Reflex - Operations and Service Management Facility
Reflex is in use at many of the worlds most demanding Financial and Telecommunications sites and is the ideal, single replacement for OMF™, VIEWPOINT™, VHS™ and other HP NonStop monitoring products.
Since the product is not reliant on the MEASURE subsystem or heavy polling software, CPU usage is extremely low.
Reflex provides a concurrently accessible view or your entire HP NonStop estate (both network and supporting Guardian and OSS subsystems) from an integrated, graphical interface. EMS event alerts are mapped directly to the appropriate NonStop object component, e.g. XPNET station, line, batch job, CPU, disk, process, TCP/IP listner, MQ queue, Enscribe or SQL file providing both clear and audited troubleshooting capability to the Operations Bridge. Click here for more in-depth Reflex product information.
Reflex 80:20 is both a technical and a business tool because of its ability to :
- Provide early warning of business process vulnerability - applications and hardware
- Automatically escalate faults and restart critical business processes
- Provide a tool that can be used by non-technical staff
- Cover a heterogeneous environment to deal with connected devices and networks
- Provide comprehensive HP NonStop component information and health for supporting subsystems from a single graphical view without requiring TACL command prompt syntax
- Provide a wide range of reactions to alerts via SNMP, Mobile SMS, Pager and E-mail
- Route key events to enterprise managers (e.g. HP Operations Center™ using Smart Plug-In, Tivoli™ using TEC Adapter and logfile approaches and BMC Performance Manager™ using the PatrolCLI utility)
- Convert 512 text events and application text messages to fully tokenised EMS for Open System Services (OSS), WebSphere MQ and Guardian processes
- Provide auto-detection of and monitoring provision for the BASE24™ XPNET management layer, i.e. stations, lines, links, processes, devices and XPNET nodes
- Provide the industry’s lowest overhead on CPU utilisation - just 1%
- Provide system performance measurement of CPUs, Disks, TCP/IP, X25 and Processes including missing, looping, busy and suspect processes
- Install quickly with self-checking installation macro and then autodetect major HP NonStop subsystems for fast implementation, e.g. PATHWAYs
- Reduce maintenance and investment required
- Efficient production and presentation of Management Information Reports without affecting the performance of the HP NonStop server
- Reflex ships with several utilities that cater for bulk configuration of process / file monitoring, import / export of reaction / task configuration to allow easy replication of configuration across multiple HP NonStop nodes
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Reflex HP NonStop Monitoring and Management includes the following:
- All HP NonStop files (including object, edit, ENSCRIBE and NonStop SQL) and comprehensive file attribute checking (including; if licensed, %full, number of records, broken, corrupt, timestamp change etc.) - includes a **status agent. Entire subvolumes can also be checked at a nominated poll period.
- (** a status agent provides comprehensive information about the requested object / component including current status. This is obtained from the appropriate subsystem typically using a SPI or PATHSEND call.)
- File arrival monitoring from remote systems based on calendar periods. This module allows users to monitor for the remote delivery of a file(s) to a nominated HP NonStop subvolume and that it has the correct attributes set, e.g. timestamp, EOF, RWEP security and owner and so on.
- All Event Management Service (EMS) events for both system and application.
- Aleri ATLAS™ global banking technology.
- HP NonStop hardware component monitoring using generic AUTODISC utility, e.g. tapes.
- ASYNC lines with automatic detection and status agent.
- BASE24™ XPNET including autodetection and status agent for stations, lines, links, processes, devices and XPNET nodes. This module does not constantly poll the XPNET layer and provides quiet, CPU friendly monitoring using advised approaches from BASE24 technicians.
- CPUs performance including a status agent for viewing configuration information (e.g. TLEs configured, high / low pin PCB counts etc.)
- Disks Status Agent (also Storage Management Foundation (SMF) virtual disks), monitoring of individual %full, cache hits and so on for both virtual and physical HP NonStop disks.
Also a comprehensive status agent for viewing disk configuration, e.g. disk paths. Individual Disk I/O can be monitored and each Disk can be monitored against specific values.
- EXPAND line monitoring. Monitor EXPAND events for Expand lines & paths and also Expand processes such as $NCP, $ZEXP (via Heartbeat).
- HP NonStop network clustering.
- MultiBatch batch scheduler (PowerPoint - 1.6MB) including alerting, autodetection and status agent (both Guardian and OSS compliant).
- NetBatch™ job scheduler including alerting, automatic detection and status agent.
- Open System Services (OSS) monitoring for UNIX image of HP NonStop.
- Open System Management (OSM) monitoring.
