classify Cisco devices. You can then use CA NSM to visualize and monitor these Cisco devices.
The advantages of using Intel AMT with CA NSM are that now you can do the following:
The Unicenter MCC provides access to the eHealth Suite of products so that you can monitor the performance of eHealth objects, generate reports, and create and close alerts associated with eHealth alarms. The eHealth Suite delivers comprehensive fault, availability, and performance management across complex, heterogeneous systems and application environments. eHealth collects a wide variety of data from your network infrastructure to generate alarms and reports.
From Unicenter MCC you can access the following features of eHealth:
The eHealth Business Service Console (BSC) is a Web-based tool that provides a high-level view of the availability and performance of business services across an organization. The BSC offers customized business views, immediate notification of performance problems, and drill-down capability for fault resolution.
The Report Server is part of the eHealth Web interface. The eHealth Web interface provides access to reports and applications through Web browsers on local systems.
The Unicenter MCC provides access to eHealth At-a-Glance reports for Alert Management System (AMS) alerts that were created from eHealth alarms. The reports are also available for eHealth objects in the Topology and DSM views. eHealth At-a-Glance reports show the overall performance of an eHealth object for a specified time period. The reports consist of several charts that display different performance statistics on one page.
The Unicenter MCC provides access to eHealth Alarm Detail reports for AMS alerts that were created from eHealth alarms. eHealth Alarm Detail reports show the availability and performance history over time of an eHealth object that caused an alarm to be generated.
The Unicenter MCC provides access to eHealth Trend reports for eHealth objects in the WorldView Topology and DSM Views. eHealth Trend reports are charts that plot a variable for an object over a period of time. Trend reports can also show variables for groups of objects. The reports can reveal patterns over time and relationships between objects and between variables. The available Trend reports are Availability, Bandwidth, and Error, depending on the type of managed object.
Based on policy that you deploy, eHealth alarms and netHealth exceptions create alerts automatically. When alarms are closed, the associated alerts are closed. Likewise, if an alert associated with an eHealth alarm is closed through AMS, the alarm is also closed.
Note: If you receive a security error when closing an alert associated with an eHealth alarm or netHealth exception, see Authorize Users to Run Commands.
CA NSM provides integration with CA Spectrum Infrastructure Manager, which is a network fault management tool that provides proactive management of your network infrastructure through root cause analysis, impact analysis, event correlation, and service level management.
CA NSM integrates with CA Spectrum through an Integration Kit that you can install from the Unicenter Product Explorer. After you install the kit, you can view CA Spectrum device model alarms from the MCC, 2D Map, and the Event Console. You can also launch the CA Spectrum OneClick interface from the MCC, 2D Map, or Management Portal.
For more information about integrating with CA Spectrum, see the CA Spectrum Infrastructure Manager and CA NSM Integration Guide (5147), which is included with CA NSM and CA Spectrum.
The following guides provide information that you will find useful. Most are available on the CA NSM installation media.
Is intended for use by system administrators and contains general information and procedures about how to secure, customize, configure, and maintain CA NSM after installation and implementation. Individual chapters describe the components that are included with or that can be integrated with your CA NSM installation.
Provides information about how Agent Technology can take advantage of the SNMPv3 protocol. Documents how the security information is handled on the manager and agent side as well as how it is applied to the managed systems. SNMPv3 configuration and usage details are provided in this guide.
Contains procedures and processes for all components of CA NSM, including WorldView, Agent Technology, Enterprise Management, Event Management, CAICCI, Data Scoping, Discovery, Notification Services, Wireless Messaging, Security Management, and CA NSM Job Management Option.
Contains commands, parameters, and environment variables for all components of CA NSM, including Advanced Event Correlation, Agent Technology, Enterprise Management, Event Management, CAICCI, Data Scoping, Discovery, Notification Services, Wireless Messaging, Security Management, CA NSM Job Management Option, and WorldView.
Contains architecture considerations, pre-installation tasks, installation instructions, post-installation configuration information, and implementation scenarios. Appendixes include in-depth information about Distributed Intelligence Architecture (DIA), the MDB, and the CA High Availability Service (HAS) for cluster aware environments. This guide is intended for users who are implementing CA NSM on a new system.
Provides general information, installation scenarios, and configuration procedures for Active Directory Management.
Provides detailed information about Event Management (message records and actions), Advanced Event Correlation, and Alert Management.
Contains detailed information about the configuration and use of the Performance Agent.
Describes systems management from the CA NSM architecture perspective. The guide describes the different layers (WorldView, Management Layer, Monitoring Layer) and associated components, for example: Distributed State Machine (DSM), Unicenter Configuration Manager, dashboards, and so on.
Explores how to use and configure the system agents of CA NSM to monitor the system resources in your environment. The chapters guide you through the process of configuring and optimizing the agent for your special requirements.
Contains detailed information about the three architectural layers of Systems Performance, and provides guidance in the deployment, configuration, use, and best practices of the Systems Performance components.
Provides a generic overview of the Management Database (MDB), a common enterprise data repository that integrates CA product suites. The MDB provides a unified database schema for the management data stored by all CA products (mainframe and distributed). The MDB integrates management data from all IT disciplines and CA products. The guide includes implementation considerations for the database systems that support the MDB and information specific to the CA NSM implementation of the MDB.
Provides detailed information about each MIB attribute of the CA NSM system agents.
Provides detailed upgrade and migration instructions. This guide is only available on the CA Support website: http://ca.com/support
Provides details for constructing applications by CA development teams and by third parties and their clients. The guide is intended for developers who use one or more of the application programming interfaces (APIs) in the SDK to develop applications for use with CA NSM. Key among these APIs are the WorldView API, the Agent Technology API, and the Enterprise Management API.
Provides information about known issues and information discovered after CA NSM publication. The following readme files are available:
Provides information about operating system support, system requirements, new and changed features, published fixes, international support, and the documentation roadmap. The following release notes are available:
Provides installation, deployment, and basic administrative instructions for Unicenter Management Portal.
Identifies the CA solution for managing challenges involved in maintaining the performance and availability of complex server infrastructures. The CA solution provides proactive management of servers as part of an overall effort to improve service levels, and minimize the costs of managing the computing infrastructure through increased automation. It provides a view of the requirements for systems management and best practices for deployment. This guide is available online at: https://support.ca.com/irj/portal/anonymous/phpdocs?filePath=0/common/greenbooks.html.
Describes how to deliver integrated end-to-end performance and event management that is centered on services. The CA Service Availability Management solution leverages the Manager of Managers integration capabilities of CA NSM and eHealth and explains how to take advantage of those capabilities. It includes details on how to install and configure a variety of management solutions to provide simpler and more comprehensive management and monitoring of IT services. This guide is available online at: https://support.ca.com/irj/portal/anonymous/phpdocs?filePath=0/common/greenbooks.html.
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