AIX Monitor

ZenPacks.zenoss.AixMonitor

This ZenPack provides status and performance monitoring of AIX systems.

The ZenPacks.zenoss.AixMonitor ZenPack uses Secure Shell (SSH) to monitor AIX hosts.

This ZenPack models and monitors devices placed in the /Server/SSH/AIX device class by running commands and parsing the output. The account used to monitor the device does not require root access or special privileges.

Applications Monitored:

IBM AIX (5.3)
IBM AIX (6.1)
IBM AIX (7.1)

Support

This ZenPack is included with commercial versions of Zenoss. Enterprise support for this ZenPack is provided to active Zenoss customers.

Releases

Version 2.2.3-Download

Released on 2017/05/18
Compatible with Zenoss Resource Manager 4.2.x, Zenoss Resource Manager 5.0.x - 5.1.x

Version 2.2.2-Download

Released on 2016/08/30
Compatible with Zenoss Resource Manager 4.2.x, Zenoss Resource Manager 5.0.x - 5.1.x

Version 2.0.1-Download

Released on 2015/04/02
Compatible with Zenoss Resource Manager 4.2.x, Zenoss Resource Manager 5.0.x

Features

The features added by this ZenPack can be summarized as follows. They are each detailed further below.

Initial discovery and periodic remodeling of relevant components.
Performance monitoring.

This ZenPack provides:

File system and process monitoring
Network interfaces and route modeling
CPU utilization information
Hardware information (memory, number of CPUs, machine serial numbers, model numbers)
OS information (OS level command style information)
LPP and RPM information (such as installed software)

Gallery

Discovery

The following components will be automatically discovered through the AIX server address, username and password you provide. The properties and relationships will be periodically updated by modeling.

Server (Device)

Attributes
- ent_cpu
- ent_vproc
- active_cpu
- systemId
- prof_max_mem
- ent_mem

EntAdapter

Attributes
- devname
- location
- parent
- physloc

FCAdapter

Attributes
- devname
- location
- parent
- physloc

HDisk

Attributes
- devname
- location
- parent
- physloc

Performance Monitoring

The following metrics will be collected every 5 minutes by default.

Default OS performance Metrics

Device

ssCpuIdle
ssCpuSystem
ssCpuUser
ssCpuWait
ssRawContexts
ssRawInterrupts
io_read
io_written
hrMemorySize
memAvailReal
percentMemUsed
swap_percentUsed
sysUptime
laLoadInt1
laLoadInt5
laLoadInt15

EntAdapter

receive_bytes
receive_packets_dropped
transmit_bytes
transmit_packets_dropped
recvHugeutil
recvLargeutil
recvMediumutil
recvSmallutil
recvTinyutil

FCAdapter

control_requests
input_bytes
input_requests
output_requests
output_bytes
output_requests

HDisk

b_written
b_read
policies_algorithm
policies_reserve_policy

Service Impact and Root Cause Analysis

When combined with the Zenoss Service Dynamics product, this ZenPack adds built-in service impact and root cause analysis capabilities for services running on IBM Power. The service impact relationships shown in the diagram and described below are automatically added. These will be included in any services that contain one or more of the explicitly mentioned components.

IBM and Power Server Impact Relationship Diagram

Internal Impact Relationships

Ethernet Adapter impacts related Device (LPAR)
Fibre Channel Adapter impacts related Device (LPAR)
HDisk Drive impacts related Device (LPAR)

Usage

Note: If using a distributed collector setup, SSH requires firewall access (default of port 22) from the collector to the monitored server.

Set AIX Server Monitoring Credentials

All AIX servers must have a device entry in an organizer below the /Devices/Server/SSH/AIX device class.

Note: The SSH monitoring feature will attempt to use key-based authentication before using a configuration properties password value.

Navigate to the device class or device.
- If applying changes to a device class:
  1. Select the class in the devices hierarchy.
  2. Click Details.
  3. Select Configuration Properties.
- If applying changes to a device:
  1. Click the device in the device list.
  2. Select Configuration Properties.
Verify the credentials for the service account to access the service.

AIX Configuration Properties

Name Description

zCommandUsername AIX user with privileges to gather performance information

zCommandPassword Password for the AIX user
Click Save to save your changes.

Add an AIX Server

The following procedure assumes that the credentials have been set.

From Infrastructure > Devices, select Add a Single Device.

Enter the following information in the dialog:

Adding AIX Device Information

Name	Description
Name or IP	AIX host to model
Device Class	/Server/SSH/AIX
Model Device	Select this option unless adding a device with username/password different than found in the device class. If you do not select this option, then you must add the credentials, and then manually model the device.

Click Add Device to add the device.

Troubleshooting

This ZenPack requires the following collector process to be running.

Type	Name
Modeler	zenmodeler
Performance Collector	zencommand

IBM_PowerVM Device Class

The Devices/Server/SSH/AIX/IBM_PowerVM device class is intended to be used when monitoring PowerVM LPARs. This device class creates an additional AIXExt template to be used in monitoring the PowerVM equipment.

