Date post: | 12-Dec-2015 |
Category: |
Documents |
Upload: | bhupendrasingh1975 |
View: | 101 times |
Download: | 12 times |
SAP Solution Managerconcepts, technology,
and best practices
A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP
NetWeaver Applications
by Tony de Thomasis, SAP Mentor, Solution Manager Practice Lead — Acclimation • August 25, 2010
Learn why and how you should use CA Wily Introscope as part of your SAP Solution Manager
Root Cause Analysis toolkit.
Key Concept
End-to-end Root Cause Analysis offers systematic analysis and resolution of incidents for adistributed environment. Since January 2005, CA Wily Introscope has been available via SAP
Solution Manager as the Java management tool of choice to provide support services for and managecritical SAP NetWeaver applications. You can download the CA Wily Introscope Right To View (RTV)
software from the SAP Service Marketplace.
Solution extensions are software offerings that form part of the application life cycle management
(ALM) solution sold and supported by SAP. Solution extensions are designed to rapidly and
independently deploy and also provide a fast ROI and a low overall TCO. SAP identified CA Wily
Introscope (simply referred to as Wily in this article) as a key solution extension for IT optimization.
You can use Wily as part of an industry best practice offering to address your key pain points in an
expedited manner, resulting in cost savings and a positive ROI.
I will provide a guide to help you accelerate the benefits of Wily in an SAP NetWeaver landscape using
SAP Solution Manager. Basis administrators, capacity planners, and ABAP programmers can use this
quick guide to decrease support costs by reducing:
Application performance delays
Unplanned downtime
Application-associated help desk calls
The mean time-to-resolution for application errors
What Is CA Wily Introscope?
Most SAP NetWeaver landscapes are complex and made up of several individual components. Wily, a
product by CA Technologies, is part of their enterprise application performance management (APM)
solution that allows you to monitor the complexities of this landscape by providing detailed information
about the health and availability of the extended landscape at a glance.
Monitoring an SAP extended landscape is complex because of the mixture of technologies involved
coupled with a layered architecture of application servers, back-end systems, Web servers, and
third-party non-SAP applications (Figure 1). The CA Technologies APM solution is a collection of
technologies centered around Wily, which provides end-to-end transaction visibility and diagnostic
capabilities across your landscape — without affecting performance.
Figure 1 Wily technology across a complex technology stack
Wily is part of your standard SAP support license, so you have already paid for the Right to View (RTV)
version. SAP Active Global Support uses your local Wily when it delivers remote safeguarding services
such as go-live checks and technical integration checks. SAP front-line support staff often asks for
remote access to your Wily or requests Wily logs and reports to speed up problem resolution when SAP
users report an issue on the SAP Service Marketplace.
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
1 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
In addition, Wily gives your support staff the best chance of solving a problem locally without any
delays waiting for problem resolution via the SAP Service Marketplace. Wily also gives support staff
reaction time before a system slowdown or failure. This reaction time gives the staff a chance to repair
a problem and avoid the frustration of dissatisfied users and management staff. Wily can also analyze
performance trends, isolate bottlenecks, and obtain information that helps you make architectural
improvements to your SAP NetWeaver landscape.
The prevention of system failure and fast problem resolution you get by using Wily can potentially save
you thousands of dollars in unprocessed orders and legal procedures. You can use Wily to create a
performance baseline for local developments, thereby improving the quality of unit testing and
reducing the incidence of poorly performing Z code in production.
The Wily Landscape
Figure 2 illustrates a typical Wily architecture.
Figure 2 Typical Wily architecture
The Wily agents collect performance data from the managed (i.e., satellite) systems and report metrics
to the Wily Enterprise Manager (EM). The EM is the engine that:
Processes the metrics received from SAP Solution Manager agents
Saves Wily data to the SmartStor external database store for future analysis
Generates alerts and actions for notifications based on specified thresholds (SAP Enhanced
Diagnostics is required for this)
Presents SmartStor data to the workstation in the form of dashboards, investigator, reports, and
traces
In a large SAP NetWeaver landscape, Wily supports a clustered EM architecture to improve performance
and provide a highly available infrastructure for application monitoring. This is achieved by installing
several EM instances and assigning the role of Manager of Managers (MoM) in EM. There is no additional
license cost for a Wily MoM deployment. (A detailed explanation of establishing an MoM setup is beyond
the scope of this article.) Another EM scaling option is to install several isolated EMs, a viable option for
distributed locations.
