My experience on setting up IT Performance Reporting

My experience on setting up IT Performance Reporting

I was assigned to a new project for couple of months.  I was expected to send the CPU utilization report at 6 AM to the HP admin team.  It was here that all my troubles started, since I could never wake up early in the morning!  Just the other day, my manager had requested me to send the reports of memory utilization of the system for the bygone week.  I was looking for a way to get this data in the easiest and most user friendly way, one in which every one could understand – sort of like a graphical view.  But I couldn’t get this done by way of standard transaction codes like RZ20, SM04, and ST06.  This turned out to be a huge headache for me.  I was looking for a work-around, from all the sources I had knowledge of.

One day while searching the standard SAP help site, I stumbled upon a new technical term – ‘Central Monitoring history (CPH)’ which stored the monitoring data not only for the past 24 hrs but for a longer earlier period as well.

As my entire landscape was already connected to the Solution Manager (Version 7.0 SP15) for CCMS, I started to dig deeper into CPH and IT performance reporting.  I was found that IT Performance reporting gave seven reports on the most important nodes, which could help me to find the problem early and act proactively.

I was ecstatic when I realized that IT performance reports covers Non-ABAP systems too, and it gives two reports for AS JAVA components as well.

Knowing this, I suggested my manager to go for the IT performance report setup, showcasing the value proposition about CPH.  Indeed, it is amazing that unlike Alert Monitor or CCMS, the IT performance report displays the most important performance values in a user-friendly graphical view.  This gives a quicker overview of the status of the monitored systems.

Technically speaking, IT Performance reports collect the data using CCMS Monitoring infrastructure, where it stores the performance values locally in Monitoring segments, later it transfers the data to the BI using external framework.

Set up and Configuration

I went through the detailed documentation for setting up of IT Performance Reporting in the implementation guide.  You can find it using the following path, SAP Solution Manager -> Scenario-Specific Settings -> System Monitoring -> Reporting -> IT Performance Reporting.

IT performance reporting is in the system monitoring work center. Before configuration, the IT performance reporting button is grayed out in the system monitoring work center.

We can configure IT Performance Reporting using the wizard provided. All configuration steps are performed automatically wherein BI content is activated and data extraction is triggered.  The reports are ready to use.  You can get the wizard in system monitoring work center, choose the setup on the left panel.

Choose configure IT Performance Reporting.  Proceed with the general settings.

We need to specify the following configuration settings:

• RFC connection between the SAP Solution Manager and the BI and vice versa.
• Lifetimes of the different aggregates in the BI.

In the next step, I chose the key performance indicators to be stored in the BI. For IT Performance Reporting, these classes should not be changed. 

In the next step, enter the data of your monitored systems such as SID, installation number or RFC destination and click Activate.

But activation failed with the below error.

I applied the note 1330447 to correct the error. Post this, activation was completed successfully.

Now IT performance tab is activated and visible in the system monitoring work center.

Monitoring My Landscape is Smart

After activation of IT Performance reporting, everyone can view the status of the system availability, R3 performance and Java performance in a user friendly graphical view.

To view IT Performance Reporting, choose System Status or Proactive Monitoring in the System Monitoring work center navigation toolbar, and then IT Performance Reporting.  After deploying this, my manager felt that monitoring of my landscape had become much smarter. Below are the seven reports which make my work smooth.

System availability reports:

These two IT performance reports show the availability of systems and instances.

• System availability
• Instance availability

This data is collected as usual by availability agent CCMSPING.

System performance reports:

System performance reports give the following information.

System load overview

The work load report shows the number of users logged on, and the response time, graphically.

Logged on Users

The ‘Logged on Users’ report graphically shows the maximum number of users in the system.

Server and database load reports:

The server and database load reports show the following information:

CPU load

This report shows the CPU load of the hosts in which instances of the monitored systems run.  The value is the general CPU load of the host, not the CPU load of a particular instance. 

File system load

This report displays load of all file systems in these hosts, in the form of a table. The percentage of the file system load and the free disk space are shown in megabytes.

Memory usage

This report shows the memory usage of the hosts in which instances of the monitored systems run.  The free main memory is also displayed in megabytes. The page out and page in rate per second is also displayed in kilobytes.

Database load

This report shows the size and growth of the databases of the selected systems, in megabytes.

Java performance reports:

The Java performance reports give the following information:

Java Garbage Collection

This report shows the two most important performance values for Java instance garbage collections, the memory released per minute, and the percentage of the time that a garbage collection runs, for the server process. Currently in my landscape there are no java systems, so ‘No data’ is displayed here.

Java sessions and thread

This report shows the number of sessions, and the number of active and long-running threads, in two graphics.

My success story continues.  The client I work for is also satisfied to know that their landscape has become much smarter.   And finally, as the cherry on the cake, I received an appreciation mail from both my management and from client.     

I wish all of you a successful set up of IT Performance reporting.