Context

Tool mentors explain how a tool can perform tasks, which are part of ITUP processes and activities. The tasks are listed as Related Elements in the Relationships section.

You can see the details of how processes and activities are supported by this tool mentor, by clicking the links next to the icons:

•   Event Management
  •   Detect and Log Event

Details

ITCAM for WebSphere® and ITCAM for J2EE offer a “Trap and Alert Management” function. This feature is especially useful for catching intermittent problems which often come and go in a completely imprevisible manner. The user can specify which actions are to be taken by the tool when the trap fires. Traps can be set against Server Resources as well as against Applications.

To set a trap:

From the top navigation, click Problem Determination > Trap & Alert Management. The Trap and Alert Management page opens.

Figure 1: Trap & Alert Management

On the left navigation, click Create Trap. The Trap Type selection page opens.  Select Application Trap as the trap type. 

Figure 2: Application Trap

Select one of the Target Types from the drop-down menu. Based on the target type you select, the system will dynamically generate the trap definition options in the next step. The following is a list of the Target Types:

• Occurrence - The number of times the specified unit occurred.
  
• CPU Time - The amount of time the CPU is executing instructions.
  
• Wait Time - The amount of time the CPU is idle.
  
• Resident Time - In-flight - Based on the resident in-flight time of a transaction, the Publish Server keeps track of all the active (in-flight) requests and their resident times and triggers the trap if the resident time of the request exceeds the time configured in the trap condition.
  
• Resident Time - Completed - The wall clock time for when the unit of a transaction, method, etc. ends, minus the wall clock time when it started.
  o Resident Time - Misbehaving Transaction - The purpose of this type is to allow you to set a trap to capture method traces without having to turn L3 monitoring on throughout the entire monitored environment. When the trap fires, the system will change the monitoring level to L3, capture method traces, and then return to the original monitoring level. Be aware that the Resident Time - Misbehaving Transaction trap differs in the way it counts occurrences. In Step 2, if "Request contains" has the value of *, the Resident Time - Misbehaving Transaction trap will deactivate after every request has reached the specified number of occurrences. For example, if requests A, B, and C exist at the time the trap is activated with the settings as follows:
  
  - Number of occurrences is specified as 5.
  - Data action is Take Method Trace.
  
  Then when request A occurs 5 times, the trap will stop being triggered and no more method traces will be taken for request A. When request B has executed 5 times, the trap will stop being triggered for request B and no more method traces will be taken, and the same for request C. After request C has occurred five times, the trap will be deactivated and the server returned back to its original monitoring level.
  
• Uncaught Exception - Capture exceptions that occur in applications and data about the failure.
  o Lock Acquisition Time - In-flight - The in-flight transaction has not completed and may be hanging, using this type will provide data on how to fix the problem. What is being measured is the amount of time taken to obtain an acquisition. The acquisition clock starts when the class/method begins trying to acquire the lock, and ends when the lock is acquired.
  
• Lock Acquisition Time - Completed - The amount of time taken to obtain an acquisition. The acquisition clock starts when the class/method begins trying to acquire the lock, and ends when the lock is acquired.

Traps is now supported in CICS. CICS has the following trap types available: Occurrence, CPU time, Resident Time - Completed, Resident Time - In-flight, and Wait Time.

Click Next. The “Define Trap” page opens.

Complete the rest of the fields in the Trap Definition section, which restrict which events will trigger the trap to fire.

Click Next. The Set Trap Alerts page opens.

For the Trap Alert settings, under Condition enter the number of times the trap should occur before the system takes an action.

Click to select the severity level from the drop-down box. The application monitor has three severity levels. Since the application monitor provides SNMP integration with Tivoli®, the three severity levels of the application monitor should be mapped to the warning levels of Tivoli as below:

Select an action or multiple actions, such as sending an e-mail or SNMP message, for the system to take when the condition is met.

Select one or all Data Actions, such as Component/Method Trace, Stack Trace, or Thread Dump (not applicable to the Windows platform), to get detailed information. We recommend that you select Component/Method Trace as the data action, since a request executes quickly and it is difficult to catch before completion. Make sure that you have selected L3 monitoring level if you choose to collect Component/Method Trace as the Data Action. When setting a trap, you can select multiple trigger conditions and alerts for each action set. Each trap is required to have at least one action but may have multiple actions set. Thread Dump is not available for CICS.

Figure 3: Set Trap Alerts

Click Add to add the alert to your trap. If you select Component/Method Trace as the Data Action for an In-flight-based trap, the method trace may contain a "-1" for Depth on some events in the method trace. In-flight transactions, by definition, are incomplete transactions, so the request stacks of those transactions will be incomplete.

Set the Default Suppression settings by entering the amount of time you want to delay alerts after the first alert is sent.
Click Next to proceed. The Name Trap page opens.

Enter a name and descriptive text for your trap.

Click Save & Activate, and the trap is set.

For details on how to configure monitoring using ITCAM for WebSphere, consult the User Guide and Operator's Guide.

For More Information

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