Presented at the 2013 IBM Pulse conference, this presentation explores how our clients achieved a quick time to value, and vastly simplified administration, when deploying ITCAM to monitor their middleware infrastructure by taking a non-standard approach. Learn how we simplified the often complex management aspects, and reduced implementation time, by leveraging the APM UI; eliminating the need for Managed System Lists (MSLs) by leveraging the little know Situation Groups; and how they addressed the unique challenges of monitoring a pooled WebSphere Application Server infrastructure.

1. Simplifying Administration and
Maximizing Time-to-Value with
SmartCloud Application
Performance Management
Speaker: Brian Fisher
Date: March, 3 2013

2. Agenda
 IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) Overview
 Typical Situation Management Challenges
 Managed System Lists (MSLs)
 Situation Management
 Streamlined Situation Strategy
 No Dependency on MSLs
 Easily Determine What is Running Where
 Simple to Manage One-off Situations
 TEP vs. APM UI for Operators/Users
 Workspaces vs. Dashboards
 User/Group Authorizations
 Summary/Q&A
2

3. ITM Overview
 Situations
 Formula (what to check)
 Sampling Interval (how often to check)
 Distribution (where to check)
 Managed System Lists
 Static grouping of Managed Systems and/or MSLs
 Used to distribute Situations
 Each Agent Type on a system has it’s own Managed System Name
3

4. Typical Situation Management Challenges
 Situation/MSL Management
 No simple way to add a new Managed System to a set of standard
Situations
• Requires editing each of the MSLs to which these standard Situations are
distributed to
 No simple way to add a new standard Situation and distribute it to
all existing Managed Systems
• Requires manually defining the Distribution
 No simple way to manage one-off Situations for a single Managed
System
• Does not allow for the use of a MSL, becomes very tedious
 No simple way to know where a specific Situation is distributed to
when using MSLs
 No simple way to know which Situations are distributed to a specific
Managed System
 Number of MSLs required becomes cumbersome to manage
4

5. Streamlined Situation Strategy
 Leverage Situation Groups (little-known feature)
 Create different Situation Groups for a set of standard Situations and
one-off Situations
 Assign Situations as Members
• Situations do not have to be monitored by the same Agent Type
 Assign Managed Systems for Distribution
• No dependency on MSLs
• Managed Systems do not have to be the same Agent Type
 Each Situation is only monitored by their related Agent
• No unnecessary monitoring
 Easily determine where a Situation is distributed to
• No need to determine which Managed Systems belong to specific MSLs
 Easily determine which Situations are distributed to a specific
Managed System
• No need to open each Situation in the Editor and note only the Situations
which are distributed to the specified Managed System
5

7. TEP vs. APM UI for Operators/Users
 TEP Workspace Usage Challenges
 Multitude of Workspaces under many different locations
• Challenging to navigate
 Role-based data filtering
• Create a new Query for every View in their Workspace (pre-filtering)
• Add filters to every View in their Workspace (post-filtering)
 Cluttered Look-and-Feel
• UI can be distracting rather than empowering
 APM UI Advantages
 Meaningful arrangement of Dashboards
• Simple yet powerful drill-down navigational flow
 True Role-based data filtering
• Assign applications to a role > assign role to an LDAP user/group
 Clean Look-and-Feel
• Finally a sexy UI that is focused on only viewing data (not editing)
• Simple to navigate via tablet or smartphone
7

9. Summary/Q&A
 Quick Time-to-Value by leveraging Situation Groups
 Straightforward grouping of Situations
• More manageable method of scanning for Situations of consequence
• Transparent process of identifying where a Situation is running
 Assign a single Distribution list for all standard Situations
• Transparent process of identifying what Situations are running where
 Practical manner to maintain one-off Situations
• Provides flexibility to confine all one-off Situations to a single group
 Quick Time-to-Value by leveraging the APM UI
 Operators/Users can start viewing relevant data from day-1
 True Role-based access via LDAP groups
 Focused dashboards which make the KPIs the center of attention
 Questions?
9

10. 10