Enterprise Monitoring SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform with Zabbix – Part 1

[shankarsgs]

Any server crashes causes disruption for your users and also costs time and money to fix. Hence, monitoring your server is important so that you can act on any issue in a proactive manner . SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform  4.0 (and above) include provisions for monitoring that you can use for individual services like APS, IFRS, OFRS, etc.. But when the CMS is down or an Apache service has exited, or even if you want to monitor beyond that, SAP BusinessObjects monitoring might not be your best solution. This calls for Enterprise Third Party Monitoring solutions. In this blog, we will see how to use Zabbix, an Enterprise class Open Source Monitoring solution, to monitor SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform.

Before we move on, let’s make sure you’ve installed and configured a running Zabbix server. We will be using Zabbix version 2.4. You can refer to Zabbix documentation for installation and configuration: https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.4/.

Installing Zabbix Agent

The first step is to install and configure Zabbix agent in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform Server host. Take a look at the following steps to install Zabbix agent in SAP BI Platform.

• Download Zabbix agent to the server from this link: http://www.zabbix.com/downloads/2.4.4/zabbix_agents_2.4.4.win.zip
• Extract the zip files and copy the contents to the filepath C:\zabbix
• Open the file win.conf present inside the conf folder and edit the following parameters:

Parameter	Value
EnableRemoteCommands	1
Server	<IP of Zabbix Server>
ServerActive	<IP of Zabbix Server>
Hostname	<Hostname of BI Platform Server>

• Start the service by running the following command inside the bin folder and respective Win32/Win64 (preferred) folders

zabbix_agentd.exe –config C:\zabbix \conf\zabbix_agentd.win.conf –start

• Now, Zabbix agent will be installed in the SAP BI Platform Server host. To confirm the installation, look for an entry called Zabbix Agent in msc folder.

There are other configurations that are used to auto discover hosts in Zabbix and configure advanced options and security. These are beyond the scope of the blog. You can find them in the Zabbix documentation: https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.4/

Configuring Zabbix Server for BI Platform

The next step is to configure Zabbix server to start monitoring the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform host. All of these actions are done using the web based user interface of Zabbix.

Creating Host group

Host group contains all the BI Platform hosts that are to be monitored. Follow the steps below to create a Host group.

• Navigate to Host groups section under Configuration tab and click on ‘Create host group’ from the right corner

• Enter the group name as SAP BI Platform and click on Save to create the group

Adding host to Host group

Now, let us create a host as shown in the following steps and  add the created BI platform host to our host group (created in the previous step).

• Navigate to Host section under Configuration tab and click on ‘Create Host’ from the right corner

• Enter the host details in the appropriate fields (Hostname, Visible Name, Agent IP Interface). Add the corresponding Host group from Other groups to In groups. Leave the port settings as default. Now, set the Status field as ‘Enabled’ and click ‘Save’.

Defining Template for SAP BI Platform

Templates host the set of applications and related configuration for monitoring them. The steps below show how to create a template for SAP BI Platform. We will add this template to our previously created Hosts group.

• Navigate to Template section under Configuration tab and click on ‘Create template’ from the right corner

• Enter the template name as BI_PLATFORM_TEMPLATE and add the corresponding group (SAP BI PLATFORM group) and the host (SAP BO SERVER) we created from previous step.

Now we have created and defined a template to the host. In the next series of this blog, we will define the monitoring conditions and the actions for this template which you can read here Enterprise Monitoring SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform with Zabbix – Part 2

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