Quote.
"Everything you do as a system administrator should serve a single
purpose: to secure and protect system integrity..."
- Sebastian Schreckenbach "SAP Administration - Practical Guide"
This quote about a series of blog-posts about business continuity and High Availability of SAP Systems.
Monitoring is very important part of this process.
Another posts from this series (The list is being updated.)
- High Availability: https://blogs.sap.com/2020/02/14/sap-high-availability.-step-by-step-guide/
- Backup: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/12/20/sap-hana-backup-via-backint-interface.-step-by-step-guide-for-verit...
- Revision update: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/10/16/sap-hana-revision-upgrade-step-by-step/
Prerequisites.
You are a SAP Basis Administrator and you want to monitor your SAP Landscape
and you want to make a small own monitoring/situation center for this purpose
Environment.
Solution Manager 7.2
SAP HANA Cockpit
Grafana Enterprise
Zabbix Server
Zabbix Agent
1 or more LCD panels
Browser Google Chrome
Google Chrome Extension "Tab Rotate"
N.B. Keep in mind - this is only one of many possible approaches. Firefox instead Chrome, Tab Rotator instead Tab Rotate, Oracle Enterprise Manager for Oracle DB, Kabana instead of Gafana and so on
Step-by-Step Resolution.
Intro.
Situation center from this approach - this is LCD panel above SAP BASIS Administrator workplace
Google Chrome with Extension "Tab Rotate". Each tab in the browser provide for BASIS Administrator useful information about SAP Landscape Health in real-time
Step 1. Google Chrome Extension "Tab Rotate".
Install Extension from official Chrome Webstore
Step 2 / Tab #1 in Google Chrome : Solution Manager. System Monitoring
N.B. This step assumes that there are many prerequisites in your Solution Manager and in a SAP Landscape are completed.
It means:
Diagnostic Agents / Wily Introscope was installed on all hosts
Mandatory steps in Solution Manager 7.2 are completed.
It means:
2.1. Mandatory Configuration - System Preparation - all steps completed (status green)
2.2. Mandatory Configuration - Infrastructure Preparation - all steps completed (status green)
2.3. Mandatory Configuration - Basic Configuration - all steps completed (status green)
3. Managed Systems Configuration is completed.
It means:
3.1. Full Configuration Including Service Delivery / EWA are completed for all systems in monitoring (Step 7 - Check Configuration are green)
Transaction - SOLMAN_WORKCENTER
System Monitoring is a part of System and Application Monitoring
Tile - System Monitoring
This page with auto refresh option.
Some examples
SAP Landscape with serious issues. Immediate response required from SAP BASIS Administrator.
Alerts examples.
Update processes in error statuses:
Abnormal size of backup catalog:
Streaming License Expiry:
And so on.
As we can see Solution Manager. System Monitoring is a very powerful and useful tool for BASIS Administrator.
Step 3 / Tab #2-N in Google Chrome : Hana Cockpit
Small quote:
"SAP HANA cockpit provides a single point of access to a range of tools for administration and detailed monitoring of multiple, individual and tenant SAP HANA databases, and also integrates the SQL development capabilities required by administrators. SAP HANA cockpit, a Web-based HTML5 user interface that you access through a browser, runs on SAP HANA extended application services, advanced model (XS advanced). You can use the cockpit to monitor and manage systems running SAP HANA"
The Database is a key element in any SAP Landscape.
SAP BASIS Administrator special attention is paid to the Backup, Memory, CPU and Disk issues and of course on the Availability for production SAP HANA DB tenants and production SystemDB
Tab #2- N in our mini Situation Center is Production tenants overview page, production SystemDB overview page and top resources with alerts page in SAP HANA Cockpit
On the screenshot below - The production tenant in a good condition (no alerts).
