Monitoring with the Generic Request and Message Generator 

Purpose

You can use the Generic Request and Message Generator (GRMG) to monitor the availability of technical components and entire business processes. GRMG is suitable both for technical monitoring and for application monitoring.

GRMG consists of two parts, both of which are required for a functioning GRMG environment:

·        GRMG Infrastructure

The GRMG Infrastructure is part of the monitoring architecture of the Computing Centre Monitoring System (CCMS). Its task is to send a request (the GRMG request) to the GRMG application, to receive its response (the GRMG response), and to display this response in a monitor in the alert monitor.

·        GRMG Application

The GRMG application performs the actual availability monitoring. From a technical point of view, this is a Java Server Page (JSP), a servlet, or a Business Server Page in an SAP Web Application Server with a well-defined interface that is called by the GRMG infrastructure. GRMG request and the GRMG response are messages in a well-defined XML format.

The concept of monitoring the availability of monitored components can be describes as an agent concept. This means that the GRMG application can run separately from the components and applications that it is monitoring. This means that you can differentiate between the following situations, if an error occurs:

·        The components monitored in the scenario are not available (component error).

·        The scenario itself has errors, for example due to communication errors or an agent that is not running (scenario error).

If the GRMG application technically runs separately from the monitored component, a scenario error means that it is not possible to make a statement about the status of the monitored component.

If the GRMG application and the monitored component form a unit, a scenario error also means that the component is not available.

Implementation Considerations

Follow the steps described in the appropriate process below, depending on whether you want to instrument an application for availability monitoring with GRMG, or whether you want to perform the Customizing in the central monitoring system to monitor an instrumented application:

·        GRMG: Instrumenting a Component

·        Activating and Customizing Monitoring with the GRMG

Integration

·        The central monitoring system and the monitored SAP Web Application Server require at least SAP Web AS 6.20, Support Package 12. Additional functions are available as of Support Package 33.

If you are using the GRMG in the context of one of the following solutions, you also require the GRMG special transport until Support Package 32 (inclusive). This special transport is available to you in the relevant Best Practice guide:

·         CRM 4.0 SP3

·         EP 5.1 SP6

·         EP6.0 SP1

·        Monitored components on J2EE servers require at least Java Basic Libraries Release 6.20, Support Package 03 (file GRMG.SDA).

Features

The above figure shows an example of a GRMG scenario. The GRMG infrastructure calls a GRMG application, which in turn checks the availability of software components (such as J2EE servers) or technical functions (such as JNI).

·        In the above Web server scenario, the Web server forwards the GRMG request, which is then processed by the Servlet Engine. The request is sent by HTTP Post. The GRMG application performs all of the tests for the availability of the monitored components or business process steps (in this example, EJB, JNI EJB, and JNI DB). The results of these tests are collected in the GRMG application and combined into a GRMG response. This GRMG response is sent back to the GRMG infrastructure and displayed in the Alert Monitor there.

·        If the GRMG application is running on a SAP Web Application Server, the GRMG request is sent to a service of the server (see Principle of Creating a GRMG Application). The standard handler class of the service means that it is possible to execute special function modules for availability monitoring in the monitored system. These function modules can contain additional test functions; the ABAP class returns the results of these tests in the GRMG response.

In any case, the GRMG response is interpreted by the GRMG infrastructure and displayed in the alert monitoring tree:

With GRMG, you can therefore use one technology to monitor all components in an application, regardless of whether these are based on ABAP or Java. You can create any number of GRMG scenarios, where you can specify one individual URL or RFC destination of type HTTP in each scenario. Each scenario can, in turn, monitor any number of components through the GRMG application.

The results of the availability monitoring are displayed in the Alert Monitor. The percentage availability is displayed for each instance of a monitored component. You can store this data over the longer term in the Central Performance History, and use it in turn to monitor Service Level Agreements.

The system also assigns an alert value to the messages sent to the GRMG infrastructure by the GRMG application and stores them in a log attribute. These messages are also available to you in the monitoring architecture, where they can, for example, trigger auto-reactions.