All historical application data is stored in the SmartStor database. This data is periodically aged to
prevent excessive overhead. To conserve disk space, SmartStor stores data in three tiers at different
levels of aggregation depending on the age of the data:
Tier 1 is the youngest data, traditionally used for incident analysis and problem diagnostics
Tier 2 is configured for lower access frequency, traditionally used for reporting purposes
Tier 3 is configured for lowest access frequency, traditionally used for capacity planning
purposes
Get Started with Wily
The first step for using Wily is to install an EM and activate the appropriate SAP reporting agents. This
process is covered in “A Guide to End-to-End Root Cause Analysis” by Labinot Bytyqi, which was posted
to the Solution Manager Expert knowledgebase in September 2009.
Once the EM is installed, download the Wily user interface from the SAP Service Marketplace at
http://service.sap.com/swdc > Download > Support Packages and Patches > Entry by Application
Group > SAP Technology Components > SAP SOLUTION MANAGER > SAP SOLUTION MANAGER 7.0
EHP 1 > Entry by Component > Support user Frontend GUIs > WILY INTROSCOPE WORKSTATION 8
(Figure 3).
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
2 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 3 SAP Service Marketplace software download center
You can initiate the Wily user interface from the SAP Solution Manager Root Cause Analysis work center
(Figure 4) or natively by executing the Wily user interface directly from your desktop (shown later in
this article under “The Wily User Interface”).
Figure 4 Root Cause Analysis work center
The online status of the EM is shown in the Introscope Starter screen (Figure 5). The green traffic light
indicates the EM is functional. Any other color indicates an error or warning with the EM.
Figure 5 Introscope Starter screen
After you install the Wily user interface, log on with the default credentials shown in Table 1 to access
the Wily EM.
Table 1 Wily user names and passwords
The Wily User Interface
Wily supports the following user interface accesses to application monitoring data:
Workstation
WebStart workstation
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
3 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
WebView
Command Line workstation
Workstation
Workstation is the standard means of viewing metrics. It is normally installed on a local hard drive for
fast loading time. It provides access to all the available visual Wily features (Figure 6).
Figure 6 The Workstation view
WebStart Workstation
WebStart Workstation is an alternate means of viewing metrics. This is the same program as the
workstation, but it is run from a USB key (or something similar) without any installation on local hard
drives (Figure 7). This option requires Java Virtual Machine (JVM) version 1.5 or higher and is a useful
option for companies with strict desktop security policies. You can also run the Java-based version of
the WebStart Workstation client by using the default URL http://emhost:8081/workstation.
Figure 7 WebStart Workstation from a USB device
WebView
WebView is a browser-based means of viewing metrics (Figure 8). It provides read-only access to Wily
features, so you cannot use it to edit monitoring logic. The WebView does not fully support the
transaction tracer feature of Wily. Note that this access method requires the Microsoft Silverlight
plug-in. Silverlight enables WebView to display vector shapes, text, and embedded raster graphics. The
default URL to initiate the WebView is http://emhost:8081/webview.
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
4 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 8 WebView sign-in page
Command Line Workstation
You can use the Wily Command Line workstation to administer the Wily EM from the operating system
or export SmartStor metrics to CSV or XML format. This non-graphical user interface to Wily is useful
for running batch scripts and most maintenance tasks. All Command Line workstation commands are
executed from the /usr/sap/ccms/WilyIntroscope/lib directory using the command prompt on the EM
server.
I provide a subset of the most commonly used Command Line workstation commands in Table 2. You
can find the complete list of commands in the Introscope Workstation Guide.
