Eko and Friends

Automatic Resource Discovery
At first login, portlets in the dashboard is empty. There are three columns in auto-discovery portlet: Resource name, Status, and Changes. HQ agent will scan host at start up and every 15 minutes after that. When HQ agent discover new resources, it will displayed in Auto-Discovery portlet in the dashboard. New resources is marked in status column as "new".

Auto-Discovery Portlet: figure 1, click to enlarge


These new resources is not monitored by HQ yet, until we add them into the Inventory. In the auto-discovery portlet, check all resources we want to add and click Add to Inventory button. The Resources that we've just added will be displayed in Recently Added portlet in the dashboard. This portlet lists resources that have been added to HQ inventory within the last 48 hours.

Recently Added Portlet: figure 2, click to enlarge



Modified Resources
If resource properties has been changed, this changes will be auto-discovered and displayed at auto-discovery portlet with status as "modified". We have to add them again to the inventory if we want to monitor them or we can choose to add it if we aren't sure about the changes.


Browsing Platforms
To see all resources we've been added to the inventory, Click Resources tab in the Masthead. When we first open resources tab, it lists all platform in the inventory. This platforms list has four column: Platform, Platform Type, Description, and Availability. The Platform column lists each host name.

Browsing Platforms: figure 3, click to enlarge



Metrics as a Chart in The Browse Page
The default layout view in the browse page is List View. We can see metric as a chart using Chart View button. Click it to see metrics in chart form. Metrics in chart form is called Indicators or Indicator Metrics.

Chart View: figure 4, click to enlarge



Browsing Platform or Group of Platforms in Real Time
Indicators page refreshed once when it's loaded. While Metric Data view refreshed every 2 min by befault. You can view refreshed metric data every 1 min, 2 min, or 5 min. Both indicators page and metric data page display latest metric in the last 8 hours by default. But these metrics are not viewed in Real Time.

We can view metrics for platform or group of platforms in real time by clicking Views tab in the indicators page. We can choose several views from Live Exec:

• cpuinfo - cpu information
• cpuperc - cpu processes in percentage
• ifconfig - network status
• netstat - active sockets
• df - file system information
• top - agent processes
• who - active users information

List View: figure 5



Browsing Metrics in Tabular Form
We can view metrics of a resource in tabular form. For example open our Tomcat Webapp group in compatible groups / clusters section. Click Metric Data tab on the right of Inventory tab.

Browsing Metrics in Tabular Form: figure 6, click to enlarge



Browsing Servers
Click Servers link in the page to list all servers on all platforms in the inventory. This servers list has four column: Server, Server Type, Description, and Availability. Server column list each server name. HQ give each server a unique name that reflects the platform and the server type of a resource.

Browsing Servers: figure 7, click to enlarge



Browsing Services
Click Services link in the page to list all services on all platforms in the inventory. As with the servers list, each service name reflects the parent resource where it resides. In this case the platform name and the server name.

Browsing Services: figure 8, click to enlarge



Browsing Selected Resources
In a production environment, Browse page can display long lists of resources. If we just want to see certain resources, we can filter the list. The list can be filtered by type, by keyword, by availability, and by owner. We also can filter the list that match any or all criteria.

Filtering Resources: figure 9, click to enlarge



Creating Groups
Before we can browse a group, we have to create it first. A group in HQ is a set of resources. This can be group of resources of the same type or different types. Groups of resources of the same type is called Compatible Groups / Clusters while groups of resources with different types is called Mixed Groups.

* First we're going to create a compatible group. The group we're going to create is a group of services. Click the services link in the browse page. This action lists all services on all platforms in the inventory. Filter the list by type. This action list all services with the same type. Check all resource that we want to add to a group and click Group button. New Group page shows up. Fill the group's name, description, and location, then click OK. The browse page of compatible groups / or clusters appears in the inventory.

Create a Compatible Group: figure 10, click to enlarge


New Group Page of The Compatible Group: figure 11, click to enlarge


Inventory Page of The New Compatible Group: figure 12, click to enlarge


* Next we're going to create a mixed group. This group is a group of servers of the same type but with different service types. Click servers link in the browse page. check all resources you want to add to the group and click Group button. The rest of the process is the same with compatible group except after we fill group information in New Group page, the browse page of mixed group which will show up.

Create a Mixed Group: figure 13, click to enlarge


New Group Page of The Mixed Group: figure 14, click to enlarge


Inventory Page of The New Mixed Group: figure 15, click to enlarge



Browsing Groups
Open Compatible Groups / Clusters and select group created in the previous section. There are four tab available when Compatible Groups / Clusters link is clicked: Monitor, Inventory, Control, and Views. When a compatible group is selected, the Monitor tab is available, just as it would be for an individual resource. However, when you work with a mixed group, the Monitor tab does not appear. Member resources have different metrics, so aggregating metric values across the group is not possible.

Browsing Compatible Group: figure 16, click to enlarge


Browsing Mixed Group: figure 17, click to enlarge


We can view a chart that graphs the response time for each of the web application in the group. For an example go to our Tomcat Webapp group in compatible groups / clusters section. Click metric's name Average Response Time. Every metric's name is a link. We can click it to drill down the detail. To include only a subset of the resources in the group we can redraw the chart by deselecting resources in the Participating Resources section of the page.

Average Response Time Chart: figure 18