IBM Tivoli Monitoring > Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2 > Administrator's Guide > Prepare your dashboard environment
IBM Tivoli Monitoring, Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2
Create a connection to the IBM Tivoli Monitoring dashboard data provider
To retrieve metrics about your managed systems and situation events from the monitoring dashboard application in IBM Dashboard Application Services Hub, such as IBM Infrastructure Management Dashboards for Servers, or IBM Infrastructure Management Dashboards for VMware, or in custom dashboards, first have a connection that is established to the IBM Tivoli Monitoring dashboard data provider that is on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server. This connection procedure is one that you do not need to repeat unless the configuration of the portal server changes.
Connections are defined in the Dashboard Application Services Hub console. Before you create the connection, you must ensure the following steps have already been performed:
- Ensure that the dashboard data provider is enabled in the portal server configuration. See "Verifying the dashboard data provider is enabled" in the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Installation and Setup Guide.
If the IBM Tivoli Monitoring environment is configured for hot standby, you should configure a domain override value for the dashboard data provider in the portal server configuration before creating a connection to the dashboard data provider. The domain override value ensures the data provider's connection ID value does not change when the portal server is reconfigured to connect to the standby hub monitoring server.
- You must log into the Dashboard Application Services Hub as a user who has been assigned the administrator and iscadmins Dashboard Application Services Hub roles. These roles are required in order to create and manage connections. For information on assigning these roles to users, see the Jazz for Service Management Administrator's Guide in the Jazz for Service Management Information Center.
If you plan to use single sign-on, you must also be logged into the Dashboard Application Services Hub as a user who is a member of the federated LDAP user registry shared by the dashboard hub server and by the portal server when you create the connection. For additional steps that must be preformed before creating a data provider connection that uses single sign-on, see Set up a monitoring dashboard environment with single sign-on and with per user authorization controls.
- If you plan to use HTTPS as the protocol connection, you must configure TLS/SSL between Dashboard Application Services Hub and the portal server before creating the data provider connection. See Configure TLS/SSL communication between Dashboard Application Services Hub and the dashboard data provider.
Tip: You can create the connection with HTTP protocol for your initial testing. Once your environment is working, then you can configure TLS/SSL between the servers, delete the connection, and re-add it with the HTTPS protocol.
- To define a connection to the dashboard data provider, you must know which network protocol is required, the host name and port number for the portal server, credentials to authenticate with the portal server, and whether single sign-on should be used.
Procedure
- In the Dashboard Application Services Hub console, click Console Settings and select Connections (under General).
- Click Create new remote provider. Fields are displayed for specifying the connection to the dashboard data provider.
- In the Protocol field, select the application protocol for connecting to the portal server computer: HTTP, HTTPS-SSL (Secure Socket Layer), or HTTPS-TLS (Transport Layer Security).
- Click inside the Host name field and enter the IP address or the fully qualified hostname of the portal server computer.
If you plan to enable single sign-on for your dashboard environment, you must enter the fully qualified hostname of the portal server. The hostname is included in the LTPA token that is sent from Dashboard Application Services Hub to the portal server so that it can verify that the request came from a server in the same Internet or Intranet domain.
- Click inside the Port field and enter the port number for the portal server: 15200 for HTTP or 15201 for HTTPS. If using an HTTP server for load balancing between Dashboard Application Services Hub and multiple portal servers, enter your HTTP server port number, 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS.
- If your configuration has a firewall between the Dashboard Application Services Hub Server and the portal server, select the Connection goes through a firewall check box and enter the fully qualified host name and port number (the default port is 16324) of the computer where Dashboard Application Services Hub is installed.
- In the Name and Password fields, enter a user name and password that can authenticate with the portal server.
If you are setting up a basic dashboard environment without single sign-on and per user authorization, enter a user who has been granted the Tivoli Enterprise Portal authorization described in the first table in Set up a basic monitoring environment without single sign-on and without per user authorization controls. This user will be used to create the connection and to send all subsequent requests to the dashboard data provider on behalf of your dashboard users.
If you are setting up a dashboard environment with single sign-on and per user authorization, enter your username and password. Your username and password will be used to send the request to the portal server to get the list of available data providers on the portal server. After that point, all subsequent requests to the data provider will include the name of the user who is logged into Dashboard Application Services Hub.
- Click Search to populate the table with the data providers that are on the portal server computer.
- Click the radio button for the dashboard data provider to select it and complete the remaining fields.
- Edit the entries in the following fields:
- Name is the same as the original data provider name. You can leave this as is.
- Description is the same as the original data provider description. You can leave this as is.
- Provider ID is, by default, initially itm.hub_monitoring_server_name.portal_server_host_name for dashboard data provider connections. If a domain override value was configured during portal server configuration, the override value replaces the hub_monitoring_server_name portion of the original ID string.
You must change the Provider ID to ITMSD if you are using one of the following applications:
- IBM Infrastructure Management Dashboards for Servers provided with IBM Tivoli Monitoring
- IBM Infrastructure Management Dashboards for VMware
- IBM Infrastructure Management Capacity Planner for VMware
- IBM Infrastructure Management Capacity Planner for PowerVM
If you are not using any of the dashboard applications listed above, but have installed dashboard applications for other monitoring agents, check the documentation for those agents to determine if their dashboards require you to use ITMSD. If you are not using one of the dashboard applications mentioned above, but might in the future, or if you are not sure what Provider ID to use, best practice is to use ITMSD.
- Select the Use the credentials of the user (requires SSO Configuration) check box if you are setting up a dashboard environment that uses single sign-on and per user authorization. When this option is checked, the LTPA token of the user who is logged into the Dashboard Application Services Hub is included in requests to the dashboard data provider when retrieving monitoring data.
- After you are finished defining the connection, click OK to save it and connect to the dashboard data provider.
Results
The connection is made to the data provider and the connections table Status column shows the progress: Pending, Working, Failed, No data sources, or Not configured.If an error occurs when creating the data provider connection, see the Troubleshooting Guide.
See Set up a basic monitoring environment without single sign-on and without per user authorization controls or Set up a monitoring dashboard environment with single sign-on and with per user authorization controls for additional steps to perform.
Parent topic:
Prepare your dashboard environment