SAP CCMS Monitoring & Agents

In the CCMS Alert Monitoring Infrastructure delivered by SAP, data collection programs monitor various components.
Each program stores the data in a “monitoring segment” (part of the shared memory of each server) using either a running SAP instance or a running agent. A dedicated central monitoring system, or CEN, accesses the locally collected data through a defined ABAP interface on an SAP instance, or through agent technology on any server on which the agent is installed and active. With the CEN, administrators now have a central overview for monitoring and managing the entire mySAP.com e-business platform from a single console, without logging on to each and every component.

To access this information, SAP provides two monitors for visual display.
1) The CCMS Alert Monitor (transaction RZ20) is the expert monitor currently available for administrators. It provides a customizable, system-wide overview of the system landscape. From RZ20, you have a guided connection to remote systems in case of an alert.

The CCMS Alert Monitor has the following advantages:
· Automated, central monitoring that only requires you to carry out administration tasks when an alert occurs
· Proactive monitoring by means of alerts that are triggered as soon as a particular threshold value is not reached, or is exceeded
· Support when solving problems by means of pre-defined analysis functions with which you can resolve the cause of an alert in a particular component
The CCMS Alert Monitor offers the following functions:
Displays any error alerts occurring in the TMS or when exporting requests; it organizes the alerts by topic in a tree structure.
Analysis method for each alert
Option of setting alerts to completed
Alerts are visible as long as they have not been completed (completed alerts are visible in the history).
The CCMS Alert Monitor includes all systems in the current system landscape.

2) The CCMS Alert Monitoring Infrastructure also acts as an information source for the second monitor, the SAP Solution Manager. This new platform for support and services analyzes and presents system monitoring data in a modern, graphical frontend geared particularly to business processes.

With the new CCMS agent software, SAP makes central monitoring possible where it didn’t exist before — and enhances the monitoring tasks that are currently available.
CCMS agents are stand-alone processes that act as RFC servers to the CEN. As such, they provide a reliable interface to the shared memory segment.There are three CCMS agents — SAPCCMSR, SAPCCM4X, and SAPCM3X — and each has a specific monitoring function, designed for a particular system, whether SAP or non-SAP.

Advantages of the agent concept include:
Faster Data Delivery
The monitoring segment contains all SAP data from the CCMS Alert Monitoring Infrastructure.This data can be transferred by SAPCCM4X agents without occupying an SAP work process. As a result, your monitors in the CEN will open much faster.

Detailed Operating System Data
On systems without SAP Basis, the SAPCCMSR agent can return the SAPOsCol2 data (e.g., CPU utilization, paging rates, file system data, network data). Administrators can now monitor individual operating system processes like those in Figure 1, which displays the monitoring data of the APOsCol
and SAPRouter processes. Important information can be updated as frequently as every minute, and you can design a monitor in the CEN to provide detailed information concerning non-SAP hosts

Log File Monitoring
Non-SAP components, such as databases, normally write their status and error messages to log files.
You can use the agent to search these log files for any combination of characters, and to report them either as error states or target states in the CEN.

Auto-Reaction Methods
If an alert is triggered in a monitored system, an auto-reaction of your choice can also be triggered. (Until now, auto-reactions were only processed in the same system where the alert occurred.) If the CEN is an SAP Web Application Server 6.10 or later, the agents can transfer the local alert information to the CEN, where an auto-reaction can be generated. The agent to send alert information immediately to the CEN (as of Web Application Server 6.10 and up), which can then automatically react with central auto-reactions or e-mail notifications — resulting in less time spent waiting in the CEN while opening monitors.

Integration Characteristics
Agents can write alerts to a log file, which third-party software products can easily access and respond to appropriately.

Database Administration in CCMS
The advantage of using CCMS is that you have a central point for managing your database. You also get the full advantage of the SAP System graphical user interface (GUI), for example, when displaying space usage in your database.
The main functions for DBA in CCMS are as follows:
DBA Planning Calendar
Update statistics, using the cost-based optimizer
Database System Check
Database Monitor
Database Alert Monitor