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Best Practice for Solution Management
Version Date: May 2002. The newest version of this Best Practice can always be obtained through the SAP Solution Manager
Contents
Applicability, Goals, and Requirements ....................................................................................................2 Best Practice Procedure...........................................................................................................................2 Requirements for a Monitoring and Optimization Concept .........................................................2 Requirements from the User Viewpoint .................................................................................3 From System Monitoring to Solution Monitoring....................................................................4 Central Monitoring and Enhanceability ..................................................................................4 Summary of Monitoring Requirements ..................................................................................4 Tools and Methods for Monitoring and Optimization Concept.....................................................5 Central Monitoring..................................................................................................................5 Continuous Monitoring ...........................................................................................................5 Performance Indicators..........................................................................................................5 Working with the CCMS Monitoring Tool ...............................................................................6 CCMS Monitoring Tree setup.................................................................................................6 Monitoring Availability and Performance in mySAP.com Components ..................................8 Monitoring the Performance of Selected Transactions ..........................................................9 Monitoring Error Situations in mySAP.com Components.......................................................9 Automatic Alert Notification Setup........................................................................................10 Using the Graphical User Interface in the SAP Solution Manager ......................................11 Further Information .................................................................................................................................15
System Requirements
You need: 1. To have the SAP Solution Manager installed 2. SAP Basis 3.0 or higher for all components that are to be monitored (such as SAP R/3, SAP BW, SAP APO, and so on)
classic system monitoring, we now talk about solution monitoring, which instead of monitoring just individual system components monitors the business process as a whole across multiple components.
Performance
Response times Throughput Workload/resource Management
Accuracy
Data integrity Data currency Recoverability Scheduled maintenance
Security
System users System resources Access control Intrusion detection
Business Processes
Interfaces
... Databases
SAP ITS
SAP LiveCache
Business Connector
...
Availability
To ensure the availability the first expectation of a user of an application most system management platforms on the market offer monitoring for hardware and software components. However, this is not enough to ensure that the business process is available. A user will also consider an application to be "unavailable" if there is a disruption in communication between components or if a serious application error makes it impossible to enter or request data. As a result, availability monitoring must guarantee that the business process is available, not just that individual components are available.
Performance
Poor performance in an e-business application easily aggravates a customer. Performance affects the dialog part of the application, that is the part in which users enter and save data, as well as automatic background processing, which continues to process data even if the customer is no longer online. Poor performance in the dialog part of the application affects the customer immediately during data 2001 SAP AG
Best Practice: Central System Monitoring for mySAP.com entry. Poor performance in the subsequent background processing part of the application affects the customer indirectly, for example, when the product is not delivered in the promised time.
Generally, the performance of dialog and background applications is evaluated independently of each other. Performance monitoring includes resource distribution in line with demands when both types of application run on the same hardware and software components (which is normally the case). Generally, dialog applications receive a higher priority than background applications. However, background applications with fixed deadlines have the highest priority. For example, printing delivery documents (delivery notes, address labels, invoices, etc): if these items are not ready at a specific time, delivery may be delayed by 24 hours (postal pickup).
Correctness
To ensure the correctness (or integrity) of an application, a monitoring concept has to take the following areas into consideration: Data integrity. This is violated when, for example, there is corrupt data in the database, a network or interface error.
Up-to-date and consistent software components and data. If software components, master data and Customizing data are not updated correctly, inconsistencies can occur in invoices, cur l9-0n0.0.uCu9piu60.09.91997h for example if the Internet catalog displays a price that is not saved accordingly in the billing system thiesystem 10.nthe b4m887.n23.6996 Tm(systy3.438126676 5 5e b4m887.n23.6993.6996 Tm(systy
The concept must record all business processes and components, if possible in a central tool.
To manage all of these requirements for monitoring mySAP.com solutions, SAP has created the Solution Management Program whose central tools are the SAP Solution Manager and the Computer Center Management System (CCMS). These are described in the following sections. This document is restricted to the aspects of system monitoring. (For business monitoring see best practice General Business Process Monitoring.)
Central Monitoring
Continuous system monitoring ensures that all components are available and are working efficiently. If this is not the case, an alert is triggered. You can automate continuous monitoring through the central monitoring architecture. For continuous system monitoring, use the central monitoring tool of transaction RZ20: the Computer Center Management System (CCMS). In the CCMS you define an SAP R/3 system as the central monitoring system, in which the error messages are received from all other mySAP.com components. This central monitoring tool collects monitoring information about the SAP instances, databases, operating system and other mySAP.com components, such as the SAP Internet Transaction Server (ITS). In addition, data supplying tools are available for non-SAP components (planned).