Step 4 / Tab #4 in Google Chrome : Grafana / Zabbix
N.B. This step assumes that there are Zabbix server and Grafana installed and configured and Zabbix Agent is also installed on all hosts
Explanation of Zabbix Agent installation process for Linux CentOS/RHEL OS:
CentOS/RHEL 7:
yum install zabbix zabbix-agent
nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf
EnableRemoteCommands=1
LogRemoteCommands=1
Server=<Zabbix Server IP>
ServerActive=<Zabbix Server IP>
Hostname=<Hostname>
Timeout=30
service zabbix-agent start
service zabbix-agent enable
Small quotes:
"Grafana is a multi-platform open source analytics and interactive visualization software available since 2014. It provides charts, graphs, and alerts for the web when connected to supported data sources. It is expandable through a plug-in system. End users can create complex monitoring dashboards using interactive query builders.
As a visualization tool, Grafana is a popular component in monitoring stacks, often used in combination with time series databases such as Prometheus and Graphite;monitoring platforms such as Sensu, Icinga, Zabbix, Netdata, and PRTG; SIEMs such as Elasticsearch and Splunk; and other data sources.."
and
"Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software tool for diverse IT components, including networks, servers, virtual machines (VMs) and cloud services. Zabbix provides monitoring metrics, among others network utilization, CPU load and disk space consumption. Zabbix monitoring configuration can be done using XML based templates which contain elements to monitor..."
For our situation center: Zabbix Agents - information providers from host level to Zabbix Server, Grafana Enterprise - visualization for information in Zabbix Server
Grafana is a very flexible tool and we can create a custom dashboard. Create Alerts dashboard for our monitoring purposes
Start page - New dashboard
Zabbix Triggers
Group (for example, SAP)
N.B. Prerequisites: all your SAP-related resources must be in group SAP in Grafana
Alerts examples:
So Zabbix with Gafana bundle is very useful tools set that covered SolMan monitoring gaps
Step 5 / Tab #5. qRFC/tRFC and other Interface Monitoring
Consdier typical bussines situation. SAP S/4HANA integrated with SAP EWM via qRFC. Due blocking QM-decision from SAP ERP system can't integrate into SAP EWM system. This is a business-critical situation and very important fix it as soon as possible.
Transaction - SOLMAN_WORKCENTER
Interface Monitoring is a part of System and Application Monitoring
Tile - Interface Monitoring
N.B. Prerequisites for Interface Monitoring: SAP Solution Manager Configuration: Integration Monitoring - Interfaces and Connections - all steps completed.
Step 6 / Tab #6. Job Monitoring
Consider a typical business situation. Developers create an ABAP report that push data from SAP system trough SAP PO to 3rd-party system (for example to 3-rd party budgeting system like Prophix). Basis Administrator schedule job that executes this report once in a day. After an internal error in an ABAP report (for example division by zero) this job ends with an error. This is a business-critical situation and very important fix it as soon as possible.
Transaction - SOLMAN_WORKCENTER
Job Monitoring is a part of System and Application Monitoring
Tile - Job Monitoring
N.B. Prerequisites for Job Monitoring: SAP Solution Manager Configuration: Application Operations - Job Monitoring - all steps completed.
Example - System with Job issues. Immediate response required from SAP BASIS Administrator.
As we can see SAP Solution Manager. Job Monitoring is a very powerful and useful tool for BASIS Administrator
Step 7 / Monitoring tabs on your flavor
Message Flow Monitoring - End-To-End message tracking for a single PI message
User Experience Monitoring - Evaluating and reporting the availability and performance of your productive systems from a client-side perspective
Business Intelligence Monitoring - Monitoring & Alerting for BI-specific objects
Conclusion.
One of the many possible approaches to Landscape monitoring is described.
Links:
Grafana Enterprise - the open observability platform
Google Chrome Extension "Tab Rotate"
Firefox Extension "Tab Rotator"
Solution Manager 7.2 - System Monitoring (Wiki)
- SAP Managed Tags:
3 Comments
