Using ITCAM for SOA to monitor BPM Systems:Part 1: Setup the environment with ITCAM for SOAand WDPEInstall, integrate and setup the ITCAM for SOA and WDPE
This is the first part of four articles in a series that introduce how to use the ITCAM forSOA product to monitor the BPM system. This part focuses on setting up theenvironment with ITCAM for SOA and WDPE. In this part, you'll learn about theinstallation of WDPE and ITCAM for SOA, the architecture of ITCAM for SOAmonitoring WDPE, and the setup steps of the monitoring environment.
Introduction
Moving to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) enables customers to model,assemble, deploy and manage services independently of the applications and thecomputing platforms on which they run, making the business processes moreflexible and IT environment more closely aligned and responsive to the changing
business needs. As a result, organizations can achieve rapid growth, reduced totalcost of ownership and improved access to timely, accurate information.
IBM WebSphere Dynamic Process Edition (WDPE) is a key IBM Business ProcessManagement (BPM) Suite offering, with built-in support for adapting, respondingdynamically to change. WDPE provides the BPM powered by SOA foundationalcapabilities for modeling, simulating, deploying, monitoring end-to-end dynamicbusiness processes.
How is it possible to monitor and manage the services of a service-orientedarchitecture (SOA) environment which is enabled with WDPE offering? How can weidentify and resolve SOA problems, such as service failure or some risk situationhappens? ITCAM for SOA is a solution for customers to monitor and manage theirSOA environment. The ITCAM for SOA infrastructure management software offersintegrated management tools that speed and simplify identification and resolution ofSOA problems. It also provides a services topology view displays actualservice-to-service relationships, including drill down to service status and metrics, sothat customers can keep track of their service flow. The automated SOAmanagement and SOA monitoring software help users meet established servicelevels with built-in alerts, message mediations, situations and workflows. Finally, ithelps the development teams and other preproduction users understand serviceuse, flows and relationships, facilitating management throughout the SOAdevelopment life cycle.
WebSphere Dynamic Process Edition Overview
WebSphere Dynamic Process Edition (WDPE) provides a comprehensive offering tomodel, deploy, monitor, and continuously optimize the business processes. Itprovides the dynamic BPM enabled by SOA foundational capabilities to optimize thebusiness processes and is essential for companies to survive for the time beingsince the business processes are changing frequently due to business needs andmarket conditions changing. WDPE is an offering with multiple products includingWebSphere Business Modeler, WebSphere Business Services Fabric (built withWebSphere Integration Developer and WebSphere Process Server) andWebSphere Business Monitor.
The capability highlights enabled with WDPE include:
• Facilitates continuous business process optimization including feedbackof actual performance data back into models and simulation throughreal-time visibility into your end-to-end processes and business activity.
• Improves agility through a combination of policy, rules management andservice selection capabilities.
• Broad, role-based capabilities foster improved collaboration between
business and IT, resulting in faster deployments that meet businessneeds without lots of rework.
• Simplified tools for business users-easier to change business servicepolicies, that drive business service reuse and business processoutcomes, human workflow creation, faster Return on Investment (ROI)metrics, increased access to information from mobile devices, andimproved support, ability to react to unexpected business situationsquickly with customizable alerts and rebalance staff workload directly fromthe dashboard to prevent backlogs.
• Business user customizable dashboards, and process analytics as theinsights or drivers to then leverage policies (+ rules + service selection) asthe vehicle to then implement process change based on those insightsrapidly and by business users.
WDPE enables the End-to-end dynamic BPM to optimize the business processes.Figure 1 illustrate how it enables the IT and business users to response quickly andeffectively to change, and to achieve an agile enterprise. It includes threecollaborative and tightly related aspects: Model and simulate processes, Rapidlydeploy and change processes, Monitor, predict and act on business processes on aday-to-day basis.