Continuous Monitoring
The CCMS (Computing Center Management System) contains a tool with which you can monitor all aspects of your mySAP.com solution. The monitor uses the object-based technology of the CCMS monitoring architecture. The monitor offers: Complete, detailed monitoring of performance indicators for mySAP.com software components, computers, databases and external components Status flags (green, yellow, or red alerts) for performance indicators whose values are lower or higher than their thresholds Tracking and administration for alerts Unlimited enhancement possibilities through open structures. This enables you to cover even non-SAP software components.
The central monitoring tool is available as of SAP Basis 4.0 (the features described in this Best Practice Document are based on SAP Basis 4.6). The systems to be monitored require at least SAP Basis 3.0. The following sections contains concrete recommendations on, for example: How to customize the tree in the monitoring tool to suit your mySAP.com solution How to set an escalation procedure, for example, using the monitoring tool to contact the appropriate person through e-mail, by pager, and so on How to connect the monitoring tool to the graphical interface of the SAP Solution Manager
Performance Indicators
The status of an IT solution is determined by performance indicators. Performance indicators can be: Numeric values (counters), such as average response times, throughput key figures, process activity levels, or fill levels of memory areas 2001 SAP AG
Best Practice: Central System Monitoring for mySAP.com Text information such as error messages. Thus, the error message "Document processing for document X was terminated" would be an indicator for poor performance in a system. In this sense, performance means not only the pure runtime performance but also availability and error situations. The task of solution monitoring includes recording, saving, aggregating and evaluating performance indicators. SAP's central monitoring tool integrates performance indicators from multiple expert monitors and combines them in a monitoring tree. These expert monitors serve the monitoring tool as a data supplier. The advantage of a central monitoring tool is that you only have to use the expert monitors in exceptional situations and not to regularly monitor components. In the central monitoring tool, the expert monitors that belong to the indicators are stored as analysis methods. You can go to the specific expert monitor directly from the monitoring tool (including via logon to another system).
The CCMS monitoring tool generates alerts automatically when an indicator is lower or higher than the threshold values. Threshold values are delivered with default values that can be customized individually. Not all performance indicators have the same weight, when evaluating whether your mySAP.com solution is running efficiently. As you gather experience, you will find that some indicators prove to be particularly important. These indicators are called key performance indicators (KPIs). Therefore, one goal when creating your monitoring concept is to filter out from the large amounts of information those KPIs that are relevant for you.
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Figure 2: Component monitoring in the central monitor as set up for a mySAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM) Figures 2 (above) and 3 (below) show that key performance indicators are divided into three groups. Availability and Performance of Components: The monitoring goal in this part of the tree is to ensure the availability and system performance of the hardware and software components in your mySAP.com solution. In other words, an alert in this area indicates that a component is either not functioning at all or only very slowly. Monitoring covers all components regardless of whether they are from SAP or not Performance of Business Transactions: Monitoring in this part of the tree analyzes the performance of SAP online transactions. Transaction-specific monitoring of response times enables you to react flexibly and individually to performance problems. For example, you can
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set a higher reaction priority for a transaction in the sales area than for a transaction in financials. You should particularly monitor those transactions for which you have Service Level Agreements (for details see Best Practice Document Service Level Management). Error Situations: This is where production operation is monitored for errors.
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Best Practice: Central System Monitoring for mySAP.com between software components. Terminated background processes must also be tended to immediately, otherwise there is a danger that the business process can hang.
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Terminated interface processes (transactional RFC, queued RFC, IDocs): For terminated interface processes, the same information is valid as for updates and background processes. For important alerts for terminated interface processes, refer to the topic "Transactional RFC" in the monitoring area. For details on the Monitoring of interfaces, see Best Practice Document Interface Monitoring.
Figure 3: The monitoring tree area "Error Situations" shows which error situations should be monitored.
Best Practice: Central System Monitoring for mySAP.com A business workplace user in client 000. The e-mail is sent 0-5 minutes after the alert is triggered and delivered immediately.
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A distribution list or an external e-mail address The e-mail is sent 0-5 minutes after the alert is triggered; however, depending on the settings in SAPconnect, there may be a delay before mail to external e-mail addresses are sent (that is addresses of uses, who are not defined in client 000 or in the SAP System.) You should set the time frame for the SAPconnect send process to take less than one hour.
The message text of the e-mail contains the same information as in the monitoring display, that is the problem at hand, where and when it occurred, and how level of the alert (a red alert points to a problem or an error, a yellow alert is a warning). For more information, see the SAP Online Documentation and SAP Note 176492.
