Technical Articles
Configuration validation to monitor client setting changes in SOLMAN 7.2
Configuration Validation application in Solution Manager is to compare and validate current values of configuration items of many systems against a defined target or standard configuration. It enables us to determine whether the systems in our landscape are configured consistently and in accordance with the requirements.
In this blog post we will discuss about generating alerts for client settings changes via Solution Manager System Monitoring using configuration validation.
Changes in client settings are very important from audit point of view. Solution manager enables alerting whenever there is any change in client settings.
Key Prerequisites:
- Solution Manager Mandatory Configuration
- Solution Manager Managed System Configuration
- System Monitoring Setup (for Alerting)
Monitoring client change alerts via Solution Manager involves three major steps:
- Creating a target system in Configuration Validation
- Creating a Custom alert in System Monitoring (Application Operations)
- Creating a Custom metric in System Monitoring (Application Operations)
- Creating a target system in Configuration Validation
Root Cause Analysis -> Configuration Validation
Target System Maintenance -> Create source system
Provide below details and click on “Display Selection”.
System ID: SID of the SAP system which needs to be monitored
Store Name: CLIENTS
Select the source system in left pane and select CLIENTS checkbox in right pane and click on “Create from selected Store”.
Provide a custom name for Target system and “Save”. This target system ID will be used later on during monitoring metric creation.
Target system entry needs to be created for each system to be monitored.
Target System Maintenance -> Edit -> Long SID (ZC<SID>) -> Display Selection
Click on the config store “CLIENTS”. Here we can see the current values of client settings in backend system:
Technical System values can be modified here as per the requirement. It is possible to specify a compliant rule for each Config Item. If the rule applies to the corresponding Config Item of a comparison system, the Config Item gets the status compliant (1 = yes). Otherwise it gets the status non-compliant (0 = no). Values which need not be considered for monitoring can be marked as “Ignore”.
Once the Target System is ready, we may proceed to create a custom alert and metric.
- Creating a Custom alert in System Monitoring (Application Operations)
Application Operations -> System Monitoring -> Template Maintenance -> Select a template -> Select “Expert Mode”
Create “Alert”
Provide “Alert Name”, “Category” and “Technical Name”
Next
Finish
- Creating a Custom metric in System Monitoring (Application Operations)
Application Operations -> System Monitoring -> Template Maintenance -> Select a template -> Select “Expert Mode”
Create “Metric”
Select “Data Collector Type”, “Data Collector Name” and “Collection Interval”.
Add placeholder in Reference SID that searches by corresponding store created. System monitoring will check the SID name in LMDB and will replace $T_SYSTEM_LONG_SID$ by corresponding SID name.
Data Usage:
Threshold:
Validity:
Assign metric to previously created alert.
Finish
Apply and activate the System Monitoring Template
Monitoring is ready and alerts will be triggered whenever there is a deviation in client settings(SCC4).
System Monitoring Overview:
Alert Inbox:
Alert generated clearly shows that there are 3 clients in the system which are being monitored, 2 are non-compliant and 1 is compliant.
Hope this blog post helps you in setting up client change alerts and keeping your system complaint in accordance with audit requirements.
Please share your feedback and queries.
Thank you so much Rittika for the detailed explanation.
How can we configure this to activate the CLient settings change alert monitoring for all the Prod systems(For exp-10 SID's in my case) in the landscape?
Can we do it through a single customized template, or do we need to create a dedicated template for each SID?
BR, RAJ
Hi Raj,
Client settings change alert monitoring can be activated for multiple systems through a single customized template. There is no need of creating multiple templates.
In configuration validation, please create target system name as ZC<SID> for all the 10 production systems.
In the step custom metric creation -> Data collection, value of REF_SID should be given as $T_SYSTEM_LONG_SID$. System monitoring will check the SID name in LMDB and will replace $T_SYSTEM_LONG_SID$ by corresponding SID of the production system.
Hope this is helpful.
Regards,
Rittika Sood
Hi Rittika Sood,
Thanks for sharing this. Very useful. I'm able to follow your step and setup it up on my test environment. It work fine perfectly.
In the actual environment, we have number of Production system (different SID),
In the Monitoring template, during the metric creation, just required to specific REF_SID as $T_SYSTEM_LONG_SID$ in the Data Collection tab, so that, it will pick up the entry from LMDB. So, it just required one monitoring template only. this is clear to me.
Something unclear in the Configuration validation,
Is that possible, just create one target system name (ZCLIENTS) which will be used for all ABAP systems. ?
Example: we have 10 production systems (for different product version, like ERP, S/4, EWM, APO and so on), the productive client are the same, example: 400, the SCC4 client settings should be "No changes allowed" settings.
I created the target system (ZCLIENTS), under the Field values and Operators, I set Operator Ignore for all field name, but except for MANDT and CCCORACTIV field.
Example:
MANDT: 400 (the productive client number)
CCCORACTIV: 2 (which refer to "No changes allowed")
After that, i apply the monitoring template (which has the client change metric/alert) for those 10 production ABAP systems.
Is that correct ? Or, i need to create 10 different target system name in Configuration validation, and each target system name is tight with one ABAP system.?
Example:
ZABC -> ABC system
ZXYZ -> XYZ system
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Regards,
Steve
Hi Steve,
In configuration validation, please create target system name as ZC<SID> for those 10 production systems.
Regards,
Rittika Sood
Hi Ritika Sood,
Thank you for such detailed information.
I have configured the same setting in my environment as per below image, however in system monitoring data is not coming for that customize metric, apart from this is any other change is required anywhere?
Regards
Debtanu Sarkar
Hello Debtanu,
To resolve this, go to CCDB, select SID and related store name 'CLIENTS'. Click on ‘Technical Information’ and check the 'Data from' and 'Data to' date, Data to date should be current day and status of the store should be 'Correct' instead of ‘Content out-of-date’.
If not, click on ‘Trigger upload’ to start data upload in the store and refresh to validate. Test the metric from template maintenance for data collection, it should work. I had faced similar issue and this worked for me.
Regards,
Mugadha Bane
well explained !!
hello - we have deployed this alert on our production system. however, i noticed that when we closed the client. the configuration validation will still report the client is still open. please advice if you know how to set the real-time collection on configuration validation. thank you.
Hello,
I tried the above configuration and by marking it to 1 in Threshold, it never change it to Red. it always green, I am not sure the above configuration has worked for anyone else?
Also followed the SAP Note- 3039029 and if we give the threshold type as per SAP note then it always set to RED, never turned to green even client is closed.
anyone has other experience as well ?