HCL Workload Automation, Version 9.4

Scenario: integrating with Tivoli Enterprise Portal

This scenario describes how HCL Workload Automation and the Dynamic Workload Console integrate with Tivoli Monitoring, the IBM® solution for controlling and managing the performance and availability of distributed operating systems and applications, and its Java-based user interface, the Tivoli Enterprise Portal. You can perform these operations from a centralized point instead of having to combine and integrate data from different products.

This integration allows you to control from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal, jobs and job streams that are critical to run your business, and to quickly and easily manage them from the Dynamic Workload Console.

With just one click, you launch the Dynamic Workload Console from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal interface and access specific job or job stream details without having to create customized queries.

Starting from HCL Workload Automation V8.6, the launching in context with the Dynamic Workload Console can be useful especially to rapidly view more details about the new job types. From the Tivoli Enterprise Portal, in fact, you can directly open the job log to view the JSDL definition of these JSDL-based job types.

The integration also allows you to monitor the state and health of the HCL Workload Automation workstations that are critical in your environment so that, when unavailability or malfunctioning impacts the job scheduling capability, you are alerted on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal interface.

In this scenario you use:
Tivoli Monitoring
To control the status and the health of your core business environment. You also out source to a third-party company the monitoring of your environment from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal user interface.
HCL Workload Automation
To run, within a selected time frame, a daily backup of the Tivoli Monitoring data and configuration to ensure the monitoring reliability and availability required to satisfy the SLAs agreed with the third party company. This daily backup ensures your core business runs successfully.
Dynamic Workload Console
To access specific job or job stream details.

Scenario goal

Your goal is to ensure that the activities critical for your core business run successfully. When a critical job, used to run the daily backup, stops running unexpectedly, you interact with that job by launching Dynamic Workload Console from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal interface. You can restart processing to ensure that the backup activity is completed successfully within the selected time frame.

Required roles and skills

The role and the required skill level of the user running the scenario are the following:
For the setup phase:
For Tivoli Monitoring:
Either a user in the ADMINISTRATOR user group or a user in the OPERATOR user group, with the following permissions:
  • List and modify permission on Managed System List.
  • Modify permission on Situation.
  • Modify permission on Launch Application.
For HCL Workload Automation:
Either the HCL Workload Automation administrator or a HCL Workload Automation user allowed in the security.conf file to run the listed steps. For more information about how to set the authorization in the security.conf file, see the Administration Guide.
For the using phase:
For Tivoli Monitoring:
Either a user in the ADMINISTRATOR user group or a user in the OPERATOR user group, with the following permissions:
  • Launch permission on Launch Application.
  • View permission on Event.
  • Logon Permitted on User Administration.
For Dynamic Workload Console:
A user belonging to a group that has either the TWSWEBUIAdministrator or TWSWEBUIOperator role assigned.

For more information, see the Administration Guide.

In this scenario, we assume that the Single Sign-On method has been configured between Dynamic Workload Console and the HCL Workload Automation master domain manager and that the user who logs in to the HCL Workload Automation master domain manager through the engine connection is allowed to run the steps specified in Running the scenario.

