IBM i monitoring

Deprecation notice

This extension documentation is now deprecated and will no longer be updated. We recommend using the new IBM i extension for improved functionality and support.

Learn how to monitor IBM i (formerly known as AS/400 or iSeries) using the IBM i ActiveGate extension.

Starting with Dynatrace OneAgent and ActiveGate version 1.231, we are upgrading the Extension Framework (also referred to as the plugins framework) from Python 3.6 to Python 3.8.

  • Consequences: Some Dynatrace extensions running in your environment may stop working and require redeployment of a new version prepared for Python 3.8.
  • Symptoms:
    • No data is provided for affected metrics on dashboards, alerts, and custom device pages populated by the affected extension metrics.
    • Extension logs display errors. Most often this will manifest itself as Python ModuleNotFoundError in the PluginAgent log.
    • Sometimes the Python virtual machine crashes.
  • Impact: This issue affects only those extensions that use native libraries called from Python code distributed with the extension.

For remediation details, see Dynatrace Extensions.

Prerequisites

  • Dynatrace 1.170+

  • Environment ActiveGate 1.170+

    • ActiveGate version 1.175+ is ready to accept and run extensions. If you are running an earlier version of ActiveGate, see Install ActiveGate plugin module for instructions on installing the plugin module.
    • For Environment ActiveGate installation instructions, see Dynatrace ActiveGate.

  • IBM i (formerly iSeries/ AS400) 7.2+ host

  • An ODBC driver manager installed on your ActiveGate host

  • DB2 for i ODBC driver installed on the ActiveGate

  • Open ports between ActiveGate and IBM i server:

    Service

    Non-SSL Port

    SSL Port

    Server Mapper

    449

    *

    License Management

    8470

    9470

    Database Access

    8471

    9471

    Data Queues

    8472

    9472

    Remote Command

    8475

    9475

    Signon Verification

    8476

    9476

ODBC driver manager installation (Linux only)

If your ActiveGate host is running on Linux, install the unixODBC driver manager according to your environment:

  • Red Hat: 
    yum install unixODBC
  • Ubuntu: 
    apt-get install unixodbc-dev unixodbc-bin unixodbc

DB2 for i ODBC driver

IBM provides an ODBC driver for Windows and Linux applications to connect to IBM i. You can download ODBC driver packages from IBM’s ESS site.

Download and install either the Linux AP Package or the Windows AP package, depending on your ActiveGate platform. You may have to scroll down the list of packages to see them. Do not install the Java-based client; it does not have the ODBC drivers.

Extension installation

  1. In Dynatrace Hub, select the IBM i extension.

  2. Select Download to get the extension ZIP file. Don't rename the file.

  3. Unzip the ZIP file to the plugin_deployment directory of your ActiveGate host.

  4. Restart the Dynatrace Remote Plugin Module service.

    • On Linux, restart the service using the following commands with admin rights: 
      systemctl restart remotepluginmodule.service
    • On Windows, run these two commands in a Command Prompt launched as Admin: 
      sc stop "Dynatrace Remote Plugin Module"
      sc start "Dynatrace Remote Plugin Module"

  5. In Dynatrace, go to Settings > Monitoring > Monitored technologies and select Add new technology monitoring > Add ActiveGate extension.

  6. Select Upload extension and upload the zipped file used in step 2.

  7. Enter the endpoint information requested for connecting to the host:

    IBM i endpoint configuration

    Setting

    Details

    Endpoint name

    Enter a meaningful endpoint name.

    Host

    The hostname/IP of the host.

    User

    Account to authenticate against IBM iSeries machine. The account needs to connect to internal DB2 tables and query system tables. IBM recommends a user with a similar profile to SYSOPR. The account must have:

    • Sufficient privileges to query and connect to system schemas (QSYS2).
    • QPMCCDATA authority to create/use aliases for member files of Performance Collection objects *COL and to query members of QPFRDATA and QMPGDATA collection libraries and QSYS schemas.

