Alerts form a central element of monitoring. They quickly and reliably report errors - such as values exceeding or falling below a particular threshold value or that an IT component has been inactive for a defined period of time. These alerts are displayed in the Alert Monitor; this reduces the workload for the system administration, since they now only need to watch the error messages, instead of endless system data.
The Alert Monitor provides the following functions:
- You can use the Alert Monitor to perform complete and detailed monitoring of all SAP and non-SAP systems, the host systems, and the database.
- All errors generate alerts, which are displayed in a tree structure.
- The alerts contain a status indicator with a color and a numerical value. Yellow means a warning, red means a problem, and the numerical value shows the severity of the reported error. In the tree structure, the most severe alerts are passed upward in the display hierarchy. If a tree node is not displaying an alert, there is also no error in the entire branch below it.
- You can assign certain analysis and auto-reaction methods to the alerts, which contribute to faster processing of the error. If you double-click an alert, the monitoring architecture starts the assigned analysis method (such as the job administration transaction for a prematurely terminated job). An auto-reaction method, on the other hand, starts automatically as soon as the alert occurs. This includes executing operating system commands and sending an e-mail or an SMS message to the system administration.
- The Alert Monitor contains various view in which either the current or the open (that is, the unanalyzed) problem messages are displayed. Alerts are also archived.
- Threshold values, methods, and detailed help for many monitoring attributes and three extensive monitor sets with monitors for all aspects of system management are predefined on the basis of Best Practices in the monitoring architecture and are available in every SAP system.
- You can adjust all settings individually, and configure your own monitors.
SAP provides preconfigured monitor sets that you can use immediately. As figure The CCMS Monitor shows, the CCMS Monitor Sets (transaction RZ20) offer various monitor definitions that let you display the monitoring data from the monitoring segments in a tree structure. Every monitor set bundles monitor definitions that display various parts of the entire monitoring architecture by topic area. The tree structure allows a clear display when you are displaying a large number of measured values.
- Monitor Set
A monitor set is a collection of different monitors. Monitor sets usually represent a product that needs to be monitored.
The provided monitor sets can be different for each system. For example, an SAP CRM system contains a special set for monitoring CRM scenarios. Of course, this also includes special data collectors that are preconfigured and delivered with an SAP CRM system.
- Monitor Definition
A monitor definition describes the selection of monitor objects and monitoring attributes that you want to examine in more detail. You bundle monitor definitions into monitor sets in transaction RZ20. When you use a monitor definition, the requested data is compiled here and displayed in the corresponding monitor.
- Monitor
A monitor is the display of monitoring objects and monitoring attributes that are included for display in the monitor definition.
The monitoring data for an attribute can be displayed in several monitors. The monitoring attribute Hit Ratio in the monitor Program Buffer, for example, can occur in several monitors. If you change the threshold values for this attribute in one of these monitors it is changed in all other monitors too.
Some monitors, such as the monitor Availability and Performance Overview in the monitor set SAP CCMS Monitor Templates do not display any data at first. This can be due to the fact that special settings are required to start the underlying data collectors.
At the beginning, you will use the preconfigured monitors. Later, you can also create your own monitors that display the exact data that you require for your daily monitoring work.
The figure Monitor Structure displays the tree structure of a monitor. A node in the monitoring tree is called a monitor tree element (MTE).
The measured values that are collected by the data collectors are displayed at the lowest level in the leaves of the tree. The leaves are called monitoring attributes.
Threshold values can be stored for a monitoring attribute. SAP supplies preconfigured threshold values. To adapt the monitor as closely as possible to your needs, however, you should check these threshold values and adjust them if required.
Monitoring attributes are grouped at the second-lowest level using monitoring objects. For example, the monitoring object program buffer contains, among others, the attributes hit rate and swap.
All other nodes in the tree structure the monitoring objects in a logical and clear way, so that you can easily find the relevant attribute.
A CCMS monitor displays different subareas of the monitoring data. A monitor can contain data from multiple SAP systems.
As the figure Layout of a Monitor shows, when you open a monitor, the corresponding monitoring data is displayed in the form of a tree. By clicking the "+" sign beside an MTE, you can expand the tree down to its leaves, which are the monitoring attributes.
Alert threshold values for triggering yellow and red alerts are assigned to monitoring attributes. If the threshold value condition is fulfilled, first a yellow, and then, if there is further deterioration, a red alert is triggered. The color of the monitoring attribute is propagated to its higher-level node in the tree, where the most severe alert is forwarded (red is more severe than yellow). As a result, the root of a tree already indicates whether an alert has occurred in that tree.
