p-avery / usdafs-itmagent

Puppet module for IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) 6.3.0 Agent on RHEL6.

itmagent

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Description - What the module does and why it is useful
3. Setup - The basics of getting started with itmagent
   • What itmagent affects
   • Setup requirements
   • Beginning with itmagent
4. Usage - Configuration options and additional functionality
5. Reference - An under-the-hood peek at what the module is doing and how
6. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
7. Development - Guide for contributing to the module

Overview

Puppet module to install IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) 6.3.0 Agent on RHEL6. The ITM agent provides monitoring data to the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server (TEMS).

Module-Description

The itmagent Puppet module installs IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) 6.3.0 Agent on RHEL 5 and 6 and CentOS 5 and 6. The IBM Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server (TEMS) fully qualified hostname or IP address must be specified as a parameter in Puppet console.

The extracted ITM 6.3.0 Agent install directory is expected on network or local filesystem.

The agent service ITMAgents1 will be configured to start automatically. The agent service process name is klzagent.

Setup

What itmagent affects

The following pre-requisite packages will be installed.

• ksh.x86_64 : The Original ATT Korn Shell
• libstdc++.x86_64 : GNU Standard C++ Library
• libstdc++.i686 : GNU Standard C++ Library
• libgcc.i686 : GCC version 4.8 shared support library
• nfs-utils.x86_64 : NFS utilities and supporting clients and daemons for the kernel NFS server

The firewall may require adjustment on the node. See ITM Port Usage below.

Setup Requirements OPTIONAL

The module attempts to install ITM agent by executing the install.sh script located on a remote NFS filesystem.
The NFS hostname or IP address and filesystem location must be specified as class paramaters in the PE console. If selected, the NFS filesystem is mounted and then unmounted when done. The $itm_server variable in params.pp should be set to the default TEM server hostname.

Beginning with itmagent

On the ITM agent node, to find the currently configured TEM server:
# /opt/IBM/ITM/bin/cinfo -s lz | grep " HOSTNAME ="

Usage

To apply this module, assign the node the class 'itmagent' in the PE console, then initiate a Puppet agent run with 'puppet agent -t' run from the node.

The following paramaters should be defined in Puppet console before assigning this class to any nodes.

• itm_server Hostname or IP address of TEMS.
• nfs_host Hostname or IP address of NFS server.
• nfs_dir Location of NFS directory where ITM tarfile resides.
• nfs_options Default '-t nfs'

Reference

Classes
::itmagent
::itmagent::params
::itmagent::install

Example ITM agent service status command. Syntax: /etc/init.d/ITMAgents1 start|stop|restart|start_msg|stop_msg

ITM Port Usage - Agents In a default configuration, agents use the following sockets,

1. Connection to a TEMS port 1918. The communications string defines the protocols used. The CT_CMSLIST environment variable names the servers where a TEMS is running. The initial connection at port 1918 gives access to the Location Broker data and thus indirectly to the TEMS. However from the standpoint of configuration, this is a socket to a 1918 listening port on the server running the TEMS.
   
2. Agent listening port at 1918+N*4096. If there is just one agent installed, the listening port will be 1918+4096 or 6014. If there are more than one agent installed, the agents contend for the listening ports. That means incidentally that there are a maximum of 15 agents using the default configuration. The listening port is used for several purposes including retrieval of real time data and receiving broadcasts about new WPA address.
   
3. Agent connection to Warehouse Proxy Agent or WPA. This can be at any port but recently was defaulted to 63358 or 1918+15*4096. The information is actually found from the Location Broker. The WPA registers at the hub TEMS, the Global Location Broker information is propagated to the Local Location Broker at the remote TEMS and the agent looks it up as part of the Location Broker data.
   
4. Internal Web Server ports. By default all Agents and most ITM processes start an internal web server. The default ports used are 1920 and 3661 [http and https]. There are several purposes including the ability to start and stop diagnostic tracing dynamically. The first ITM process owns the 1920/3661 and the others register with it. If that process stops the 1920 ownership switches to another ITM process if possible.
   
5. Ephemeral ports. ITM makes use of ports which are received from TCP/IP as "the next free port". These are used to communicate between ITM sub-systems.
   
6. Local ports. These are on address 0.0.0.0 and 127.0.0.1 which are not internet capable addresses. They are used to maintain awareness between ITM processes such as handling the internal web server switch process.
   Almost every single number you see in the above description is configurable except for 4096 and local ports. So if you must make a change you can always make that change. The rest of the technote shows how to limit or control port usage.

Limitations

This is where you list OS compatibility, version compatibility, etc.

Development

Since your module is awesome, other users will want to play with it. Let them know what the ground rules for contributing are.

Release Notes/Contributors/Etc Optional

If you aren't using changelog, put your release notes here (though you should consider using changelog). You may also add any additional sections you feel are necessary or important to include here. Please use the ## header.