IBM Tivoli Monitoring > Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2 > Installation Guides > Agent Installation Guides > Linux Agent Installation Guide > Agent installation and configuration
IBM Tivoli Monitoring, Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2
Naming instances
If you have multiple instances of a monitoring agent, you must decide how to name the monitoring agents. This name is intended to uniquely identify that monitoring agent
The agent's default name is composed of three qualifiers:
- Optional instance name
- Machine network host name
- Agent product node type
An agent name truncation problem can occur when the network domain name is included in the network host name portion of the agent name. For example, instead of just the host name myhost1 being used, the resulting host name might be myhost1.acme.north.prod.com. Inclusion of the network domain name causes the agent name in the example above to expand to SERVER1:myhost1.acme.north.prod.com:KXX. This resulting name is 39 characters long. It is truncated to 32 characters resulting in the name SERVER1:myhost1.acme.north.prod.
The agent name truncation is only a problem if there is more than one monitoring agent on the same system. In this case, the agent name truncation can result in collisions between agent products attempting to register using the same truncated name value. When truncated agent names collide on the same system, this can lead to Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server problems with corrupted EIB tables. The agent name collision in the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server might cause a registered name to be associated with the wrong product.
In general, create names that are short but meaningful within your environment. Use the following guidelines:
- Each name must be unique. One name cannot match another monitoring agent name exactly.
- Each name must begin with an alpha character.
- Do not use blanks or special characters, including $, #, and @.
- Each name must be between 2 and 32 characters in length.
- Monitor agent naming is case-sensitive on all operating systems.
Parent topic:
Agent installation and configuration