- PATHWAY monitoring including autodetection and two status agents. These modules provide an array of monitoring functions for checking TERMINALS, OBJECTS, SERVERS, TCPs, PROGRAMS as well as complete configuration checking (using SPI) including DEBUG ON/OFF, number of supporting processes defined, HOMETERM / program not present, server running from a ZZBI file, server FROZEN and so on.
- Processes including status agent (also monitors missing, looping, suspect (e.g. in INSPECT) and busy processes). All process types supported (TNS, TNS/R and TNS/E running in Guardian or OSS). Detailed Status Agent included that can help in determining the cause of problems by showing information such as files opened, procedure call trace etc. Also provides the ability to start a Measurement.
- Remote Data Facility (RDF) monitoring. DRNET can be catered for by parsing DRCOM output.
- SPOOLCOM component monitoring including autodetection and status agent (also includes monitoring of the number of jobs in the spooler, via JOBSLOTS).
- TCP/IP including autodetection and status agent (version 4 and 6) for monitoring TCP/IP process, subnet, route, listner and telserv components.
- Transaction Management Facility (TMF) monitoring including status agent (hung, long running transactions, datavols, tape media, auditdump, audittrials).
- TAPE mount requests.
- WebSphere MQ™ (IBM MQ series) including autodetection and status agent (version 5.1, 5.3 and 5.3.1.4 on OSS).
- X25 including autodetection and status agent.
- OSI/MHS status agent and autodetection. Users having OSI/MHS subsystems can utilise the Reflex 80:20 OSI/MHS Autodiscovery module to populate the OSI/MHS stack programmatically for MTAs, APPLs, CUGs, DLISTs, DLISTMEMBERs and ROUTEs and subsequently request status and configuration information for each object.
Also includes :
- Graphical (and audio monitoring) high-level HP NonStop system node display (network monitor) and status monitor display (per node). All graphical displays are secured and concurrently accessible.
- Dashboard for HP NonStop performance monitoring.
- Comprehensive EMS event viewer using object filters, filter tables and nominated collectors. Full search and EMS token breakdown and cause / effect / recovery included.
- Text to EMS conversion (Gateway) including 512 text events generated to EMS.
- Text to EMS conversion also for WebSphere MQ and OSS (MQ EMS Gateway).
- EMS event statistical analysis and graphing by event number, SSID and version tokens (Discovery).
- Enterprise manager delivery of EMS exception alerts (TIVOLI™ TEC Adapter and logfile, HP OpenView Operations™ Smart Plug-In (SPI) (now HP Operations Center™), BMC Performance Manager™ (formerly Patrol™) using the PatrolCLI utility.
- MEASURE on demand for processes and files (within Dashboard). Measure is not used by Reflex, in day-to-day monitoring of the HP NonStop systems. This ensures that CPU utilisation is kept to a minimum. Only authorised users can invoke a Measure request on demand.
- Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps can be generated and received.
- Object Monitoring Facility (OMF) conversion to Reflex.
- Mobile SMS paging.
- Email alerting.
- Task Automation (TaskMaster). Tasks can be manually invoked by authorised users from the Reflex Status Monitor screen or invoked automatically on component failure.
- Component rules analysis for SLA service monitoring (Service Monitor).
- Comprehensive EMS console event viewing and filtering (Console). This module also provides an EMSA type breakdown of user selected EMS events to show all message tokens.
- Includes lean communications software, ITL's FastPipe for quick and efficient Windows to HP NonStop data relay.
- Security classes and profiles to prevent unauthorised access.
- Includes a business-level, read-only logon.
- Reflex configuration reports.
- Audible as well as visual alerts are catered for in Reflex Status Monitor. Sound files can be swapped on-site as required.
Reflex 80:20 is a NonStop, Fault Tolerant application
Click here for sample screenshots of the Reflex product.
Hardware and software pre-requisites for the Reflex product are detailed below:
• HP NonStop (ServerNet or Integrity platforms)
• Guardian D38 Operating System (or above)
• TMF
• SQL runtime system (SQL/MP runtime), or alternatively, NonStop SQL product
• Pathway (TS/MP)
• TCP/IP
• Non-RDF/DRNET Audited Volume *
* It is recommended that Reflex is installed on a Non-RDF/DRNET Audited Volume. If this is a cause for concern, please contact Insider Technologies Ltd to discuss further.
Reflex is installed using a menu driven TACL macro for easy deployment. The macro will perform checks and output the results of each stage of the Reflex product install so that if problems are encountered they can be resolved easily.
