SAP Library - Find your answers

You can use the monitoring architecture to monitor selected jobs and to display problems as alerts (see Monitoring Jobs with the Alert Monitor). This job monitoring is deactivated by default; activation is described in Activating Monitoring of Jobs with the Alert Monitor.

After activation, the data is available in the context Background, Background Job Monitoring subtree. For the monitoring, it is useful to define your own monitor or to extend a monitor definition of your own to display the data. The monitor definition and the monitor produced from it are described here.

Prerequisites

You can define a rule-based or a static monitor to display data. For basic information about this, see Creating and Changing Monitors. For a rule-based monitor, the definition must contain a rule CCMS_GET_MTE_BY_CLASS with Job_Monitoring as the MTE class:

If you are using a static monitor, choose the context Background ® Background Job Monitoring for the desired system:

Features

With the definition above, the monitor created has the following structure. Here, the job SCHEDULED_JOB1 and all jobs whose names begin with JOB_EXAMPLE are to be monitored. A subtree is created for every name pattern for a monitored job (job chain):

The monitor contains the following monitoring tree elements (MTEs):

Customizing Alert Generation

· Runtime, Delay and Delay + Runtime

Threshold values are already assigned to these performance attributes by default, so that an alert is generated as of a defined runtime or delay. To change the threshold value, select the desired performance attribute and choose Properties (see Changing Properties and Method Assignments). Ensure that you choose Edit ® Properties ® Use for individual MTE so that you do not change the threshold values for the other monitored jobs.

· History and Log of Current Job

By default, these log attributes always have the color green. However, you can also assign a yellow or red alert to particular messages of the attribute. To do this, choose Properties and specify the class and ID of the desired message on the Filter tab page.

To determine this data for a message of the log attribute, follow the procedure below:

i. Select the desired log attribute and choose the Display Details button ().

ii. The Monitoring Attributes - Detail Data screen appears. To do this, select any row from the list of messages and choose Current Display Variant ().

iii. The Change Layout screen appears. Ensure that the fields for message class (MsgKlasse) and the message ID (MsgId) are displayed, and accept the changes.

iv. The class and ID of the message are now displayed in the list.

You can set the Alert Monitor in such a way that it triggers alerts in a way that meets your operating requirements. You can also define and modify methods, their assignments, and configuration.

You can change the following properties for monitoring tree elements (MTEs):

· General properties of the MTE classes

· Attribute groups (Properties of the performance, status, and log attributes)

· Elements of individual MTEs

The Customizing in the Alert Monitor has been designed to be simple. You can access it directly from the MTE, and you can, for example, define the threshold values for MTE classes or individual MTEs, for which an alert is generated, if a reported value falls below these values.

If you make changes to the properties of MTEs in the Alert Monitor, these are permanently stored in the database. Even if a data collection method attempts to reset the changes to the original values, your changes are retained and are therefore active in the Alert Monitor.

The general settings in Customizing apply for all monitoring tree elements. However, you can only make type-specific settings for monitoring attributes (see Properties of Monitoring Objects and Attributes).

Grouping several monitoring attributes saves you administration duties. To avoid having to maintain the same customizing settings for many monitoring attributes and then save them in the database, the monitoring attributes are assigned to attribute groups. You then only have to maintain the attribute group. All of the monitoring attributes assigned to this group then automatically receive the new or changed settings (see MTE Classes and Attribute Groups.

Properties Variants

You can assign all of these changes to properties variants. Some or all of the Customizing settings are saved in properties variants of this type. By creating multiple properties variants, you can have different strategies for administering your IT landscape.

For example, to use different alert thresholds for the response time in the test and production systems, you can define separate properties values for these settings. One Alert Monitor in the production system could run with the properties variant for the response time in the production system and another with the properties variant for the test system.

See also:

Changing Properties and Method Assignments

Editing Monitors and Monitor Sets

Using this monitor, you can monitor the status of background processing in your SAP system both for the entire system and itemized by application servers on which background work processes are configured. For a general introduction to background processing, see Background Processing: Concepts and Functions.

In addition to monitoring background processing in general, you can also monitor selected jobs using the Monitoring Architecture (see Monitoring Jobs with the Alert Monitor).

Features

The monitor contains the following monitoring tree elements (MTEs):

Activities

To start the monitor, follow the procedure below:

1. Start the Alert Monitor using transaction RZ20 or choose CCMS ® Control/Monitoring ® Alert Monitor.

2. On the CCMS Monitor Sets screen, expand the SAP CCMS Monitor Templates set.

3. Start the Background Processing monitor from the list by double-clicking it.

Procedure if an Alert Is Triggered

Utilization and SystemWideQueueLength show if there is a serious bottleneck in the capacity of the background processing. The optimal situation is that there is a high utilization of the work processes and a short wait queue length.

Background jobs are usually defined without a target server (Execution target in the Define Job initial screen of transaction SM36). This ensures an optimal distribution of the job workload. Jobs defined in this way therefore do not appear in the ServerSpecificQueueLength, but only in SystemWideQueueLength, meaning that the latter attribute is best for showing capacity problems in background processing.

If a bottleneck exists, it is often useful to divide the existing jobs between more servers. You can do this, for example, by switching dialog work processes to background work processes during the operation mode switch to night operation. Before you increase the number of background work processes, note that it does not make sense to have more than three background work processes for each CPU on a background server, as these work processes will already be fully utilizing the CPU. Set the number of these work processes using the system parameter rdisp/wp_no_btc.

For more information about this topic, see SAP Note 39412 (How many work processes to configure).

An alert for ServerSpecificQueueLength when there is a short SystemWideQueueLengthindicates that the distribution of the jobs is not optimal. You should only specify a target server when it is absolutely necessary that the job is started on this server.

Purpose

The following section contains a short overview of the operation of the Alert Monitor. For more information, see the Tutorial for the Alert Monitor.

Process Flow

To perform a a periodic check of your monitored systems, follow the procedure below:

1. Start the alert monitor by calling transaction RZ20.

2. The system displays the
tree structure of the desired monitor. The system is displaying the Current Status view in which you can monitor the current values of your monitoring attributes. If you want to analyze an alert, choose the corresponding monitoring tree element (MTE) by double clicking it.
3. You can then check what has happened since the last check in the system. Use the Open Alerts monitoring view to see if there have been yellow or red alerts (warnings or problems). If you choose an alert in this view by double clicking it, the system displays the
Alert-Browser. This displays all alerts that have not yet been analyzed in a flat hierarchy.
4. After you have analyzed an alert and taken the necessary action, set it to Completed to remove it from the display of open alerts.

See Also:

Change Views: Current Status/Open Alerts