SAPtips Journal

February/March 2005 Volume III Issue 1

Basis Team Tools: Using CCMS to Monitor SAP s Performance

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By Joey Hirao, JoTech LLC

Editors Note: Set sail with Joey Hirao on the good ship CCMS (Computing Center Management System) as he navigates the potential perils of system monitoring and performance. Your cruise will take you to the various CCMS ports where you will learn what it is and how it has evolved over time. You will thoroughly explore the Operating System, Database, and SAP Basis Layer components of the system with Captain Joey at your side. Take the helm and learn to congure and use CCMS thresholds to see at a glance how the system is performing. If dark clouds are forming on the horizon, youll be the rst to know once youve learned Joeys methods for setting up early warnings messages via pager or email. Once youve mastered these techniques, youll nd smooth sailing ahead on the seas of SAP system monitoring and performance. have monitoring tools to help with these operational issues. This article covers the use and conguration of SAPs monitoring module called the Computing Center Management System, or CCMS; specically for SAP on Unix with an Oracle database. This module works with SAP version 4.6x. Keep in mind that this article is not intended as instruction on performance tuning.

Using CCMS

CCMS is a combination of the mature system administration functions and transactions folder releases, coupled with the modern alert monitoring capabilities.

The module that we now know as CCMS (in the current release of SAP) evolved over the years from basic performance monitoring transactions. So, its no surprise that CCMS is a combination of the mature system administration functions and transactions folder releases, coupled with the modern alert monitoring capabilities. CCMS manages system monitoring with alert thresholds. Functionally, thresholds are merely an extension of monitoring. Monitoring provides data for specic parameters. Thresholds act as a boundary to these values. For example, database data buffer quality is merely a number. However, when a threshold is associated with it, that value inherits a quality such as poor, good, great. Now that we have done the formal introductions to the topic, lets get down to business. First off, lets start by examining the monitoring aspects. CCMS breaks down monitoring into large components: Operating System Database SAP Basis Layer Operating System Within CCMS, the primary transaction for operating system monitoring is ST06. Transaction ST06 reports the overall operating system status. See Figure 1. Key metrics such as CPU and SWAP utilization are captured. If further details about one particular metric is desired, click the Detailed

Introduction

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So you have SAP installed. Now what? So long as there is activity and change within the system, the Basis team will raise the sails and embark on their endless journey of system monitoring. Monitoring includes everything from space utilization in the database to the number of short dumps. If you start tallying up everything and anything that can go wrong in the system, this seemingly simple task becomes a bear of a chore. As you increase the number of systems under your responsibility, soon there will be no time to do anything other than monitoring. At this rate, youll never get back to port. Luckily, theres some help out there. SAP and third-party vendors

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Analysis Menu and drill down further into the item you desire. See Figure 2 for a detailed look at CPU utilization. Another way to look at this data is via the CCMS alert monitor. Go to transaction RZ20 to see the root level of the alert monitoring tree. Here you will see SAPs standard alert monitoring templates. An alert monitoring tree is a concatenation of individual Monitoring Tree Elements (MTE). These MTE are individual items in the system that are to be monitored. See Figure 3 for the standard SAP templates. In order to view the operating system monitors, expand the SAP CCMS Monitor Templates option. Under this tree, you will see Operating System. Drill down into Operating System to see the MTEs associated with that tree. See Figure 4 for the MTEs. What does this mean? In short, the Operating System node is actively monitoring those particular MTEs shown in Figure 4. The color legend is logically sequenced: red is critical, yellow is a warning, and green is OK. This is the same data as seen with transaction code ST06, but with thresholds established to determine alert status. Database Moving on, lets examine the database and the available tools and metrics. The main transaction for database performance statistics is ST04. Similar to the operating systems ST06, you can select the Detailed Analysis Menu button to drill down any one metric. See Figure 5. Lets pick database buffer size and drill down. Double-click on the word Size and you will get the size statistics for this database data buffer. See Figure 6.

Figure 1: Operating System Monitoring (ST06)

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Figure 2: CPU Utilization Detail

Figure 3: SAP Alert Monitoring Templates

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Figure 4: Operating System MTE

Figure 5: Database Performance Analysis (ST04)

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Figure 6: Database Data Buffer Detail

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There are additional transaction codes for the database. Here is a list of the important ones: There are other transaction codes, but these are the main ones for Oracle database monitoring.

Transaction Code
DB02 DB12 DB14

Description
Database space Database backups Database operations log

Monitoring the Basis metrics is the same as monitoring the operating system, except that we have different transaction codes and different MTEs. The Basis layer has more transaction codes.

