Applications Manager Plugin for OpManager

• Applications Manager Plugin - An Overview
• Editions Available for Installation
• Version Compatiblity
• Software Requirements for the Applications Manager Plug-in
• Instructions to apply Applications Manager plug-in
• Using the Applications Manager Plugin
• Adding new monitors in Applications Manager Plugin
• Auto-discovery in Applications Manager Plugin
• User Management in Applications Manager Plugin
• Configuring failover for Applications Manager Plugin

Applications Manager Plugin - An Overview

With Applications Performance Management plug-in (APM Plugin) for OpManager,  you can proactively monitor business applications and help businesses ensure their revenue-critical applications meet end user expectations. This plug-in offers out-of-the-box monitoring support for 50+ applications and servers.

Monitoring Highlights:

• Automatic discovery of application servers, databases, services, systems, transactions, custom applications, virtual resources and cloud apps in your heterogeneous data center.
• Experience comprehensive performance management of over 100 key performance indicators of your applications - including response time, resource availability, CPU/memory utilization and more.
• Get a holistic view of your IT resources including a wide range of business applications and network services.
• Perform end-user experience monitoring of enterprise Internet Services and hosted Web Services from your branch offices; and measure the end-user experience of business-critical network services such as DNS, LDAP, Ping and Mail server from customer locations.
• Effective, timely fault management with notification of problems through e-mail and SMS alerts.
• Powerful reporting capability with extensive coverage to  help administrators in application troubleshooting & capacity planning.

Limitation: Users with business view restriction in OpManager will not be synced to Applications Manager Plugin.

Editions Available for Installation

• Professional Edition - To install the Professional edition, the OpManager Standalone should be installed before installing Applications Manager Plugin.
• Enterprise Edition -  To install the Enterprise Edition, the OpManager Central and OpManager Probe should be installed before Plugin Enterprise Edition installation.

Version compatibility of Applications Manager Plugin with OpManager

Note: It is mandatory for customers to upgrade Applications Manager to 15160 if OpManager is upgraded to 125393 and vice versa.

Note: Applications Manager plugin should be upgraded to version 14540 or above before upgrading OpManager from its service pack version 12.5

 Software Requirements for the Applications Manager Plug-in

Please refer to this link for the recommended software requirements for installing and running the Applications Manager plug-in setup.

Instructions to apply Applications Manager plug-in

You can initiate the APM Plugin installation directly from OpManager UI by navigating to Applications tab and clicking on Download and Install button. Doing so will download the APM Plugin automatically and checks whether the required pre-requisites are met, after which will initiate the installation process. Once the installation process is completed, you will automatically be redirected to the monitor dashboard of your APM Plugin console under the Applications tab.

Note: The Download and Install button will be displayed in the Applications tab only when the OpManager-installed machine has internet connectivity to access the ManageEngine site.

 

 

 

Alternatively, you can also install the APM Plugin manually for offline users by following the steps mentioned in this link.

Using the Applications Manager Plugin

In version 125614 of OpManager, Applications Manager can be accessible under “Dashboards → Servers → Applications” or by clicking the Applications tab directly.

Adding new monitors in Applications Manager Plugin

To add a new monitor in Applications Manager Plugin, go to Applications tab and select the Add Monitor option under Monitors dropdown. Upon selecting, the Add New Monitor page will be displayed wherein you can select the required monitors to be added.

Auto-discovery in Applications Manager Plugin

APM Plugin helps you to discover and monitor servers and their corresponding applications automatically from OpManager during initial startup. Auto-discovery in plugin offers various configuration options that include disabling discovery, limiting the number of applications added, and prioritizing specific applications. To learn more, visit Plugin discovery.

Note: Auto-discovery occurs only upon initial startup of APM Plugin for Trial and Professional Edition users in Windows.

User Management in Applications Manager Plugin

OpManger automatically creates user profiles in Applications Manager plugin based on the OpManager users. To view Applications Manager plugin user profiles, navigate to Apps → Settings → User Management. You will be taken to the User Management dashboard, where there are 5 tabs - Profiles, User Groups, Permission, Views and Account Policy.

Profiles: You will be able to view the list of user profiles available here. However, you would not be able to click or edit the user profile details such as User Name, Update Password, E-Mail, and Role.

User Groups: You can add user groups and associate users to them here.

• Specify the User Group name.
• Select the users to be associated to the group.
• Select the monitor group to be associated  to the user group.
• Click Create User Group to finish.

Permissions: A set of Admin, Delegated Admin, Operator, User and IBM i permissions are given from which you can enable/disable the ones that are applicable to your infrastructure.

Views: Select how you view the monitors in the Home tab. You can choose between "Show the subgroups from the corresponding top level Monitor Group" and "Show the associated subgroups directly in the home tab itself."

Account Policy: Option to Enforce account lockout is given here wherein you can specify the number of continuous failed login attempts and idle session timeout (in minutes) after which the account should be locked.

Configuring failover for Applications Manager Plugin

To ensure high availability of the APM Plugin, a secondary server can be configured to act as a failover instance. This setup involves pointing the secondary APM Plugin server to the same database as the primary server. Follow the steps below to configure failover:

• Install the secondary APM Plugin in the server where the secondary OpManager (OPM) instance is installed.
• Navigate to the installation directory of the secondary server and open the Plugin.properties file located at: <Plugin_Installation_Directory>/conf/Plugin.properties.
• Ensure the value of APM_DBNAME matches the database name used by the primary Plugin server.
• Save any changes made to the Plugin.properties file.
• Start the OPM secondary server.

Since APM Plugin uses the same database server as OpManager, it is sufficient to configure failover the OpManager database server alone. To learn how to configure failover for the OpManager database server, refer here.