Figure 1. How WDPE optimize the business processes
The WDPE environment could be classified as two environments: the developmentenvironment and the runtime environment. The development environment includesthe tooling product such as WebSphere Integration Developer, Modeler, MonitorToolkit and Fabric Toolpac. The runtime environment includes the runtime supportsoftware including WebSphere Process Server, WebSphere Business Monitor andServices Fabric. Figure 2 describes those products which are involved in the
Figure 2. Development and runtime environment for WDPE
IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for SOA Overview
IBM® Tivoli® Composite Application Manager for SOA (ITCAM for SOA) is a productof ITCAM family and monitors the SOA life cycle to ensure high availability andperformance. We will introduce ITCAM first, then ITCAM for SOA and how it works.
What is ITCAM?
IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager (ITCAM) is a family of monitoringproducts; it combines deep IT management capabilities with the rich functionality ofIBM Tivoli Monitoring products, delivering a truly integrated solution for monitoringand management across the entire enterprise. ITCAM offers a single set of tools thatcan help the customer's organization optimize performance and availability at everylevel of the IT infrastructure.
ITCAM helps to simplify and enhance distributed application management.Application components can reside on multiple servers, across different platformsand J2EE environments, even through mainframes. With ITCAM, integration beginsat the data layer, where a common data model enables a consistent view ofinformation across all components and agents. This information is then consolidatedin one easy-to-use role-based interface, the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Portal. This portalgives you single sign-on to all the monitoring data and management tools youneed-for server management, application management, transaction managementand advanced management capabilities.
IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for SOA (ITCAM for SOA) is a product ofITCAM family and monitors the SOA life cycle to ensure high availability andperformance.
ITCAM for SOA has notable benefit for business, it monitors, manages and controlsSOA deployed using a wide range of IBM and third-party systems, it provides a lot offeatures which will help the customer to proactively recognize and quickly isolateWeb service performance problems; verify that Web services are available andperforming to specification; alert when Web service performance is degraded;perform automated service mediation; report results against committed servicelevels; visualize service flows, end-to-end, as they cross the enterprise; pinpointsource of service bottlenecks, and Understand the impact of service problems onbusiness processes
ITCAM for SOA provides a services topology view displays actual service-to-servicerelationships, includes drill down to service status and metrics so that customers cankeep track of their service flow; contains automated SOA management and SOAmonitoring software help customers meet established service levels with built-inalerts, message mediations, situations and workflows; helps the development teamsand other preproduction users understand service use, flows and relationships,facilitating management throughout the SOA development life cycle; and what'simportant, it can smoothly integrate with other IBM Tivoli and WebSphere productssuch as WDPE, to gain the comprehensive application management solution forcomplex environments.
How ITCAM for SOA Works
ITCAM for SOA is installed and operates within the management infrastructure ofthe IBM Tivoli Monitoring environment. The primary components of ITCAM for SOAincludes One or more data collectors that are installed locally on every applicationserver; a Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Agent (also referred to as the monitoringagent) that interacts with the managed application servers and infrastructuremiddleware; a set of managed SCA mediation primitives that you can add to yourWebSphere Integration Developer environment; a set of management data usinglogical table constructs; a set of queries and commands.
Figure 3 below shows the ITCAM for SOA data collection conceptual architecture.There is a data collector which resides on the application server and triggered as aSCA or web services handler or extension. The monitored information which iscollected by the monitoring agent is transferred to the Tivoli Enterprise MonitoringServer, and could be viewed through the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server.
There are two kinds of data collectors, one is the data collector for SCA messages,and the other one is the data collector for Web service. The SCA message datacollector supports the SCA invocations, and the Web services data collectorsupports both J2EE application client and server container environments becauseJAX-RPC handlers are supported only by these environments. The Web servicesshould be compliant with JSR-109 specifications.
The monitoring agent data collector for Web services is implemented as a JAX-RPChandler or service extension that is installed into the application servers that arehosting the monitored Web services. The handler is given control when either of thefollowing events occurs:
• A client application invokes a Web service, which is referred to as aclient-side interception.
• The Web service request is received by the hosting application server,which is referred to as a server-side interception.
The monitoring agent records and collects monitored information into one or morelocal log files. The information is then transferred to the Tivoli Enterprise MonitoringServer and can be archived into a historical database for later retrieval with IBMWeb Services Navigator.
Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server provides a portal-based consolidated view of datacollected by ITCAM for SOA agents. It also provides mechanisms to tailor views ofthe data according to user needs. Tivoli Enterprise Portal can be used by anyonewho needs to monitor and analyze many servers or technology types from acommon user interface. This is most beneficial to operational areas supporting manysystems or application support for complex applications.
Setup environment of using ITCAM for SOA to monitor standalone server
Figure 4 shows the topology of using ITCAM for SOA to monitor the stand aloneserver environment. Typically, there are two machines here, one is the applicationserver 6.2 which holds the WPS, Monitor and Fabric runtime with a DB2 databaseserver as one repository, it has an ITCAM for SOA monitoring agent which interactswith the ITCAM server on the second machine. The second machine is an ITCAMserver, which has the ITM 6.2 installed and TEMS (Tivoli Enterprise ManagementServer) and TEPS (Tivoli Enterprise Portal Serve) server there, the repository isanother DB2 server. It's better to have separate database for the application serverand ITCAM products, to gain better performance.
Figure 4. Topology of using ITCAM for SOA to monitor standalone server
The overall setup steps of using ITCAM for SOA to monitor the standalone systemincluding:
1. Plan for the installation
2. Install and setup WDPE standalone environment
3. Install IBM Tivoli Monitoring
4. Install the application support component for ITCAM for SOA
5. Install and configure the monitoring agents of ITCAM for SOA
6. Verifying the installation and configuration
Plan for the installation
To plan for the installation, you should check the "Planning for installation" section inthe info center of all the involved products (WDPE and ITCAM for SOA) first.However, it's not enough for planning the whole system; there are several factorsespecially the combination of the software and operation system need to beconsidered when planning the installation and setup of WDPE and ITCAMenvironment. Figure 5 shows the recommendations of the matrix of combinations ofthe software and operation system settings.
Figure 5. Recommendations of the configuration combination
The OS column means the operation system type. The OS(64/32) column indicatesthe operation system is a 32-bit or 64-bit one. The WDPE App(64/32) columnindicates the WDPE installations which include WPS, Monitor, Fabric are 32-bit,64-bit or Mix (some are 32 and some are 64) one. The DB2(64/32) column refers tothe DB2 databases for WDPE and ITCAM is 32-bit or 64-bit one.
We do not recommend installing the 32 bit DB2 software on the 32 bit Linuxenvironment, since there are multithreaded architecture limitations for DB2 V9.5 on32-bit Linux. Such limitation would make ITCAM not function properly and see someerrors in the ITCAM view and get the "SQL1084C Shared memory segments cannotbe allocated" error when they directly connecting the ITCAM database such asWAREHOUS or KD4SDMS. Also, the mixed WDPE product installation is notallowed, as the PMT (profile management tool) tool can't recognize the existingprofile or the augment may fail. For WDPE installation with 64 bits, we shouldmanually issue the manage profile command line instead of the GUI PMT tool to
As the WDPE environment contains two environments: the developmentenvironment and the runtime environment, both the tools and the stand-alone servershould be setup.
The detail steps of installing the WDPE client software to setup the toolsenvironment are well documented in the info center, following the "Installing yoursoftware" part of the "Setting up your tools" section to setup the environment. Thereare two approaches to install the client, interactively installing the Client or manuallyinstalling the Client, we suggest interactively installing the Client as it's simpler.
The detail setup steps of the standalone server could be found in the info center,follow the steps described in the "Installing the WebSphere Dynamic Process EditionSingle Server" section of the operation system type of single server to setup thesingle server environment. For example, setup your single server on Windowsfollowing the "Installing the WebSphere Dynamic Process Edition Single Server onWindows".
Install IBM Tivoli Monitoring
IBM Tivoli Monitoring services, which include Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server andTivoli Enterprise Portal Server, must be already installed and configured in theenvironment.
