IBM Tivoli Monitoring > Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2 > Installation Guides > Installation Guide > Pre-deployment phase > Understanding Tivoli Monitoring and your network > Determine where to place the Tivoli Monitoring components
IBM Tivoli Monitoring, Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2
Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Agents
Monitoring agents are installed on the system or subsystem that requires data collection and monitoring. Monitoring agents are responsible for gathering data on various properties, or attributes, of a monitored system, subsystem, application, or database, the managed system, and for sending that data to the monitoring servers.
Monitoring agents test for specified conditions, or situations, by periodically comparing attribute values against specified thresholds. When the tested values match or exceed the thresholds, monitoring agents notify the monitoring server, and alert are displayed in the portal client.
The following scenarios prompt the monitoring server to gather data samples from the agents:
- Opening or refreshing a workspace that has data views (table or chart views):
When a Tivoli Enterprise Portal workspace is opened or refreshed, the portal server sends a sampling request to the hub monitoring server. The request is passed directly to the monitoring agent, if there is a direct connection, or indirectly through the remote monitoring server to which the monitoring agent connects. The monitoring agent takes a data sampling and returns the results through the monitoring server and portal server to the portal workspace.
- The sampling interval for a situation (a test taken at your monitored systems):
A situation can have a sampling interval as frequent as once every 30 seconds or as seldom as once every three months. When the interval expires, data samples are requested from the agent in which the returned values are compared with the condition described in the situation. If the values meet the condition, an event is generated and corresponding alerts or automation are initiated.
- Monitor agents are configured to collect historical data:
The collection of historical data can be configured to send the data to the remote monitoring server at regular intervals or, transfer data collections from the agent to the Warehouse Proxy Agent at hourly or daily intervals. If firewall restrictions are disabled or minimal, configure all of the agents to transfer directly to Warehouse Proxy Agent. If firewall security is an issue, you can either use the firewall gateway or place the Warehouse Proxy Agent on the remote monitoring server where a network connection is already established.
Typically, there are no unique considerations regarding the placement of monitoring agents. The main consideration is whether to store historical data on the agent or on the remote monitoring server. For environments with slow network connections between the agent and the remote monitoring server, storing the data on the monitoring server spreads out the network load of transmitting the historical data. Doing this places a higher demand on the remote monitoring server, and effectively lowers the number of agents that can be managed from the remote monitoring server.
For short-term historical requests of agent data less than 24 hours, the request does not have to cross the slow link, but this savings is offset by the remote monitoring server having to read a larger amount of data from disk (from all agents of that agent type connected to the remote monitoring server) to find the results for the desired agent. For environments with network events that cause agents to failover to a secondary monitoring server, this option may be a poor choice. When an agent fails over, it loses access to the short-term historical data because the data is located on the primary remote monitoring server and the agent is connected to the backup remote monitoring server.
By installing the operating system agent on the system first, the remaining agents can be deployed remotely using the Add agent capabilities.
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Determine where to place the Tivoli Monitoring components