    Password

    The user account's password.

    Use SSL

    Use SSL ports to communicate with your IBM i host

    Comma-separated job filter

    Job names (not fully qualified names) to collect performance data for jobs matching this filter.

    Select data source for performance data

    Select the source of performance data.

    • Catalog views: This collects performance data from catalog views contained in the QSYS2 schema. This option does not use Performance Collection Services and provides a smaller set of metrics.
    • Default Perf Collection CRTPFRDTA (Existing): This only collects performance data from an existing Performance Collection profile.
      • The DEFAULT performance collection profile is the one that IBM i provides out of the box and normally has an interval of 15-minute aggregated data.
      • Dynatrace extensions pull data every minute, so if you pull data from longer interval data sources such as 15-minute intervals, you will see datapoints repeated on Dynatrace for 15 minutes.
    • SYSMON Perf Collection CRTPFRDTA2 (Overwrite): Creates a new SYSMON Performance Collection Service profile of 1-minute aggregated data and overwrites any existing SYSTEM MONITORING profile.
      • You can only have one SYSMON profile, which is the reason for overwriting.
      • Ensure that no other monitoring tool is using this profile, as it will be overwritten.
      • This option provides the most accurate minute-to-minute performance data. The data retention of this System Monitoring profile is 24 hours.
      • Be aware that the collection of performance data in 1-minute intervals for 24 hours may consume a lot of storage and it depends on the number of disks attached, active jobs, etc.
    • SYSMON Perf Collection CRTPFRDTA2 (Existing): Uses any existing SYSMON Performance Collection Service profile.
      • If categories are missing in this profile, metrics from those categories will be skipped and not seen on Dynatrace.
      • Dynatrace extensions pull data every minute, so if you pull data from longer interval data sources such as 15-minute intervals, you will see datapoints repeated on Dynatrace for 15 minutes.

    Categories used by performance collection services:

    • System-level data
    • Disk storage
    • Jobs (MI tasks and threads)
    • Jobs (operating system)
    • Memory pool
    • System CPU

    Comma-separated message queues

    Message queues to collect message counts of queues matching this filter.

    • For no message counts, leave it blank
    • Enter specific message queue names

    Comma-separated job queues

    Enter job queues to collect Total, Held, Released, Scheduled, and Active counts of queues matching this filter.

    • For no queues, leave it blank
    • For all queues, enter *
    • For specific queues, enter the queue names separated by commas

    Name of group

    If the host is part of a group, enter the name here to group the devices in the GUI. This will group your devices in your Technologies view.

    Choose ActiveGate

    The ActiveGate where the extension resides.

Troubleshoot ActiveGate extensions

See Troubleshoot ActiveGate extensions.

Metrics

System

  • CPU Utilization %
  • Interactive CPU Utilization %
  • Scaled Speed Vs. Nominal %
  • Physical CPU % consumed in shared pool
  • Virtual CPU % consumed in shared pool
  • Disk ASP Used %
  • Disk Temporary Used %
  • Total Jobs
  • Active Jobs
  • Total Active Threads

CPU

  • Virtual CPU Utilization %

Memory

  • Page Faults
  • Fault rate
  • Current number of threads
  • DB faults
  • Non-DB faults
  • DB fault rate
  • Non-DB fault rate

Jobs

  • CPU %
  • Suspended time
  • I/O operations
  • Page faults

Disk

  • Busy %
  • Response time
  • Total I/O operations
  • Read operations
  • Write operations
  • Total operations rate
  • Read operation rate
  • Write operation rate
  • Total KB Read size
  • Total KB Write size
  • KB Read size rate
  • KB Write size rate
  • Read cache hit ratio
  • Write cache hit ratio
  • Avg. service time
  • Avg. wait time

Message queues

  • Total messages

Job queues

  • Total
  • Active
  • Scheduled
  • Held
  • Released