Table 2 Useful Command Line workstation commands
CA Wily Introscope Features
The main Wily features can be broken down into four main categories:
Investigator: used to select performance metric details on demand
Traces: used to perform on-the-fly traces of metrics
Console or dashboards: used to select logically grouped metrics
Reports: used to create on-demand reports for selected metrics
Wily Investigator
You use the Wily Investigator to view individual metric data. You can filter metrics, use search criteria,
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
5 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
and export data to an external CSV file. The Investigator view is divided into three main panes (Figure
9):
Investigator tree: provides a tree hierarchy view of domains and metrics
Viewer pane: provides live or historical data for the selected metric
Settings pane: provides a logical grouping of metrics to treat as a single element
Figure 9 Investigator main screen with three panes
The Overview tab consists of a combination graph for the node selected, along with a summary of
component runtime information, response times, errors, and stalls (Figure 10). Note that a node is a
logically related collection of Wily performance metrics. From the SuperDomain node level overview,
most selected nodes offer additional tabs.
Figure 10 The Overview tab view
The next tab is the General tab (Figure 11). Select this tab to view the combined line graph of
overlayed metrics from the selected node. Use the check boxes in the bottom pane to include or mask
data points from your line graph.
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
6 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 11 The General tab view
Select the Traces tab to see the historical trace data that has accumulated in the SmartStor database
(Figure 12). You can use the time slider to change the time focus or zoom in on any desired time
period. You can use this display to drill down into the trace or to sort by call time, for example.
Figure 12 The Traces tab view
Select the Errors tab to view all errors that have occurred for the node (Figure 13). Results are
presented in a single table. Click a row to jump to the associated stack view showing details about the
errors. In this example, the referring URL is the cause of the error.
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
7 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 13 The Errors tab view
Select the Search tab to search for all metrics matching your input text or regular expressions (Figure
14). Results are presented in a single table. Double-click a row to jump to the appropriate node in the
Investigator tree. A single click from the table displays the associated graph in the bottom pane.
Figure 14 The Search tab view
Select the Metric Count tab to see the total number of individual metrics grouped by a branch (Figure
15).
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
8 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 15 The Metric Count tab view
Wily Transaction Tracer
SAP Solution Manager agents capture several traces per hour (by default, every 15 seconds). You can
view these traces using the Historical Viewer in the Investigator or capture a new trace according to
your requirements.
To get to the Transaction Tracer View, follow menu path Workstation > New Transaction Trace session
or press Ctrl-3. This view allows you to isolate individual problematic transactions and instantly identify
which components are causing performance degradation (Figure 16). All monitored transactions are
stored in the SmartStor database for future analysis.
Figure 16 The Transaction Tracer view
The Transaction Trace table in Figure 17 allows you to further analyze trace details. By default, the
trace starts in the Summary View, which displays the summary information for each component of the
selected transaction. By selecting an entry from the trace table, you can sort the table and check the
summary view for the most expensive part of the response time. Double-clicking the appropriate record
in the Summary View takes you directly to the closest node in the Investigator View.
Figure 17 The Summary View
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
9 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
The Trace View displays each component of a traced transaction in block view (Figure 18). The largest
block represents the largest component of a transaction in milliseconds and is displayed at the top of
the trace stack. Each component in the block trace forms a graphic commonly referred to as the
upside-down cake, with the most expensive part represented by the top layer. As you navigate down
the cake, the less expensive layers are revealed.
Figure 18 The Trace View
The Tree View displays a traffic light hierarchical view of the transaction components (Figure 19). Red
represents a total duration of greater than 25%, yellow represents a total duration of greater than 10%,
and green represents a total duration of less than 10%. The color-coded traffic light representation is
designed to lay blame directly on the most expensive part of the traced transaction. In the example in
Figure 19, the Adobe EJB process was responsible for more than 30% of the total transaction run time.
Figure 19 Tree View
The Plain Table Viewer displays all parts of a traced transaction (Figure 20). The table in the bottom
pane is designed so you can sort or search it using wildcards for further analysis.
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
10 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 20 Plain Table Viewer
You can see the Historical Query view by pressing Ctrl-Q from the Transaction Tracer view. This screen
allows you to create a search query across the SmartStor database (Figure 21). You can use
sophisticated wildcards and Boolean logic to combine search terms. Some useful search expressions
include \(ms)\, Response, Concurrent Invocations, Errors, and Stall.
