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Interface Channel Monitoring (ICMon) allows you to monitor the interfaces between business-critical systems, in real-time.

Interface Channel Monitoring provides the following benefits:

  • You can monitor the performance of connections between systems as well as define interfaces on the level of functions called in a system. These function calls may be, for example, a function module (in the case of an RFC connection) or a method called via a Web Service. In this way, you can monitor interfaces in detail.

  • To provide aggregate overviews, you organize the monitoring as follows:

    • Define scenarios which comprise all systems on which, for example, certain critical business scenarios depend.

    • Cluster the relevant interfaces in interface channels between the systems in your scenario, according to the type (RFC connection, Web Services, SAP Process Integration). When you monitor an interface channel, you can drill down to individual interfaces.

  • To identify the interface channels according, for example, to their business relevance, you can define, in each scenario, attributes which you assign to the interfaces and interface channels. When monitoring the interfaces in real-time, you can filter by the attributes.

Typical Interface Channel Monitoring use cases are the following:

  • As a technical administrator you set up monitoring of critical channels which are important, for example for transferring data between systems.

  • As an application owner, you identify critical business processes and want to monitor the corresponding technical systems and interfaces technically.

You can monitor the following connection types:

  • Remote Function Call (RFC): The interface is defined by destination and remote enabled function module.

  • Web Service (WS): The interface is defined by web service / web service method / logical port and/or web service user.

  • SAP Process Integration (PI): The interface is defined by the sender and receiver attributes.

You can monitor the following metrics, individually for each interface of an interface channel:

  • Usage: How many function calls have been executed, in an interval of 5 minutes?

  • Response Time (only for Web Services and RFC connections): What was the average response time of a certain function call, in an interval of 5 minutes?

  • Availability (only for Web Services and RFC connections): A simulated function call is executed every minute to measure the availability as the percentage of successful function calls.

  • Exceptions: How many, and which, errors occurred, when, for example dumps, web service errors, or logs in the application log file?

Integration

ICMon is integrated in the E2E monitoring and alerting infrastructure, incident and notification management, and central Exception Management in SAP Solution Manager. This gives you the following options:

  • Display and access alerts in the Alert Inbox of the Technical Monitoring work center

  • Display details of exceptions in the Exception Management Cockpit

  • Generate notifications or incidents automatically, if threshold values are exceeded

Prerequisites

  • You have set up System Monitoring.

  • You have identified, in cooperation, for example, with the process owners of business processes, the relevant components, systems and function calls.

Note Note

  • RFC and Web Service data collectors for ABAP performance metrics are available only for ABAP systems with SAP Basis 7.00 or higher.

  • PI data collectors are available only for systems with SAP PI 7.00 or higher.

End of the note.

Features

  • ICMon setup: You define a monitoring scenario comprising interfaces grouped into interface channels. You define attributes for filtering, and define threshold values for alerts.

  • ICMon monitor: You monitor the interfaces you specified, in real-time.

  • You can use the Exception Management Cockpit to display details of exceptions.

  • ICMon reporting: You can display the most important monitoring data through time – from today to the previous year – on a centralized basis. You identify potentially problematic trends early, and get an overview of the availability and performance of your scenarios.

Activities

  1. Preparation: Specify the technical requirements (systems, functions and interfaces to be monitored, threshold values for alerting) with the persons responsible for critical business processes.

  2. Define a monitoring scenario, attributes, interface channels, interface and threshold values for alerting. For more information, see Configuring an Interface Channel Monitoring Scenario.

  3. Monitor the interfaces in real-time or set the time range to display long-term trends based on aggregated data. For more information, see Displaying an Interface Channel Monitoring Scenario.

  4. To display alert details and process alerts, navigate to the Alert Inbox.