IT-Conductor Latest Features Q3-2024

  

Welcome to the Q3 edition of IT-Conductor's latest SOAP (Service Orchestration and Automation Platform) features. In this edition, we focus on key areas such as performance, resource utilization, system integrity, and communication monitoring. We've also included a link to our recent webinar showcasing our newest product, IT-Conductor FLUX™, at the end of this post. Let’s dive in and explore all the details!

1. SAP Workload Monitoring - Top Transactions

Effective monitoring of SAP workloads is essential for maintaining optimal system performance and resource utilization and ensuring critical business processes run smoothly. One of the key aspects of this is tracking top transactions—those that consume the most system resources, such as CPU, memory, and I/O. Monitoring these top transactions not only provides insight into the current system performance but also helps identify bottlenecks and areas for optimization.

Transactions can have a significant impact on system performance, especially in high-traffic environments. If certain transactions are consuming disproportionate resources, they can cause performance degradation, affecting overall system stability and responsiveness. To address this, IT-Conductor provides an easy way to monitor top transactions in your SAP systems. This allows you to identify trends and potential issues early on, investigate the underlying causes of performance bottlenecks, and improve performance optimization.

The new IT-Conductor SAP workload monitoring utilizes the same data as ST03 and has capabilities similar to SAP EWA. Some key metrics you can track with this tool include response time (the amount of time it takes to complete a transaction), CPU utilization (the percentage of CPU resources consumed by a transaction), memory usage, database I/O, network traffic, and more.

IT-Conductor alert mechanism can also be enabled to notify relevant teams of critical performance issues when certain thresholds are exceeded, and custom reports can be delivered to designated recipients. This helps identify and analyze transactions that consume the most resources, allowing teams to proactively address potential bottlenecks and ensure smooth operations.

SAP Workload Monitoring in IT-Conductor

Figure 1: SAP Workload Monitoring in IT-Conductor

The top transactions workload view allows you to analyze long-running transactions and individual transaction performance, including response times and resource consumption. This is helpful for a deeper dive into specific transactions that may be causing performance issues. It also provides a snapshot of detailed data on the performance of various transactions in the system, such as transaction execution times, CPU consumption, and database processing times.

SAP workload monitoring with IT-Conductor will benefit system administrators who would like to keep an eye on resource-hogging transactions and performance bottlenecks. It also proves to be a useful tool when optimizing system capacity, planning for scaling based on real transaction workload data, and improving the end-user experience.

2. Object Age Monitoring Applied to Oracle DBVerify Job

Universally, there is an important need to track the age of application objects such as jobs, queues, documents, files, etc. IT-Conductor solves this problem with the Object Age Monitoring feature, which can track the life of each object and alert, notify, and report for compliance.

In SAP systems, database health and integrity are critical for ensuring seamless operations and safeguarding business data. IT-Conductor has extended its Oracle database monitoring capabilities to include Object Age monitoring. A case in point is the monitoring of DBVerify within the SAP Database Planning Calendar (DB13). This feature tracks the age of the last successful DBVerify job, detects job failures, and triggers alerts in the event of a failure.

DBVerify is an essential tool for validating database integrity and detecting corruption in data files. The Oracle DBVERIFY tool can be used for two types of verifications: backup tape readability and database block consistency. This allows for early error detection, preventing program termination in applications accessing corrupted blocks.

VerifyDB Monitoring in IT-Conductor

Figure 2: VerifyDB Monitoring in IT-Conductor

Benefits of Using IT-Conductor for DBVerify Monitoring

  • Automated job monitoring: IT-Conductor automatically detects scheduled DBVerify jobs and tracks their execution status.

  • Proactive issue detection: IT-Conductor's real-time monitoring capabilities enable early detection of DBVerify job failures, preventing potential data integrity issues from escalating.

  • Historical job data: IT-Conductor provides historical job data, allowing administrators to review trends in DBVerify job execution, success rates, and any errors over time.

With this latest feature, IT-Conductor customers running their SAP systems on the Oracle database can now benefit from an intelligent, automated method to track and monitor DBVerify jobs scheduled in SAP's DB13, ensuring continuous database health monitoring.

3. SAPOffice Send Records Monitoring

IT-Conductor unveils SAPOffice monitoring to track the success and failure of messages sent via SAPOffice, ensuring communication reliability within SAP systems.

SAPOffice Monitoring in IT-Conductor

Figure 3: SAPOffice Monitoring in IT-Conductor

With IT-Conductor's SAPOffice monitoring, you can track the status of documents sent through SAPOffice, enabling users to monitor outgoing messages, emails, and documents to ensure successful transmission. The tool provides insights into the sending status—whether successful, pending, or failed—and generates alerts when predefined message types fail, allowing you to proactively address communication issues. This functionality is essential for maintaining smooth communication workflows within SAP systems.

This enhanced feature helps streamline document delivery processes, improve efficiency, and enhance overall communication within your organization.

4. Host Agent Log Monitoring

IT-Conductor’s Host Agent Log Monitoring is a versatile and generic solution designed to monitor any SAP Host Agent logs. By specifying a log name pattern, this feature automatically identifies the most recent log files, extracts the latest records, and parses them using regex patterns to generate actionable alerts.

One of the key strengths of Host Agent Log Monitoring is its flexibility. It can be applied across different log types, offering a powerful mechanism for tracking specific events, errors, or anomalies that need attention.

Key Features of Host Agent Log Monitoring

  1. Automatic Log Identification: Based on a predefined log naming pattern, the most recent log file can be retrieved. This ensures that the system always processes the latest data, eliminating the need for manual log inspection.

  2. Regex-Based Parsing: Once the log file is retrieved, the tool parses its content using regular expressions. This allows users to define custom patterns, such as specific error codes or keywords, ensuring highly targeted monitoring. For example, it can look for a specific pattern in the log files to detect failed connection attempts to the SAP Gateway.

  3. Alert Generation: The tool generates alerts based on user-defined conditions. Alerts can be configured to trigger based on a count threshold (e.g., repeated error messages) or individual log entries (e.g., specific failed connections). These alerts can also include detailed information, such as the hostname, error details, and timestamps, directly from the log.

  4. Preventing Duplicate Alerts: Host Agent Log Monitoring has built-in mechanisms to avoid redundant alerts. For instance, if multiple failed connection attempts occur from the same host, it ensures that unique alerts are sent, reducing alert fatigue.

  5. Customizable for Various Use Cases: The real power of this solution lies in its versatility. The log monitoring process can be applied to any type of host agent log, making it applicable to a wide range of use cases. Whether monitoring SAP Gateway ACL entries or tracking performance anomalies, users can tailor the system to meet their specific needs.

Host Agent Log Monitoring in IT-Conductor

Figure 4: Host Agent Log Monitoring

Use Case: SAP Gateway ACL Monitoring

A practical example of applying this solution is monitoring the SAP Gateway ACL through Host Agent Log Monitoring. In this scenario, the Host Agent monitors SAP gateway logs for failed connection attempts, such as unauthorized external applications trying to connect to SAP. The system pulls the latest gateway log files, searches for a specified pattern in the logs, and generates alerts based on failed connection attempts.

In this case, IT-Conductor generates alerts for denied connections, allowing system administrators to respond proactively.

The Host Agent Log Monitoring facility is not limited to SAP gateway log monitoring. Its flexibility means it can be extended to any system logs that follow a structured pattern.

Host Agent Log Monitoring by IT-Conductor is a flexible, powerful tool designed to monitor various log files. Automating the log retrieval process, parsing log entries, and generating detailed alerts helps organizations stay on top of critical events and issues, enhancing their overall system performance and security.

News

We first announced IT-Conductor FLUX™, a revolutionary SAP-native PCA tool, last August 9, 2024, and officially launched it on a LIVE webinar held last September 5, 2024.