Foglight for Infrastructure 5.9.5 - User Guide

Configuring connections to remote Windows platforms

Foglight Log Monitor requires that a Windows® command shell connection be established to execute Windows commands on remote machines. There are two types of command shell connections that can be established to execute remote commands: WinRMCommandShell and DCOMWindowsCommandShell. You need to setup the remote machine based on the type of command shell connection you need to establish.

To execute Windows commands on a local machine, a LocalWindowsCommandShell may be used, if local user credentials are provided.

The Foglight Log Monitor command shells are described in the following sections.

Uses Windows Remote Management (WinRM) to execute remote commands. For configuration information, see section “Configuring Windows Remote Management (WinRM)” in the Foglight Agent Manager Guide.

NOTE: WinRmCommandShell connections are attempted before DCOMWindowsCommandShell.

This command shell type executes commands remotely using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). WinShell must be setup as well.

For configuration information, see sections “Configuring Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)” and “Configuring Registry Settings for WinShell Access through DCOM” in the Foglight Agent Manager Guide.

This command shell type is for local command execution. No setup is required for executing commands on a local machine.

The Foglight for Infrastructure WindowsAgent can use the WMI mechanism to establish remote connections for monitoring Windows resources. In this case it can collect data only from specific event logs, but not all (for details, see About the WindowsAgent).

To monitor event logs within the “Applications and Services” category, you must use the LogMonitor agents (FileLogMonitorAgent or WindowsEventLogMonitorAgent).

Foglight LogMonitor copies an executable to the remote machine and runs this executable, which outputs the collected data and then Foglight Agent Manager processes it. The executable uses Windows native APIs to obtain the relevant data from the Windows Event Logs. To copy and run the executable on the remote machine, access to the Windows command prompt is required. If DCOM is used, an extra setup step is required (for details, see “Configuring Registry Settings for WinShell Access through DCOM” in the Foglight Agent Manager Guide). There are no extra setup steps required if WinRM is used.

The remote monitoring of Windows® and UNIX® hosts has unique requirements, as presented in the Foglight Agent Manager Guide. For example, the following log entry indicates that the Remote Connection failed.

2015-06-02 11:05:44.286 ECHO <HostAgents/5.7.2/FileLogMonitorAgent/LogMonitor-IIRWin_Webservers-agent> WARN [Quartz[0]-1228] com.quest.foglight.infrastructure.actions.logmonitor.file.FileLogScanAction - Could not execute data collection commands for File Log Scan Action [Host=host.example.com, HostType=WINDOWS, Directory=D:\Program Files(x86)\FglAM\state\default\logs, Filename=temp.log]. It will be skipped in this collection period.

com.quest.glue.api.services.RemoteConnectionException: a shell connection could not be established

Monitoring IBM PowerVM environments

Foglight™ for PowerVM allows you to monitor IBM® PowerVM® environments. Foglight alerts you about infrastructure problems when they develop, enabling you to resolve issues pro actively before end users are affected. Early intervention ensures consistent application performance at established service levels. Foglight for PowerVM monitors the health of your virtual system by tracking the levels of resource utilization such as processor, network, and memory consumption of individual objects in your integrated environment.

Before you begin

Ensure that Foglight for Infrastructure is installed on the Management Server. For installation instructions, see the Foglight for Infrastructure Release Notes.

Introducing the PowerVM infrastructure

When you deploy Foglight™ for PowerVM and set up the monitoring agents for data collection, the Infrastructure Environment dashboard enables you to review the performance of your environment at a glance. To ensure consistent application performance, use this dashboard to find out more details about specific components, and to look for potential performance degradation indicators, such as high processor loads or low network utilization.

Foglight for PowerVM focuses on the following components in your monitored PowerVM® environment: