IBM Tivoli Monitoring > Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2 > Administrator's Guide > Manage historical data > Summarization and pruning configuration

IBM Tivoli Monitoring, Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2


About the Summarization and Pruning agent

This topic gives you some background information to help in planning and configuring the Summarization and Pruning agent.

The Tivoli Enterprise Portal enables you to set up summarization and pruning for selected attribute groups in the History Collection Configuration window or from the command line using tacmd histconfiguregroups (see IBM Tivoli Monitoring Command Reference). For information about setting up data connections for the warehouse proxy and the Summarization and Pruning agent, see IBM Tivoli Monitoring Installation and Setup Guide.

Plan to summarize and prune your collected data

The Summarization and Pruning agent is not configured and started during installation to give you an opportunity to configure history collection in advance for all installed monitoring agents, a task that must be performed prior to starting the Summarization and Pruning agent for the first time.

History Collection Configuration window

The History Collection Configuration window in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal has options for specifying the time period to be aggregated and the same or different time period to be pruned: Yearly, Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly, Daily, and Hourly.

Configure Summarization and Pruning Agent window

You configure the Summarization and Pruning agent itself through the Manage Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Services window. To see the utilization of resources or to determine the hours of peak loads, you can define a set of hours as shifts, for example 9 AM to 5 PM. To specify whether a particular day is a normal work day or a vacation day, you can classify the days that are not normal work days as vacation days. Be aware that defined shifts and vacation days increase the amount of data in the Tivoli Data Warehouse.

If the Tivoli Data Warehouse and all the agents that are collecting data are not in the same time zone, the Timezone Indicator identifies the time zone to use. If you chose to use the Tivoli Data Warehouse time zone, all data is changed to reflect the time zone of the Tivoli Data Warehouse. If you choose the agent's time zone, the data stays unchanged, with the original time zone for that agent.

Summarization tables in the Tivoli Data Warehouse

The following are names of the summarization tables. The x represents the original table name of the detailed data. The summarization interval that is chosen for the particular attribute group is appended to the original table name. Names can be different between the detailed data table and summarized table name due to database name length restrictions.

Yearly

x_Y

Quarterly

x_Q

Monthly

x_M

Weekly

x_W

Daily

x_D

Hourly

x_H

The table shows the names of the summarization columns in the detailed tables and what they mean. The x represents the original column name. The formula values are set by the agents and can be different for different attribute groups . Attribute names can be different between the detailed data table and summarized table due to database name length restrictions.


Summarization functions

Name Formula
Average AVG_x
Delta high HI_x
Delta low LOW_x
Delta total TOT_x
Latest (based on the time that the historical data was collected at the monitoring agent) LAT_x
Maximum MAX_x
Minimum MIN_x
Sum SUM_x

Names can be different between the detailed data table and summarized table name due to database name length restrictions.

Summarization and pruning metrics

The following example describes how the Summarization and Pruning agent calculates metrics that accumulate over time. You can use the results to manage your resources. In this example, the metric represents cache hits since last restart of server.

The total number of cache hits in the last hour is given by the Total value. The Low value represents the lowest number of cache hits in the hour based on all the detailed data values for the hour. The High value represents the highest number of cache hits in the hour based on all the detailed data values for the hour.

With these detailed data values in one hour: 9, 15, 12, 20, 22, delta-based processing has the following rules:

  • If the current value is greater than or equal to the previous value, the output equals the previous value minus the current value.

  • If the current value is less than the previous value, the output equals the current value.

  • Because 15 is greater than 9, the output equals 6.

  • Because 12 is less than 15, the output equals 12.

  • Because 20 is greater than 12, the output equals 8.

  • Because 22 is greater than 20, the output equals 2.

  • The TOT_ value is 28, which is the total of outputs.

  • The LOW_ value is 2, which is the lowest of outputs.

  • The HI_ value is 12, which is the highest of outputs.

Null values in tables and charts of summarized and pruned data

If you see null as the value of a table cell or chart point, it means that no value was stored in the Tivoli Data Warehouse. This happens when values that were identified as invalid are reported from a monitoring agent for a given summarization period. The agent support files might have been upgraded or some data cannot be computed on the summarized tables (for instance, counter and delta-based values cannot be calculated if only one value is present).

For example, assume that an invalid value for a particular attribute is -1. If the agent reports -1 for all the collection intervals (1, 5, 15, or 30 minutes; 1 hour; 1 day) up to the point when the summarization and pruning computation is done for a given summarization period (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly), then there is no data to perform calculations on and a null is written for the given summarization.

Capacity planning suggestions for historical data collection on the Tivoli Data Warehouse

Disk capacity planning is a prediction of the amount of disk space to be consumed for each attribute group whose historical data is being collected. Required disk storage is an important factor to consider when you are defining data collection rules and your strategy for historical data collection.

For more information about performance tuning for your DB2 database, go to the IBM Integrated Service Management Library and search for part or all of this phrase: Relational database design and performance tuning for DB2 database servers. For more detailed information on capacity planning and scaling of the Tivoli Data Warehouse, see IBM Tivoli Monitoring Installation and Setup Guide.

Summarization after upgrading agent support

After support for an updated product has been applied to the portal sever, it is possible to get a request error message about a missing or unknown column name in the view's status bar after you set a time span with Use summarized data selected.

The resolution is to wait to view the summarized data until after the next scheduled summarization and pruning procedure has taken place. If need be, the summarization and pruning can be rescheduled to run sooner. More information is provided in IBM Tivoli Monitoring Installation and Setup Guide and in the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Agent User's Guide for your product.


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Summarization and pruning configuration

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