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Use

The following section provides a detailed guide to using the Alert Monitor.

Procedure

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1. Choose CCMS ® Control/Monitoring ® Alert Monitor, or call transaction RZ20.

The system displays the CCMS Monitor Sets.

2. Expand one of the monitor sets by placing the cursor on the CCMS monitor sets and then choose Edit ® Expand Tree.

SAP delivers various standard monitor sets, such as SAP CCMS Monitor Templates or SAP CCMS Technical Expert Monitors. These monitor sets are always available.

3. Display the Entire System monitor of the SAP CCMS Monitor Templates monitor set by placing the cursor on the monitor and choosing Start Monitor.

The monitor displays the tree in the last-used format. The monitoring tree is a hierarchical display of monitoring objects (system components) and monitoring attributes (information types for objects) in the system.

For this tutorial, expand the alert monitoring tree, if the entire hierarchy is not displayed. Place the cursor on the Entire System line and choose Edit ® Tree ® Expand Tree ® Expand Subtree.

In addition to the Entire Systemmonitor, there are also predefined monitors for particular purposes. For example, if you are a database administrator, you can open the Database monitor instead of the Entire System monitor.

Another special monitor is the CCMS Selfmonitoring monitor in the SAP CCMS Technical Expert Monitors monitor set. This monitor displays possible problems in the alert monitor and the monitoring architecture. Check in this monitor whether all of the data collection methods started by the Alert Monitor are running correctly.

4. Check the current status of your system.

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a. Display the current system status in your monitor.

Choose the Current Status view, if it is not already selected. In the Current Status view, you can see the performance values and status messages that have been most recently reported to the Alert Monitor.

Older alerts that are still open (that is, not yet completed) are no longer labeled with colors.

b. Check the color indicators in the monitoring tree.

The colors of the nodes in the tree mean the following:

Green: The component is running correctly.

Yellow: The system is issuing a warning.

Red: The system is reporting a problem or a critical state.

Gray: No data is being delivered for the node.

To display a legend for the colors and icons used in the Alert Monitor, choose Extras ® Legend.

The alert monitor passes the highest alert level up the monitoring tree. For example, if the monitoring tree element (MTE) with the name of your system is green, this means that all components in the monitoring tree for the system have this status. There are therefore no warnings or problems.

Choose an MTE by double-clicking it to start the associated analysis method. The analysis method displays more detailed information about the current status of the MTE.

You can optionally specify an automatic refresh of the display. Choose Extras ® Display options, and switch to the General tab. In the Refresh display box, select the option Yes, interval and enter the interval for the refresh. The default value is 300 seconds or longer. If the automatic refresh is deactivated, the alert monitor displays the data that was available when the alert monitor was started.

5. Check what has happened recently in the Open Alerts view

The color indicators in this view do not show the current status of the system (see Changing Views: Current Status/Open Alerts).

At the start of your working day or after your lunch break, you can use the Open Alerts view to check what has happened in the system during your absence. The monitor stores the alerts for you, even if the status that triggered the alert has improved in the meantime.

6. React to an alert.

In the monitoring tree, yellow entries mean warnings and red entries mean errors.

Proceed as follows:

Ensure that you are in the Open Alerts view.

The monitor is now displaying how many alerts exist for each MTE. It is also displaying the most important of the waiting alert messages.

Place the cursor on a yellow or red MTE and choose Display Alerts.

The system opens the Alert Browser and displays the open alerts for the relevant MTE. The Alert Browser displays all alerts in the branch of the tree that you selected. Move the cursor further up the monitoring tree to display a wider range of alerts. Select an MTE on the lowest level to display only the alerts for this MTE.

Analyze an alert.

Each line in the Alert Browser provides overview information for an alert, including the alert message.

The browser also provides two additional information sources. Select an alert and choose one of the following buttons:

- Start Analysis Method
By choosing this button, you start the transaction for problem analysis or the analysis method for an alert. New analysis methods are constantly being added to the system. Not all MTEs already have an analysis method (see Starting Methods).

For problems with buffers, for example, you can start the Buffer Tuning Summary from the Alert Monitor.

- Display Details
You can use this function to display the details for the monitoring tree element. These include the current values or status messages, the alert threshold values, and the performance data for the last measurement period (only for performance MTEs). You can display the performance data graphically by selecting the relevant line and choosing Display Performance Values Graphically.

7. If the alert is resolved, set it to Complete.

Once you have analyzed the problem and have either resolved it or ensured that you can safely ignore it, you can set the problem to Complete.

Select the alert and choose Complete Alert. The Alert Monitor deletes the alert from the list of open alerts (see Completing Alerts).

The monitoring architecture, a solution within SAP NetWeaver, centrally monitors any IT environments – from individual systems through networked SAP NetWeaver solutions, to complex IT landscapes incorporating several hundred systems. It is provided in SAP NetWeaver and can be used immediately after installation. You can easily extend the architecture to include SAP and non-SAP components.

Alerts form a central element of monitoring. They quickly and reliably report errors – such as values exceeding or falling below a particular threshold value or that an IT component has been inactive for a defined period of time. These alerts are displayed in the Alert Monitor; this reduces the workload for the system administration, since they now only need to watch the error messages, instead of endless system data.

The Alert Monitor is therefore the central tool with which you can efficiently administer and monitor distributed SAP NetWeaver solutions or client/server systems. The Alert Monitor displays problems quickly and reliably.

Implementation Considerations

If you want to use the Alert Monitor for central monitoring (that is, you want to monitor the systems of your IT landscape from a central monitoring system), you must perform various configuration steps yourself. These are described under Configuring the Monitoring Architecture.

Features

The Alert Monitor provides the following functions:

· You can use the Alert Monitor to perform complete and detailed monitoring of all SAP and non-SAP systems, the host systems, and the database.

· All errors generate alerts, which are displayed in a tree structure.

· The alerts contain a status indicator with a color and a numerical value. Yellow means a warning, red means a problem, and the numerical value shows the severity of the reported error. In the tree structure, the most severe alerts are passed upward in the display hierarchy. If a tree node is not displaying an alert, there is also no error in the entire branch below it.

· You can assign certain analysis and auto-reaction methods to the alerts, which contribute to faster processing of the error. If you double-click an alert, the monitoring architecture starts the assigned analysis method (such as the job administration transaction for a prematurely terminated job). An auto-reaction method, on the other hand, starts automatically as soon as the alert occurs. This includes executing operating system commands and sending an e-mail or an SMS message to the system administration.

· The Alert Monitor contains various view in which either the current or the open (that is, the unanalyzed) problem messages are displayed. Alerts are also archived.

· Threshold values, methods, and detailed help for many monitoring attributes and three extensive monitor sets with monitors for all aspects of system management are predefined on the basis of Best Practices in the monitoring architecture and are available in every SAP system.

· You can adjust all settings individually, and configure your own monitors.