Hitachi

JP1 Version 12 JP1/Integrated Management 2 - Manager Overview and System Design Guide


8.4.5 Collecting and distributing definition information

Definition collection and distribution functions provided by JP1/Base are used to collect and distribute information on the hosts that is defined in JP1/Base. Using these functions, you can perform the following operations:

Definition collection and distribution is functionality specific to JP1/IM - Manager and provided through JP1/Base. Depending on the JP1/Base version, this functionality might not be supported. For details, see the JP1/Base User's Guide.

Note that these definition collection and distribution functions are sometimes called plug-in functions. When you use the JP1/Base jbs_spmd_status command to verify the status of the service, look for the displayed name jbsplugin.

Organization of this subsection

(1) Collecting and distributing event service definitions

When using JP1/IM to monitor the system operation, you must consider, for each host, which events should be managed as JP1 events and which events should be forwarded to higher-level hosts, and define the event service accordingly. Although you can check and modify definitions in JP1/Base on each host individually, this is highly inefficient and can lead to mistakes in the definitions.

Using the definition collection and distribution functions of JP1/Base, you can batch-collect information defined in JP1/Base on the hosts, and manage the information on the manager. You can also update the definition information on each host by editing and distributing the definition information from the manager. Hence, these functions provide an efficient way of centrally managing definitions related to the event service.

You can collect and distribute definitions from the following files:

The following figure shows the flow of processing when event service definitions are collected from or distributed to all the hosts in the system as a batch operation.

Figure 8‒18: Batch-collection and batch-distribution of event service definitions

[Figure]

Working in conjunction with configuration management, the definition collection and distribution functions collect and distribute definitions to the hosts defined in the configuration definition as a batch operation (for details about defining the system configuration, see 8.4.3 Managing the system hierarchy). When the manager collects definitions from or distributes definitions to managed hosts, it communicates with the hosts directly without regard to the system hierarchy defined in the configuration definition. For this reason, take care when using these functions in a firewall environment.

To collect and distribute event service definitions as a batch operation, use the commands provided by JP1/Base. For details about the procedures and a description of the batch-collection and batch-distribution commands, see the chapter on collecting and distributing event service definitions (JP1/IM only) in the JP1/Base User's Guide.

(2) Auto-generation of monitoring trees (Central Scope)

JP1/IM provides the Monitoring Tree window and Visual Monitoring window to allow objective-oriented system monitoring in accordance with the needs of the system administrator. When you create a Monitoring Tree window, you can use the auto-generation function to generate a monitoring tree automatically, and then customize the tree to suit your needs.

The auto-generation function collects definitions relating to specific linked products from each server, and uses a template to create a monitoring tree from the collected information. The collection of definitions is performed as functionality specific to JP1/IM - Manager, realized through the definition collection and distribution functions provided by JP1/Base.

When directed by JP1/IM - Manager to collect definitions from linked products, JP1/Base collects the definitions from the linked products on that host, and passes the information to JP1/IM. This functionality is supported from JP1/Base version 07-00. To collect definitions, the Central Scope service of JP1/IM - Manager must be active (ON).

The following are examples of the definition information that can be collected and distributed:

A monitoring tree is created automatically from this information collected from the hosts defined in the system hierarchy.

The collection of definition information from linked products is realized by interaction between the JP1/IM functionality and the configuration management and definition collection and distribution functions of JP1/Base. How these functions interact with each other is explained in 5.11.4 Automatic generation of a monitoring tree.

The behavior of JP1/Base on a target host when directed by JP1/IM to collect definition information is described below.

The following figure shows the flow of the processing to collect definition information within each host.

Figure 8‒19: Collection of definition information within a host

[Figure]

The flow of processing is described below, following the numbers in the figure:

  1. The host receives a definitions collection request from the manager.

  2. On receiving the request, JP1/Base requests definition information from any linked product on that host that supports the JP1/IM definition collection and distribution functions.

  3. The linked product that receives the request starts the JP1/IM linkage program to send back the relevant information to JP1/Base.

    To start the JP1/IM linkage program, a command that sets up JP1/IM linkage must have been executed on the linked product. For details about the command that sets up JP1/IM linkage, see the documentation for the linked product.

  4. On receiving the definitions from the linked product, JP1/Base passes the information back to the manager that issued the request.