Manual Chapter : Health and Performance Monitoring Statistics Overview

Applies To:

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Enterprise Manager

  • 3.1.1
Manual Chapter

Overview: Health and performance monitoring statistics

When statistics data collection is enabled, Enterprise Manager stores the following information in its statistics database for each managed device on which the Data Collection Agent is installed:

  • Specifics about the managed devices, such as host name, IP address, and software version
  • Details, such as object type and name, about any enabled network objects associated with a managed device
  • Performance and health data for managed devices and associated network objects

You can use collected statistics to display standardized reports about the health and performance of managed devices in your network. This helps you identify any systems that are not performing at full capacity and assists you in determining when you should add new devices.

Important: Enterprise Manager collects statistics only from devices that have BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager licensed and provisioned. Starting with Enterprise Manager version 2.3, Enterprise Manager can also collect statistics from devices licensed and provisioned for BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager.

To start collecting statistics, you must enable the collect statistics data feature and install the Data Collection Agent.

Enabling statistics data collection

To collect statistics you must enable data collection, which is disabled by default.
Important: Due to the processing power required to collect and store statistics data, only Enterprise Manager 4000 platform and Enterprise Manager Virtual Edition (VE) support statistics data collection. If you are upgrading from a version of Enterprise Manager that is earlier than 1.7, you must re-license the system before enabling data collection.  
Tip: If Enterprise Manager is managing devices that are part of a BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) synchronization group, Enterprise Manager temporarily disrupts communication between GTM and remote BIG-IP objects while it verifies the version of the big3d agent on GTM. To reduce the impact to production traffic relying on the BIG-IP GTM infrastructure, we recommend that you enable statistics data collection during a maintenance window. Alternatively, you can configure the BIG-IP GTM system to maintain an available status for the virtual servers on each managed device while communication is briefly disrupted.
  1. On the Main tab, click Statistics > Options > Data Collection.
  2. For the Collect Statistics Data setting, select Enabled.
  3. Click the Save Changes button.
When you enable statistics collection, Enterprise Manager verifies that each managed device has a compatible version of the Data Collection Agent installed.

Installing the Data Collection Agent

When data collection is enabled, Enterprise Manager collects health and performance monitoring statistics data for each managed device in your network on which the most current version of the Data Collection Agent is installed. If a device on which statistics is enabled requires a more recent version of the Data Collection Agent, Enterprise Manager displays that device as Impaired in the device list, and indicates that an upgrade is required.
You can use the Data Collection Agent Installation wizard to update and install the Data Collection Agent.
  1. On the Main tab, click Enterprise Management > Tasks > Task List.
  2. Click the New Task button.
  3. For the Software Installation setting, click Install Data Collection Agent, and then click Next. The Data Collection Agent Installation screen opens.
  4. For the Device Filter setting, click the Devices with data collection enabled requiring update option. The screen refreshes to display the devices that require an update.
  5. Select the check box next to each device on which you want to install the most recent version of the Data Collection Agent, and click Next. The Task Options screen opens.
  6. From the Configuration Archive list, select an option to include or exclude private SSL keys in the configuration archive.
  7. From the Device Error Behavior list, select an option to specify how you want the system to proceed if an error occurs during the Data Collection Agent installation task.
  8. Click Next. The Task Review screen opens.
  9. In the Task Name field, you can type a new name to customize the name that displays in the task list.
  10. Click the Start Task button. The Task Properties screen opens, displaying the progress of the task. The task progress displays as Finished when the Data Collection Agent is installed.
Enterprise Manager starts collecting and storing health and performance monitoring statistics for the devices on which data collection is enabled and the Data Collection Agent is installed.

Specifying defaults for alert options

Setting the default behavior for alerts ensures consistent alert actions and the ability to quickly add new alerts based on these standardized options. It is important to specify default behavior for alerts before you enable the alert options.
  1. On the Main tab, click Enterprise Management > Options > Alerts.
  2. If you want Enterprise Manager to send emails when an alert is triggered, in the Email Recipient field, type the email address of the user, or the alias, that you want as the default receiver for alerts.
  3. If you want to log alert events to a syslog file:
    1. In the Remote Syslog Server Address field, type the IP address of the remote syslog server where you want to store alert event logs by default.
    2. In the Maximum History Entries field, type the maximum number of alerts that you want stored in the syslog file. If the alert history reaches the limit you set, Enterprise Manager deletes the oldest entries to create room for newer entries.
  4. Click Save Changes.