Figure 21 Historical Query Viewer
The Wily Dashboards
SAP has created three pages of dashboards for about 30 SAP NetWeaver usage types. By filtering
relevant data into individual dashboards, SAP aims to provide a more meaningful collection of related
information. Each individual dashboard is made up of Triage, Overview, and Help-Browser screens
(Figure 22).
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
11 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 22 The dashboard view
The Triage dashboard shows the most common metrics for the SAP NetWeaver usage type to be
monitored (Figure 23). In this example, SAP considers the Portal Dispatcher Servlet, HTTP Sessions,
iView response time, and Portal Request response time to be critical for monitoring the SAP NetWeaver
Portal usage type.
Figure 23 The Triage dashboard view
The Overview dashboard shows a set of traffic lights indicating the quality of the metric or application
for which the agent is reporting metrics (Figure 24). A red light indicates a problem that needs
immediate attention. A yellow light indicates that an attempt to use the application is likely to result in
an unsatisfactory outcome. A green light indicates that the application is functioning properly. Finally, a
white (or missing) light indicates that no data is available. The Wily Baseliner calculates the heuristics
based on the amount of historical data available since the last start of the SAP Solution Manager agent
process.
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
12 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 24 The Overview dashboard
The Help browser shows a context-sensitive set of help screens via your Microsoft Internet Explorer
browser (Figure 25). These HTML help screens are installed on the Wily EM server as part of the
installation process. I have found various inconsistencies with Internet Explorer version 8 that you can
overcome by running it in compatibility mode to set it back to version 7 (see Tools > Compatibility
View Settings in Internet Explorer). You can see SAP Note 1435190 (SAP Client plug-in) for further
details. I have had no errors with Mozilla Firefox version 3.6.8.
Figure 25 The Wily help browser
Wily Reports
On the basis of what you see in the dashboards, you may wish to generate a Wily report. There are four
SAP-supplied report templates for creating performance reports covering the dates and agents of your
choice:
SAP J2EE overview
SAP OS overview
Top JDBC statements
Top iViews and components
To demonstrate typical Wily reporting capabilities, I selected the J2EE overview report as an example of
a Wily report showing the most important Java metrics over your selected time frame (Figure 26).
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
13 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 26 A typical Wily report
You can choose several report formats to save your report in, including Adobe PDF, Microsoft Excel,
HTML, RTF, CSV, and text.
The Wily Roadmap
As your organization grows in the ALM space, you may want to upgrade the RTV version of Wily to the
SAP Extended Diagnostics application by CA Wily and look into the benefits of business process
monitoring across the entire landscape using the Wily Customer Experience Manager (CEM).
The simple Wily landscape shown in Figure 2 can be scaled out and improved to a mission-critical APM
deployment. Introducing a Wily CEM appliance and connecting it to the most appropriate network
fabric switch provides all the necessary metrics to begin using the CEM console (Figure 27). Over
time, the performance of the Wily APM solution becomes critical and you may need to scale out the
solution by clustering the Wily EM infrastructure and introducing an MoM-based landscape. This
scale-out process can be performed gradually and without disruption to the existing Wily EM
deployment.
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
14 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 27 Wily APM landscape with CEM
SAP Extended Diagnostics for Wily
SAP Extended Diagnostics provides a more comprehensive approach to identifying bottlenecks,
eliminating unplanned outages, managing service levels, optimizing resources, and lowering the costs
associated with Web applications across both SAP and non-SAP software environments. You can
purchase Wily SAP Extended Diagnostics licenses directly from SAP. The list of improvements over Wily
RTV are as follows:
Automated threshold alerting directly from Wily. Alerts can be sent via email or by connection to
your service desk of choice.
Integration of Wily alerts for incident detection and notification to the SAP Solution Manager
Service Desk or to third-party service desk offerings
Enables the creation of personalized Wily dashboards for grouping related metrics and improved
reporting
Metrics customization for multiple audiences (e.g., CIO dashboards and solution provider
dashboards)
Support for tracing and monitoring customized code in SAP. Wily Introscope ProbeBuilder inserts
probes into the application Java classes. Probes collect performance data at runtime.