Sample Scenario
The following example shows you how to setup your System Monitoring in the Solution Manager.
Prerequisites
SAP Solution Manager is up and running SAP Systems to be monitored are connected to the Solution Manager (RFC connection) The solution landscape (that is, Systems, hardware etc.) has been specified in the Solution Scope area of the Solution Manager by answering the questionnaire Define Solution Landscape For non-SAP components agents are running which report their data into a CCMS which is connected to the solution manager
Monitoring
In the following example we created a productive CRM landscape named High Tech Shop. In order to setup the system monitoring for your landscape you have to perform the session Setup System Monitoring in the system monitoring area of the Solution Manager (Monitoring -> System Monitoring). The following screen shot shows the starting point.
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In the session Setup System Monitoring you are asked to specify The systems you want to monitor, that is, o o o o Components with SAP basis Non-SAP systems alerts which are defined by default user defined alerts, which have to be connected to the CCMS via the MTE names of the respective alerts
For the SAP systems the alerts that you want to have displayed in the alert graphic, that is
The MTE names can be found in transaction RZ20 via the menu points Edit -> Nodes (MTE) -> Display MTE description. In order to get access to the alerts of satellite systems you have to maintain RFC connections to these systems in the check Setup RFC connections for Monitoring. A detailed description of the maintenance procedure can be found in the check description. For additional systems, that means systems, which have been specified during the Scope Session as: Further SAP application systems SAP technology components Non SAP application components or non SAP technology components
you also can propagate alerts by maintaining the checks Additional Software Components and Additional Hardware Components respectively. In the following screenshot you see the SAP technology component Business Connector for which we have integrated the alert with MTE name CTQ\SAPBC P37221 5555\...\Hardware Properties\.... Of course this alert has to be accessible in an alert monitor of the system the solution manager is running on. (For details on the alert monitor see: http://help.sap.com/ -> SAP R/3 -> SAP R/3 Release 4.6C -> Basis Components -> Computing Center Management System -> CCMS Monitoring -> The Alert Monitor). It is important to notice the following rules for the rating of the checks by which you can customize the alerts for the respective system: If all alerts are not accessible now or if all alerts are deactivated the rating for the check is undefined If all activated alerts are accessible then the rating for check is green If at least one alert was never accessible yet then the rating for the check is red If at least one of the activated alerts is not accessible now, but was accessible before, and no never-accessible alert is activated, then the rating for the check is yellow
The following screen shot shows the session Setup System Monitoring.
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After having finished the setup of the system monitoring the corresponding CCMS alerts are connected to the solution manager. The solution manager performs a graphical correlation between the alert and the corresponding system in the landscape. To get the view onto the alert screens click on Display Alerts in the Monitoring area. The result for the CRM Solution High Tech Shop can be seen in the following screen shot (here we have chosen the software and the business process viewpoints; you can choose alternatively the hardware viewpoint). Alerts for software components:
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On the top of the boxes, that are representing the systems you can see some alert icons. Possible alerts are green, yellow or red. If the alert, which you have maintained, is not accessible you will get a gray icon for the corresponding component. In the check Copy customizing you have the possibility to deactivate all non-accessible alerts, so that they will not appear in the graphics. Clicking on the alert icons will display the alert in detail. The following screen shot shows the alerts for the system CTD:
Clicking on the components brings you to the next alert level in order to analyze the alert in greater detail:
The ultimate level could be, for example, a corresponding monitoring transaction, which has to be maintained as a method assigned to the MTE or MTE class, that corresponds to the alert. For more information on this topic see http://help.sap.com/ -> SAP R/3 -> SAP R/3 Release 4.6C -> Basis Components -> Computing Center Management System -> CCMS Monitoring -> The Alert Monitor -> Method Assignments.
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Best Practice: Central System Monitoring for mySAP.com 2. For alerts, that you identify as particularly critical, define automatic reaction procedures, for example sending e-mails or SMS messages, to ensure continuous monitoring is performed even when you are not watching it.
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3. Set up the SAP Solution Manager to provide you with a graphical interface to display your business processes and the allocated alert situations. This simplifies monitoring especially for complex processes and software landscapes and allows you to visualize the connections between the business processes and software.
Further Information
Troubleshooting
If executing this Best Practice did not produce the desired results, you may have tried to implement System Monitoring too quickly, too superficially, or without the full cooperation of all the company employees involved. If you encounter problems with the SAP Solution Manager, send feedback to SAP.
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