The detail steps of installing IBM Tivoli Monitoring could be found in the learningmaterial of the Resources, you can install IBM Tivoli Monitoring on one machine forsimplicity, with selecting all components for a complete installation on one computerin the "Select Features" window, Figure 6 shows how to install ITM in one computer.
Install the application support component for ITCAM for SOA
Install the IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for SOA application supportcomponent on the system where the monitoring server, portal server, and portaldesktop and browser clients are installed. The application support files containingagent specific information for the monitoring agent on the computer system whereTivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server is installed must also be installed. Wheninstalling the application support on the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server, youshould be logged in as the user who installed Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server.
The application support files for ITCAM for SOA include:
• Data structure definition for Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server attributesand attribute groups (tables). ITCAM for SOA contains two tables:Services_Metrics and Services_Inventory.
• Situation definitions that allow proactive monitoring to be performed in theIBM Tivoli Monitoring environment.
• Presentation information to be installed in the Tivoli Enterprise PortalServer, including help resources and workspace definitions.
• Additional resources such as sample workflow and historical collectioninformation.
The detail steps of installing the application support component for ITCAM for SOAare available in the info center; you can follow the steps of "Install ApplicationSupport" section to install.
Install and configure the monitoring agents of ITCAM for SOA
The ITCAM for SOA agents should be installed on the WDPE standalone server toenable monitoring. When installing the ITCAM for SOA on the application server,select to install the agent support component. This includes the data collectorcomponent that intercepts request and response messages for the Web services tomonitor. The installation steps are straightforward and could be found in the"Installing the monitoring agent" section of ITCAM for SOA's info center. Here wewould highlight the steps of agent's configuration, which will specify the default TivoliEnterprise Monitoring Server address, shown in figure 7.
After installing the agent component, the final and most important step is configuringthe appropriate data collector. It is essential to enable the monitoring capability onthe WDPE standalone server. To configure this, you should configure the datacollector for WAS (WebSphere Application Server) support first, then configure theSCA mediation primitive. The following steps list these steps sequentially.
9. Select Enable, and set the WPS install dir, click Next
10. Click Next, Wait for the configuration utility to complete the operation and Exitthe utility.
11. Restart the WebSphere Process Server
12. Run the Data Collector Configuration Utility again, do the same step as 6,7, inthe same window as step 8, choose "Deploy support ear file" option and click Next
15. If security is configured for the runtime environment, select the check boxSecurity is configured for the runtime environment, and input the userID andpassword. Else, uncheck it, then click Next
Figure 14. configure Security for the runtime environment
16. Select Next until the configuration completes.
Verifying the installation and configuration
First, you should follow "verify the environment" section of the info Center to verifythe installation and configuration first.
Then, you can run some sample business scenarios to monitor the Web servicestraffic data in the TEP (Tivoli Enterprise Portal) to verify the environment. Whenthere are service data flows, the workspace of ITCAM for SOA will reflect this. Theworkspace of ITCAM for SOA (Figure 15 shows the default) in the Tivoli EnterprisePortal is arranged to show Web services calls by servers. The Web services callsare typically identified by three attributes: Frequency, Response time and Messagelength
The workspace in Figure 15 displays the primary metrics that are collected byITCAM for SOA. It shows all active Web services calls in the duration. For details ofthe metrics collected by ITCAM for SOA and how to analyze according to thesemetrics data, refer to the second part of this series articles.
Setup environment of using ITCAM for SOA to monitor NDCluster environment
Figure 16 shows the topology for cluster environment. Such cluster is based on theNetwork Deployment configuration. The clusters have two members which reside onseparate machine, each machine is a cluster member and there is one DMGRprofile. To have better performance for the system, it's recommended to have aseparate database server for WDPE cluster environment and another one for ITCAMserver. The ITCAM server resides in a separate machine and interacts with bothagents on the members of the cluster. For each cluster member, the monitoringagent of ITCAM for SOA should be installed and configured to connect with the ITMserver.
Figure 16. Topology of using ITCAM for SOA to monitor cluster
To setup the environment for ITCAM for SOA to monitor the ND cluster environment,the following setup steps need to be done; it's very similar with the setup steps ofmonitoring standalone environment, except some cluster specific different steps.