Software requirements

Install the following software before starting the scenario:
  • HCL Workload Automation V9.1 or later (master domain manager, agents, Dynamic Workload Console).
  • The following components of a supported version of Tivoli Monitoring for the purpose of this integration. For information about how to generate a dynamic report containing a matrix of supported product versions see the short procedure in Integrating with IBM Tivoli Monitoring:
    Tivoli Monitoring agent for HCL Workload Automation
    It is an Tivoli Monitoring agent that can be configured to monitor any data collected from two data providers: script data provider and a file data provider.
    Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server
    It is the core component of the Tivoli Monitoring product. It collects and controls the events received from the agents. It uses a proprietary database to store the monitoring information.
    Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server
    It enables retrieval, manipulation, and analysis of data from the agents. It uses an external relational database, such as DB2®, to store the data.
    Tivoli Enterprise Portal
    It is the Java-based Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server user interface for viewing and monitoring your enterprise.
The following figure shows the information flow as a result of the integration. In this scenario, we assume that each block represents a different workstation where you install and set up the indicated components. You can decide where to install each of these blocks in your environment according to your environment requirements and workstation resources. For information about system requirements for each component, see the Planning and Installation Guide. The HCL Workload Automation components and their information flows are indicated in yellow, the Tivoli Monitoring components and their information flows are indicated in blue.
Figure 1. Information flow
Depicts the flow of information between HCL Workload Automation components and Tivoli Monitoring components
These are the descriptions of the main information flows:
Information about the HCL Workload Automation master domain manager state and health
A script data provider runs on the HCL Workload Automation master domain manager to collect information about errors, anomalies, and threshold conditions. This information is saved in a file that is parsed by the Tivoli Monitoring agent for HCL Workload Automation. The result of the parsing is retrieved on timely basis by the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server and then displayed on the Tivoli® Enterprise Portal client interface.
Information about the processing of the scheduled backup activity
The HCL Workload Automation engines installed on the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server and Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server run jobs to perform the requested the backup activity on these two servers. For specific states (for example HOLD) of a job and job stream that might represent an issue for a successful backup activity completion, events are triggered from the HCL Workload Automation agent where the job or job stream is processing.
Forwarding of selected events about the job processing status and issues to the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server
Each time one of these events is triggered, it is saved by the HCL Workload Automation master domain manager, parsed by the Tivoli Monitoring agent for HCL Workload Automation, retrieved by the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server, and then passed to the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server.
Situation events informing about the specific job or job stream issue are displayed on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal client user interface.
The user logged into the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Client user interface sees the situation event on the navigation tree informing about the specific job or job stream issue. The severity of the situation event is specified when setting up the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server.
The Dynamic Workload Console is launched from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal client user interface to view and solve the issue
The user logged into the Tivoli Enterprise Portal client user interface selects the job or job stream instance marked with the situation event and launches the Dynamic Workload Console to access that specific job or job stream details and fix the problem, to ensure the backup activity is successfully completed within the selected time frame. When the problem has been solved, an event informing about the new state of the job or job stream is generated on the HCL Workload Automation workstation processing the job and the situation event is removed from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal navigation tree.

Setting up the environment

For details about how to run the steps listed in this section to configure the integration with Tivoli Enterprise Portal, see Integrating with IBM Tivoli Monitoring.

When the required software is installed, you must complete the following tasks before starting the scenario:
To enable Tivoli Monitoring to monitor HCL Workload Automation master domain manager processes and data to look for errors, anomalies, and threshold conditions.
On the HCL Workload Automation master domain manager:
  1. Install and configure the Tivoli Monitoring agent for HCL Workload Automation to monitor the HCL Workload Automation master domain manager, see Installing and configuring the Tivoli Monitoring agent for HCL Workload Automation.

  2. Run the ITMCreateSituations script to configure the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Console to create and display the HCL Workload Automation situations.

To enable HCL Workload Automation events for all the monitored objects (jobs and job streams) to be passed to the Tivoli Enterprise Portal client user interface.
On the HCL Workload Automation master domain manager:
  1. Enable monitoring by the Tivoli Enterprise Portal, see Configuring the integration with Tivoli Enterprise Portal.

  2. HCL Workload Automation creates and writes events for all the monitored objects (jobs and job streams) into a predefined event file that is accessed by the Tivoli Monitoring agent for HCL Workload Automation at a set interval. Make sure that the <TWA_home>/BmEvents.conf file is set to create and write the information about the following events:
    Job is in abend state (event 101)
Job is in hold (event 109) 
Job stream hold (event 159)

  3. Recycle the HCL Workload Automation engine.

On the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server:
Create situations by assigning the highest severity (Critical) when the following events are detected:
Job is in abend state (event 101)
Job is in hold (event 109)
Job stream hold (event 159)
When you complete these steps, the Tivoli Monitoring agent for HCL Workload Automation is ready to retrieve and parse the logged events from the event file. The monitored data is then retrieved from the Tivoli Monitoring agent for HCL Workload Automation by the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server and displayed to the Tivoli Enterprise Portal.
To run the critical activity, the daily backup of the Tivoli Monitoring data and configuration, using HCL Workload Automation
On the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server and on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server:

