BMC Middleware Management FAQ: The Six Most Common BMM Questions, Answered
BMC Middleware Management FAQ: The Six Most Common BMM Questions, Answered
Here at Transcendence IT, we work with BMC’s TrueSight Middleware Monitor and MainView Middleware Administrator products every day helping users:
- Configure the products
- Troubleshoot issues
- Monitor new technologies
- Implement new capabilities
- Set up integrations and automations
- Learn the products thru formal training
- Discuss solution capabilities
Through these interactions, we get a lot of questions. Some of them come up often, so we decided to share our answers in the following FAQ.
- What are the current names of the BMC Software middleware monitoring and administration products?
- Prior to BMC’s purchase of MQSoftware in 2009, the products were known as Q Pasa! (today’s TSMM), Q Nami! and AppWatch (today’s MVMA).
- After the acquisition of MQSoftware, BMC renamed Q Pasa! to BMC Middleware Management – Performance & Availability (BMM-PA), Q Nami! to BMC Middleware Management – Transaction Management (BMM-TM) and AppWatch to BMC Middleware Management – Administrator (BMM-A).
- When the products moved from the Mainframe Solutions organization, BMM-PA and BMM-TM were bundled and renamed to TrueSight Middleware and Transaction Monitor (TMTM) also known as TrueSight Middleware Monitor (TSMM). BMM-A was renamed to TrueSight Middleware Administrator (TSMA).
- On March 31, 2019 the products moved back to the BMC Mainframe Solutions organization under the MainView brand. The subsequent release of TSMA was rebranded to MainView Middleware Administrator (MVMA). The next release of TSMM (probably v9.0) will be also be rebranded to MainView.
- Does TrueSight Middleware Monitor (TSMM) support remote middleware monitoring?
- For IBM MQ, an agent is installed on a server that is not hosting the IBM MQ Queue Managers to be monitored and configured to connect to the Queue Managers to be monitored via a SRVCONN channel.
- DataPower can only be monitored remotely through the DataPower XML Management Interface using the same technique.
- WebSphere and WebLogic Application Servers, HTTP Servers, and TIBCO EMS can be monitored remotely.
- MainView for MQ, the BMC MQ Monitor for the mainframe, is accessed by using the MainView for MQ extension configured on a remote agent.
- Currently, the only technology that is not remotely monitored is the WebSphere Message Broker and IBM Integration Bus.
- Does the TrueSight Middleware Monitor automatically discover the middleware components on the host to be monitored?
- What attributes should I monitor for each middleware technology to be monitored?
- Does the TrueSight Middleware Monitor automatically start monitoring middleware objects or does it have to be configured?
- What kinds of event actions can be taken when an alarm condition is triggered?
- Send a Monitor Console alert
- Send an e-mail message
- Log a message to a file
- Execute an external program
- Send an event to BMC TrueSight Operations Management
- Send a message to the IBM Tivoli Event Console
- Send a message to HP OpenView
- Log a SQL message to a file
- Send a message to a WebSphere MQ queue
- Send an SQL message to a WebSphere MQ queue
- Delete a transient topic
- Use time to delay a message
The current names are TrueSight Middleware Monitor (TSMM) and MainView Middleware Administrator (MVMA). The products have had many names over the years, such as:
Short answer: Yes.
Yes. Once the monitoring agent is deployed with the appropriate technology extension, the middleware objects are discovered and registered in the server object repository.
BMC delivers out-of-the-box events and policies for each middleware technology: Minimal, Basic, Standard and All recommends the standard set of out-of-the-box events and policies to get started. Then you can refine it over time. To learn more about policies, read Josh Klarmann’s blog on “The Power of BMC Middleware Monitoring Policies.”
Once the events to monitor are defined, they are associated to the middleware objects with policies. Once the objects are discovered, if they match an active policy association expression (object type, attribute naming conventions, etc.), TrueSight Middleware Monitor automatically monitors the object.
There are many events and event monitoring policies that ship with the product. They are based on years of feedback and requests from customers. Typically, 95% of what is needed is there out of the box.
Note that Register Object Policy Action is for MQ only.
There are many options available.
All events are automatically written to the event journal which serves as an audit log to see a history of any events that were fired.
That’s it for now: Our top six BMM questions, answered. Don’t see your question here? Give us a call or get in touch.
