BMC Patrol

Any comment about BMC Patrol. The basic package doesn't look like anything more than a pretty interface. I was wondering more about monitoring (Patrol KM) while I was away, and being able to be notified (by pager preferably) if things run amuck. I have heard that it is a performance hog. How about cost if you are/were using it. If you have a negative response, then do you have a suggestion for monitoring while you are away, and being paged. Yes it could be written, but why reinvent the wheel. TIA Chris

We are evaluating BMC's Patrol for use with Sun/Informix, and we like it. There are so many factors and facets about the product that BMC could (and does) write books about it, but here are the main points we are looking at: * It is totally configurable. As Paul points out, it does parse the output of some command line utilities such as vmstat and iostat. It also examines text files, such as Informix' online log, and queries the SMI tables. The user can determine what metrics will and will not be monitored, and how frequently. Users have access to the source code for metrics, and (I suppose) could even create their own. Alarm threshholds are adjustable, and recovery actions (such as paging or e-mail or adding a chunk when free space drops below a certain value) can be specified by the user. Out of the box, metrics are set to representative values (I'm told that the Informix KM was written by DBAs for DBAs). Speaking of monitoring frequency, this is where the user determines whether Patrol will be a resource hog. I reduced the monitoring frequency of some of the metrics, and the PatrolAgent's CPU usage dropped from 16% to not more than 1%. Our already maxed-out database couldn't return results from one query before the next one was submitted. * It presents a uniform view not only of the state of the database, but also system parameters, such as CPU, network, NFS, memory, user logins, etc. * The system can be monitored by exception; that is, metrics falling outside of normal or acceptable ranges are highlighted by turning a different color, or by blinking in extreme conditions. * All hosts and servers running PatrolAgent can be monitored from one console. * Support is "top drawer", and is 7 x 24. It may be worth a look. You should be able to get a 30-day evaluation. Ask about start-up consulting. Milton Chris Burton wrote: > Any comment about BMC Patrol. The basic package doesn't look like > anything more than a pretty interface. I was wondering more about > monitoring (Patrol KM) while I was away, and being able to be notified > (by pager preferably) if things run amuck. > > I have heard that it is a performance hog. > > How about cost if you are/were using it. > > If you have a negative response, then do you have a suggestion for > monitoring while you are away, and being paged. Yes it could be > written, but why reinvent the wheel. > > TIA > Chris

We are using the Patrol/Informix km to monitor multiple Informix 7.3 instances. These have been in production for about 4 months now. The Patrol agent that runs on the server does not need to be connected to a Patrol console to operate. Any configuration changes you make on your console are actually downloaded to the server km. You can configure any parameters that are installed out of the box (about 50 for Informix) and specify recovery actions if the threshholds are crossed. We can page and/or e-mail any number of people when things like dbspaces fill up, etc. You may choose to turn off parameters if they have no value. We turn off such things as "latchwaits" since there is nothing you can do to tune them anyway. All of these parameters are written in the Patrol Scripting Language. A very c-ish tool. All of the source code is supplied for you to modify if you wish. (I wouldn't.) You can write your own to do anything you like. It is a very robust tool. Patrol also supports snmp for communication to any number of 'framework' tools. By running the 'top' command, I never see the PatrolAgent taking more than 2% of the cpu and most of the time it is less than 1% and it takes 13meg of memory. This is Patrol monitoring Informix and Unix (only 1 agent runs). Chris Burton wrote: > Any comment about BMC Patrol. The basic package doesn't look like > anything more than a pretty interface. I was wondering more about > monitoring (Patrol KM) while I was away, and being able to be notified > (by pager preferably) if things run amuck. > > I have heard that it is a performance hog. > > How about cost if you are/were using it. > > If you have a negative response, then do you have a suggestion for > monitoring while you are away, and being paged. Yes it could be > written, but why reinvent the wheel. > > TIA > Chris