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Figure 7: Database MTE The alternate way to view this is via transaction RZ20, the CCMS alert monitor. The navigation is similar to the operating system. However, for database alerts select Database under the SAP CCMS Monitor Templates root. Database specic MTEs are associated with the Database node; see Figure 7. The alert legend is the same as before: red is critical, yellow is a warning, and green is OK. This is the same data as seen with transaction code ST04, but with thresholds established to represent alert status. SAP Basis Layer Without being too repetitive, monitoring the Basis metrics is the same as monitoring the operating system, except that we have different transaction codes and different MTEs. The Basis layer has more transaction codes. Here is a list of the important ones: There are other transaction codes, but these are the main ones for Oracle database monitoring. Similar to the database and operating system, there are Basis specic MTEs in the CCMS alert monitor. From transaction code RZ20, select the SAP CCMS Monitor Templates option and select one of the listed sub-components.

Conguration

There is some conguration you can include into the CCMS alert monitors. You can copy SAPs templates and modify the thresholds based on your needs. Lets run through an example.

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1. From transaction code RZ20, follow the menu extras > Activate Maintenance Function. 2. Next, select the template that you want to copy. 3. Select the copy icon and then enter the name of the new copy (see Figure 8) 4. You can set CCMS monitoring as private or public. To do this, select the newly created monitoring set and then select the Change icon. Make any necessary changes per your needs; see Figure 9. 5. To customize any of the thresholds, drill down to the MTE. 6. Select properties of the MTE. 7. Change any threshold values and save. See Figure 10 as an example of changing the syslog error MTE. A useful feature in CCMS is the ability to set up automatic reaction via email. This means that when alerts occur, emails are sent. See the following instructions to set up automatic emailing. 1. Set up SAPCONNECT to enable external emailing.

Transaction Code
SM21 ST02 ST03 ST22 SM50 SM66 SM12 SM37 SP12 SM50 SM66 SM12 SM13 SM20 SE01 SMGW SM58 SAP system logs SAP Buffers SAP Performance Short Dumps Work process overview Global work process overview Lock Entries Background jobs Spool requests Work process overview Global work process overview Lock Entries Update requests Security audit log Transport logs SAP Gateway monitor Transactional RFC monitor

Description

Figure 8: Copying a Template

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2. Go to transaction RZ21. 3. Select Methods > Method overview and select Display Overview. 4. Select CCMS_OnAlert_Email and open for change. 5. On the Parameters tab, edit the parameters: SENDER = Enter the From SAP username RECIPIENT = Enter the recipients email address (i.e. john.doe@company.com ) RECIPIENT-TYPEID = Enter U for Internet address and B for SAPusername. Figure 9: Modify CCMS Monitoring Set

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6. Save your changes 7. Go to the MTE for which you want to activate emailing 8. Select properties of the MTE 9. On the Methods tab, enter CMS_ OnAlert_Email in the Autoreaction method eld Voila! Now you will receive alerts via email on that MTE.

layer is your responsibility. Luckily, SAP provides you with tools that allow you to be proactive and preventative. The sooner you know of a potential problem, the better. As the Basis motto goes, a day without calls is a day youre doing your job. Joey Hirao, Jotech LLC. Joey is a Basis consultant with expertise in SAP Basis, UNIX, NT, and database technologies. He designs, implements and maintains SAP systems for customers worldwide. Joey has been working with SAP technology for the past six years. He is the founder of Jotech LLC, and the author of SAP R/3 Administration for Dummies. Joey is SAP Basis certied, Solaris Administrator certied, and an MCSE. Joeys email address is Joey.Hirao@SAPtips.com.

Putting it all together

The real value of using CCMS becomes evident when you hear of a problem before the users call you with a complaint. Early warning notication via pager and/or email truly cuts down on real user complaints. At one customer site, for one reason or another, I ended up being the only Basis staff supporting a multitude of SAP systems. If I did not implement CCMS as my early warning mechanism, I would not have had time to do anything other than system monitoring. I can cite many examples where the early warning mechanism really helped out. One time, in particular, really stands out. This was when a x to some custom code went into production with errors. Subsequently, this produced a tremendous amount of sort dumps. If it were not for the late night pages, the bad code would not have been xed until the bulk of users started using the system the following morning. CCMS is something I always try to implement after installing a system. It becomes one of my required post-installation steps.

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Conclusion

System monitoring can be a boring task but, hey, someone has to do it. SAP has many functions that can malfunction. Everything from the operating system to the actual Basis

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February/March 2005 Volume III Issue 1
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