Resolving CHANNEL_OPEN_FAILURE Issues

The zencommand daemon's log file ($ZENHOME/collector/zencommand.log) may show messages stating:

ERROR zen.SshClient CHANNEL_OPEN_FAILURE: Authentication failure WARNING:zen.SshClient:Open of command failed (error code 1): open failed

If the sshd daemon's log file on the remote device is examined, it may report that the MAX_SESSIONS number of connections has been exceeded and that it is denying the connection request. At least in the OpenSSH daemons, this MAX_SESSIONS number is a compile-time option and cannot be reset in a configuration file.

To work around this limitation of the sshd daemon, use the configuration property zSshConcurrentSessions to control the number of connections created by zencommand to the remote device.

Navigate to the device or device class in the Zenoss platform interface.
- If applying changes to a device class:
  1. Select the class in the devices hierarchy.
  2. Click Details.
  3. Select Configuration Properties.
- If applying changes to a device:
  1. Click the device in the device list.
  2. Select Configuration Properties.
Apply an appropriate value for the maximum number of sessions.

Concurrent SSH Configuration Properties

Name Description

zSshConcurrentSessions Maximum number of sessions supported by the remote device's MAX_SESSIONS parameter. Common values for AIX are 2 or 10.
Click Save to save your changes.

Resolving Timeout Issues

The zencommand daemon's log file ($ZENHOME/collector/zencommand.log) may show messages stating:

WARNING:zen.zencommand:Command timed out on device device_name: command

If this occurs, it usually indicates that the remote device has taken too long to return results from the commands. To increase the amount of time for devices to return results, change the configuration property zCommandCommandTimeout to a larger value.

Navigate to the device or device class in the Zenoss platform interface.
- If applying changes to a device class:
  1. Select the class in the devices hierarchy.
  2. Click Details.
  3. Select Configuration Properties.
- If applying changes to a device:
  1. Click the device in the device list.
  2. Select Configuration Properties.
Apply an appropriate value for the command timeout.

SSH Timeout Configuration Properties

Name Description

zCommandCommandTimeout The number of seconds to wait for commands to complete on the remote device.
Click Save to save your changes.

Known Issues

When Migrating from 1.2.0 to a newer version of this ZenPack the Filesystem cycle time changed from 60 to 300. If your filesystem graphs are not updating you will need to delete the existing filesystem rrd files so that new ones can be generated with the new 300 second step time.

When upgrading this ZenPack from version 1.3.0 to a later version, a traceback containing the text:

AttributeError: 'ZenPack' object has no attribute '__of__'

may be encountered. This traceback does not affect the functionality of the ZenPack, which should function normally after installation is completed.

Limitations

Some commands used in the AIXExt template may be incompatible with your version of AIX. You should disable those datasources if that is the case and it is impacting your installation.

Changes

2.2.3

Fix aliases for standard reports (ZPS-1390)

2.2.2

Make event class /Status/OSProcess for process monitoring (ZEN-21999)
Add zCredentialsZProperties: zCommandUsername & zCommandPassword
Add mem__pct and fs__pct datapoint aliases (ZEN-24619)

2.2.1

Updated zenpacklib.py to address modeler timeouts from attribute-indexed components

2.2.0

Fix excessive remote command execution (ZEN-16740)
IP Service modeling no longer ignoring zIpServiceMapMaxPort (ZEN-17360)
Fix incorrect ssCpuIdle alias for multi-core systems (ZEN-17360)
Fix handling of European date formats (ZEN-19089)
Fix incorrect template bindings (ZEN-20078)
Fix incorrect modeling time (ZEN-22127)
Add/revise custom component icons, fix icon positioning (ZEN-22191, ZEN-22294)
Fix missing Impact YAML file (ZEN-22250)
Fixed missing graph datapoints (ZEN-22259)

2.0.1

Fix handling of locales that use comma for decimals. (ZEN-16506)
Fix inability to discover DB2 databases on AIX servers. (ZEN-17193)

2.0.0

AIX 7.1 Support
AIX SS CPU data inaccurate (ZEN-8637)
AIX Parser Broken (ZEN-15092)
Graphs returning Nan (ZEN-15099, ZEN-15157, ZEN-15199)
Unable to gather some memory metrics (ZEN-15139)
Added Impact Adapters (ZEN-15153)
Rename Components (ZEN-15155)
Disk Drive Components returning wrong data (ZEN-15159)
Add graph legends (ZEN-15162)
Installation Traceback (ZEN-15166)
Supply Missing Template (ZEN-15180)
Some components missing during upgrade (ZEN-15193)
Traceback during installation (ZEN-15166)

Name	Description
zCommandUsername	AIX user with privileges to gather performance information
zCommandPassword	Password for the AIX user