Install a HCL Workload Automation engine

On the HCL Workload Automation master domain manager:

  1. Create a job stream scheduled to run daily on the HCL Workload Automation engine installed on the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server system during the time frame dedicated to the backup operations. The job stream must run in sequence the steps needed to run the backup of the Tivoli Monitoring configuration and data. In this scenario you use a job stream named BACKUP containing such a sequence of jobs:
    Table 1. Jobs implementing the backup procedure
    Job name Operation to run Dependencies HCL Workload Automation engine where the job runs
    JOB1 Stop Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server None Engine installed on Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server system
    JOB2 Stop Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server JOB1 completed Engine installed on Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server system
    JOB3 tar -cvf TEMS_installdir JOB2 completed. Needed disk space available on Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server system. Engine installed on Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server system
    JOB4 tar -cvf TEPS_installdir JOB1 completed. Needed disk space available on Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server system. Engine installed on Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server system
    JOB5 db2backup TEPS_db JOB1 completed. Needed disk space available on Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server system. Engine installed on Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server system
    JOB6 Start Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server JOB3 completed Engine installed on Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server system
    JOB7 Start Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server. JOB6, JOB4 and JOB5 completed Engine installed on Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server system
    The job stream and its jobs must be marked as Monitored. By doing so you ensure that, whenever an event among those specified in the BmEvents.conf file occurs on one of these jobs and job stream, it is parsed by the Tivoli Monitoring agent for HCL Workload Automation, retrieved by the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server and displayed on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal interface.

    For details about how to run the steps to configure the jobs and job stream definitions, see the User's Guide and Reference.

  2. Run JnextPlan to add the new job stream and its jobs to the current plan.

To access specific job or job stream details, enable the Dynamic Workload Console launch in context from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal interface
In the navigation tree of the Tivoli Enterprise Portal client:
  1. From the Agent drill down to both the JOBS and the JOBSTREAMS entries.
  2. Click a job or job stream instance and select Create or Edit Launch Definitions.
  3. Select Create New.
    Create or Edit Launch Definitions panel
  4. Specify for each Launch Definition the following information:
    • The name
    • The full path of the browser executable file to use when running the Dynamic Workload Console.
    • The URL to open using this format:
      https://{WebUIHostname:adminSecurePort}
/ibm/console/xLaunch.do?pageID=com.ibm.tws.
WebUI.External.navigation&showNavArea=false

      where:

      WebUIHostname
      The fully qualified hostname or the IP address of the computer where the Dynamic Workload Console is installed.
      adminSecurePort
      The number of the port on which the Dynamic Workload Console is listening.
  5. Specify the action that you want to run, by specifying the corresponding parameter:
    &action
    It indicates the action that you want to perform and can have one of the following values:
    • BrowseJobs
    • ZBrowseJobs
    • BrowseJobStreams
    • BrowseCriticalJobs
    • BrowseWorkstation
    • InternalTask
  6. Specify the engine on which you want to run the query, by entering its parameters:
    &hostname
    For distributed environments, it is the host name or TCP/IP address of the computer on which the HCL Workload Automation engine is installed. For z/OS® environments, it is the host name or TCP/IP address of the computer on which the z/OS connector is installed.
    &port
    The port number that is used to connect to the computer on which the HCL Workload Automation engine or the z/OS connector is installed. Typically, the default port numbers are:
    Table 2. Default port numbers
    Port number Engine
    31117 HCL Workload Automation distributed engine
    31127 IBM Workload Scheduler for z/OS engine with z/OS connector V8.3
    31217 IBM Workload Scheduler for z/OS engine with z/OS connector V8.5 or later
    &server
    It applies to z/OS systems only and is mandatory. It is the name of the remote server of the engine as it was specified in the z/OS connector.
    The following is an example of a complete URL:
    https://mypc:29443/ibm/console/xLaunch.do?pageID=
com.ibm.tws.WebUI.External.navigation/&showNavArea=false
/&action=BrowseJobs/&hostname=webuidev/&port=31117
  7. To start the Dynamic Workload Console, click Evaluate.