Course Description
This course is designed to cover all aspects of creating monitoring solutions with the IBM Tivoli Universal Agent (UA) to integrate data from custom resources into ITM 6.1. Starting with a general understanding and positioning of UA, it covers specifics of installing the UA on Windows and Linux before going into designing custom UA applications utilizing different data providers. The course also covers advanced topics, how to manage UA applications in TEP, as well as troubleshooting procedures.

Objectives

• Describe the purpose, components, and architecture of the Universal Agent and identify all data providers.
• Plan and perform UA implementations on Windows and Linux.
• Perform all steps to create and activate UA applications.
• Use different data providers to create monitoring solutions for a variety of custom resources.
• Manage UA within TEP and utilize visualization, monitoring, and automation capabilities, and reset UA application versions.
• Determine the cause of different UA problems and use the UA trace facilities.

Who will benefit from this course
Primary audience is administrators and deployment specialists tasked with monitoring custom resources in a distributed environment.

Required Skills Knowledge

• Familiarity with the IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 architecture.
• Ability to install ITM 6.1 agents and other infrastructure components on Windows and Linux.
• Ability to use and navigate the Tivoli Enterprise Portal.
• Working knowledge of managing situation events effectively using IBM Tivoli Monitoring.
• Skills in configuring TEP to visualize data in workspaces, and views.
• Experience with using administration functions within TEP used to create monitoring and automation solutions.
• Working knowledge of system administration of Linux and Windows 2000.
• Familiarity with Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) basics.

Prerequisites
IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 for Operators
IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 for Administrators
IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 for Implementers

Course Outline

Unit 1: Describing Universal Agent Concepts, Architecture, and Components

• Concept
• Architecture and components
• Data providers
• UA applications
• Metafiles

Unit 2: Installing and Configuring the Universal Agent

• Implementing the UA on Windows
• Implementing the UA on Linux
• Starting components
• Verifying the installation

Unit 3: Developing a UA Application

• Identifying collected data
• Selecting data providers
• Creating metafiles
• Activating metafiles
• Testing the Implementation

Unit 4: Using Different Data Providers

• Data providers in general
• Post Data Provider
• File Data Provider
• API Server Data Provider
• Socket Data Provider
• HTTP Data Provider
• ODBC Data Provider
• Script Data Provider
• SNMP Data Provider
• SNMP emitter
• Attribute Definitions

Unit 5: Finalizing UA Monitoring Solutions

• Managing managed systems
• Visualizing data
• Monitoring custom resources
• Versioning

Unit 6: Problem Determination

• Common UA problem scenarios
• UA trace facilities