1. Plan for the installationThe configuration combination consideration is the same with standalone,for each WDPE product planning related with cluster, refer to the WDPEproducts' info center for details.
2. Install and setup WDPE clustered environmentThe development environment is the same with the stand-aloneenvironment setup. For the clustered server environment setup, it's totallydifferent with the standalone one. The detail setup of the clusterenvironment could also be found in the info center, where you shouldselect the related "Installing the WebSphere Dynamic Process Editionclustered golden topology" section based on the operation system tosetup the cluster environment. For example, the "Installing theWebSphere Dynamic Process Edition clustered golden topology onWindows".
3. Install IBM Tivoli MonitoringThe installation of IBM Tivoli Monitoring is the same with the standalonesetup; refer to the standalone part for details.
4. Install the application support component for ITCAM for SOA
The installation of application support component is the same with thestandalone setup; refer to the standalone part for details.
5. Install and configure the monitoring agents of ITCAM for SOA on eachcluster memberTo utilize ITCAM for SOA to monitor the ND environment, customersneed to install the monitor agent and configure the data collector for eachcluster member machine. The installation steps are the same with thestandalone setup for each cluster member, but the configuration steps area little different for each cluster member. Each cluster member should gothrough all the same configuration steps (step 1-16) with the standaloneserver configuration, however, it should specify the ApplicationClustertarget when doing step 14-selecting the deployment target whendeploying the support ear file, which is shown below.
Figure 17. Specify the cluster target when deploying support EAR
6. Verifying the installation and configuration
First, you can follow the same "verify the environment" sections of the info Center toverify the installation and configuration.
Also, you can navigate the workspace in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal to check thelayout of the clustered systems. After successfully setup the ITCAM for SOA tomonitor the ND environment, the workspace in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal will layout
the two systems separately, and you can find each cluster member in related systemnode. The following figure 15 shows a typical managed systems layout in the TEP inthe physical navigator view; the wemx1 and wemx2 nodes are two machines whichconsists the ND environment. You can see that physically, machine wemx1 has oneDMGR node, one Application cluster member and one support member; wex2 hasone application cluster member and one support member.
Figure 18. ND environment in physical navigator
For the details of how ITCAM for SOA monitor the ND environment, how user readmetrics to aware how the cluster member works, and how to customize ITCAM forSOA views to effectively monitor the ND environment, you can refer to the part 4 ofthis series.
• Visit the WebSphere Dynamic Process Edition Information Center
• Visit the WebSphere Message Modeler Information Center
• Visit the WebSphere Process Server Information Center
• Visit the WebSphere Business Services Fabric Information Center
• Visit the WebSphere Business Monitor Information Center
• Visit the ITCAM for SOA 7.1.1 information center
• IBM Tivoli Monitoring installation guide.
• Redbook: IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager Family Installation,Configuration, and Basic Usage,(SG24-7151-02), January 2008
About the authors
Hua ChengHua Cheng (Ted) joined IBM since 2003 and currently is the BPM Integration QAteam Lead, He has broad experience of BPM products including WID, WPS,Modeler, Monitor and Adapter. Also has the In-depth knowledge covering Java/J2EEdevelopment and product testing. Before taking the current role, he works for severalWPS development and test project, including the WPS(Webpshere Process Server)component owner, development lead and test lead.
Yunjie TanYunjie Tan (Jim) is a staff software engineer and the BPM Integration QA teamDesigner. Besides the in-depth knowleadge about the WPS/WID products, he is alsoan expert of UML, Business analysis/modeling, and Software methodology. He alsois an author of the popular chinese book about the UML - "Elephant--thinking in UML"
Sen WangSen Wang (Watson) currently is the BPM Integration QA team member, He has
broad experience of BPM products including WID, WPS, Message Broker, WSRRand FileNet, also has the In-depth knowledge covering Java/J2EE development.Before taking the current role, he works for SOA design center as intern since 2007and have rich experience of custom projects, such as bank and insurance projects.