Extended instrumentation for non-SAP application server platforms via the following managers:
Wily Portal Manager for BEA WebLogic, Wily Portal Manager for IBM WebSphere, Microsoft
SharePoint, CA SiteMinder, and Wily PowerPacks
Provides visibility into the performance and availability of Oracle databases
With ErrorDetector, detects and diagnoses the cause of serious errors (such as 404 Not Found
and others) that can prevent end users from completing Web transactions
Identifies memory leaks in your extended SAP Landscape with CA Wily Introscope LeakHunter
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) adapter for connections to third-party service
desk offerings
Enables the creation of customer-specific Adobe PDF report templates for capacity management
Leveraging the language of CA Wily Introscope for other non-SAP, J2EE-based applications
Role-based user management with Microsoft Active Directory integration and support for user
personalization settings
Lightweight Directory Active Protocol (LDAP) integration enabling the query and modification of
directory services over TCP/IP
SAP Extended Diagnostics allows you to combine selected SAP NetWeaver metrics from the
Investigator into a single custom dashboard. The dashboard in Figure 28 shows metrics from separate
SAP NetWeaver instances on a single dashboard. This is useful when monitoring the SAP NetWeaver
Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) Accelerator, TREX instance, and the SAP NetWeaver BW
system all on a single dashboard. You can refer to SAP Note 1404944 (BWA 7.2: Usage of additional
monitoring tools) for tips on incorporating the SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator into Wily.
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
15 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Figure 28 Typical custom-built SAP Extended Diagnostics dashboard showing SAP metrics
SAP Extended Diagnostics also allows you to combine selected non-SAP metrics from the Investigator
onto a single custom dashboard. The dashboard in Figure 29 shows metrics from a BEA WebLogic
front-end server combined with the BEA back-end database all on the single dashboard.
Figure 29 Typical custom-built SAP Extended Diagnostics dashboard showing non-SAPmetrics
SAP Extended Diagnostics gives you the freedom to create custom dashboards to cover a complete
business process from end to end — regardless of how many instances are involved.
Wily CEM
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
16 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
Wily CEM allows the business to understand and respond to the online experience of each end user.
CEM monitors individual end user transactions in real time, enabling you to measure service level
agreements (SLAs) (Figure 30). It provides a more business-centric approach to dashboards and
alerts.
Figure 30 Typical custom-built Wily CEM executive dashboard
CEM monitors real user transactions against transaction SLAs by response time thresholds or error
conditions (Figure 31). It captures the user name, the actual transaction response time of the
transaction, and the location of the user to gain visibility into the impact of service quality delivery. The
key benefit is that you can correlate the context of a user’s transaction into the back-end components
within the SAP or non-SAP stack to determine the root cause of an issue.
Figure 31 CEM Incident Management SLA view
Note
Some of the references you can use for further information include SAP Help, CA Website,
ALM in SAP Solution Manager, Diagnostics on the SAP Service Marketplace, and SAP Note797147 (Wily Introscope Installation for SAP Customers).
Tony de Thomasis has been working with SAP software since 1986. He installed the first SAP R/2
system in Australia for Mobil Oil in 1989. Tony has several years of Basis experience with large
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
17 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM
companies including National Australia Bank, Telstra, Coles Myer, BHP Billiton, and Australia Post. Tony
enjoys SAP NetWeaver system and landscape design, extracting the best out of the database,
operating system, disk subsystem, and server platform. He is very keen to virtualize, consolidate, and
reduce downtime. Most recently, as an SAP Mentor Tony has taken on an application life cycle
management thought leadership role in the SAP community. In his role as NetWeaver Practice Lead for
Acclimation, Tony is passionate about deploying SAP Solution Manager as an initiative to reduce
support costs, introduce proactive and innovative capability, and manage change. You may contact
Tony via email at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com
/c821311.
Solution Manager Expert - A Guide to Using CA Wily Introscope for SAP... http://www.solutionmanagerexpert.com/article_printable.cfm?id=5396
18 of 18 5/7/2011 4:10 PM