Hub Monitoring Server

OMEGAMON

Enhanced Definition

A Hub Monitoring Server, within the IBM OMEGAMON monitoring suite, acts as the central aggregation and distribution point for monitoring data collected from various mainframe subsystems and applications. It receives data from Remote Monitoring Servers and provides this consolidated view to Tivoli Enterprise Portal (TEP) clients, enabling centralized performance and availability management across the enterprise.

Key Characteristics

- Data Aggregation: Collects performance and availability metrics from multiple Remote Monitoring Servers, which in turn gather data from agents running on z/OS LPARs and subsystems (e.g., CICS, DB2, IMS, z/OS).
- Centralized Data Store: Maintains a historical data store (typically a VSAM KSDS or DB2 database) for collected metrics, allowing for trending, reporting, and problem analysis over time.
- Client Interface: Serves as the primary connection point for Tivoli Enterprise Portal (TEP) clients, providing a unified graphical user interface for viewing real-time and historical monitoring data.
- Event Management: Processes and forwards alerts and events generated by monitoring agents to event consoles (e.g., NetView, OMNIbus) or other automation tools.
- Configuration Management: Can manage and distribute monitoring configurations (situations, policies) to connected Remote Monitoring Servers and agents.
- Scalability: Designed to support a large number of connected Remote Monitoring Servers and TEP clients, providing a scalable architecture for enterprise-wide monitoring.

Use Cases

- Enterprise-wide Performance Monitoring: Provides a single pane of glass for operations teams to monitor the health and performance of all critical mainframe subsystems and applications across multiple LPARs.
- Historical Data Analysis: Enables performance analysts to review historical trends, identify performance bottlenecks, and forecast resource requirements using the aggregated historical data.
- Automated Alerting and Problem Detection: Serves as the central point for evaluating defined situations (thresholds) and generating alerts when performance issues or critical events occur, triggering automated responses.
- Reporting and Compliance: Facilitates the generation of performance reports for capacity planning, service level agreement (SLA) compliance, and auditing purposes.

Related Concepts

The Hub Monitoring Server is foundational to the OMEGAMON monitoring architecture. It works in conjunction with Remote Monitoring Servers, which are deployed closer to the monitored z/OS LPARs and collect data from OMEGAMON agents (e.g., OMEGAMON for CICS, OMEGAMON for DB2). It provides the consolidated data view to Tivoli Enterprise Portal (TEP) clients, which are the primary user interface. It also integrates with NetView for automation and Tivoli Common Reporting for advanced reporting.

Best Practices:

High Availability: Implement the Hub Monitoring Server in a highly available configuration (e.g., using a z/OS Sysplex with shared DASD and VTAM generic resources) to ensure continuous monitoring capabilities.
Resource Allocation: Allocate sufficient CPU, memory, and I/O resources to the Hub Monitoring Server and its historical data store (e.g., DB2 database) to handle the expected data volume and client load.
Security Configuration: Secure access to the Hub Monitoring Server and TEP clients using z/OS security managers (RACF, ACF2, Top Secret) and implement network encryption.
Regular Maintenance: Perform regular maintenance on the historical data store, including reorganization and backup, to ensure optimal performance and data integrity.
Capacity Planning: Continuously monitor the performance of the Hub Monitoring Server itself and plan for future growth in monitored resources and user activity.