Windows Platform for GUI Install:
• Modern Pentium PC Specification
• 32Mb on-board RAM
• 20Mb free hard disk space
• Minimum 17” monitor recommended
• Graphics Resolution: 1027 x 768 x 16 minimum
• Windows XP, Vista, 7
* For escalation of HP NonStop issues to enterprise management solutions, email or mobile SMS, a dedicated Windows box is required.
Latest News :
Reflex 4.7M released
H06.20 accredited
Extensions summary:
- Disk Monitoring - (I/O Times)
- TCP/IP (Subnet M-State monitoring)
- File Monitoring (Increased limits to numbers of files)
- Web based / Java front end development underway
Insider Technologies has successfully completed a HP NonStop Blade accreditation test exercise at the HP offices at Wood Street, London. The testing took place between April 21st and 24th 2009.
The ITL product successfully accredited was ;
Reflex
The mainframe class monitoring and management software suite for the HP NonStop environment.
The hp NonStop 'Blade Ready' version of the software is ;
Reflex, version 4.7L2
The software is available from May 1st 2009.
The version of the Blade operating system that the product was verified against was ;
J06.04.02 on a HP Integrity NonStop NB50000C Blade System
For further information about the Insider Technologies Blade accreditation program, please contact the Insider Help Desk on +44 (0) 161 876 6606 or use our contact page.
Reflex 80:20 Version 4.7M – Available Q1, 2010
Individual Disk Monitoring (I/O Times):
Individual Disk I/O monitoring is now available, where this facility can obtain the count of timings that I/O took on each Disk (Primary, Backup, Mirror and Mirror Backup Paths), polling each Disk at regular intervals.
If a specified monitoring value is exceeded then an EMS event is issued to alert HP NonStop personnel of the problem. When the Disk Paths return to specified I/O levels, then a subsequent EMS event is raised to clear the alert. All events can be forwarded to matching Disk Objects in Reflex Status Monitor, or escalated as with other types of Reflex monitoring and alerting.
Disk I/O monitoring continues to take place for all Disk Paths, even if half of a mirrored volume is down and there is no need to run Measure Counters to obtain this information; you just need to specify the I/O values and polling period and let Reflex alert you to any issues with Disk I/O.
For further details on Reflex Disk monitoring, please visit the following link.
TCP/IP extensions for 4.7M:
Reflex 80:20 provides an auto-detection utility and status agent for comprehensive, real-time monitoring of the HP NonStop TCP/IP subsystem (both TCP/IP v4 and TCP/IP v6), where Process, Telserv, Route, Listner and Subnet components can all be monitored.
If a TCP/IP subsystem component fails, then an EMS event will be issued with the option to forward it to a variety of escalation tools, e.g.:
• Reflex Status Monitor
• Mobile SMS
• Email
• Enterprise Managers: Tivoli, HP Operations Center, BMC Performance Manager
• Restore the failed TCP/IP component via a Reflex TASK (automatically, or by Operator intervention)
Graphical TCP/IP object trees can be generated automatically for instant monitoring or can be constructed and tailored by the user, grouping appropriate components together.
EMS alerts can be mapped directly against each graphical TCP/IP object and users can also request object detail where the equivalent SCF data is graphically represented.
From release 4.7M, TCP/IP Subnet M-State Monitoring has been included, where Reflex can monitor the M-State flag for autodiscovered Subnets, which can assist in identifying a problem with TCP/IP v6 Failover.
If a Subnet M-State flag is identified as DOWN, then an EMS event is issued to alert HP NonStop personnel of the problem. When the M-State flag returns to normal, then a subsequent EMS event is raised to clear the alert. All events can be forwarded to matching Subnet Objects in Reflex Status Monitor, or escalated as with other types of Reflex monitoring and alerting.
For further details on Reflex TCP/IP monitoring, please visit the following link.
File-Metrics extensions for 4.7M:
The Reflex File Metrics monitoring facility can track a list of nominated files or subvolumes (including SQL, ENSCRIBE and Edit files) where numerous file attributes can be monitored and rules configured, so that if the monitored file / subvolume is not in a ‘healthy’ state, then a Reflex EMS event will be raised. As with TCP/IP monitoring, these alerts can be forwarded to a variety of destinations.
Some examples where users can benefit from Reflex File Metrics monitoring are:
• File is Corrupt, Broken or Crashed Open
• File has lost its Audit flag
• Timestamp of file has changed since last poll
• Saveabend files found in monitored subvolume
• File has lost its SQL Compiled status
• File no longer exists
• File upon arrival does not meet certain criteria, e.g. timestamp or security attributes are incorrect
From release 4.7M, several enhancements have been made to allow for increased flexibility, improved memory management and increased limits to the number of files that can be monitored.
For further details of Reflex File monitoring, please visit the following link.