Getting BMC parameter information that you can manipulate

There’s a tool called the Parameter Reference Database on our support site that lets you export the PATROL Knowledge Module parameters to a CSV file so you can re-mix them as you want.

This Parameter Reference Database tool for exporting the KM parameters looks really cool to me so I wanted to be sure you all know about it too. One neat thing about this type of documentation is that updates are not tied to product release cycles. It’s much closer to the single sourcing holy grail where you change your source file and that change can be propagated through the whole system with a few button clicks. If you’re more of a driller-down type, go to the Support Central page, and then click Product Lists & Manuals, and then click Parameter Reference Database.

Once you’re on the Parameter Reference Database page, select the products whose parameter information you want to download. Here’s a list of the products.

Next pick the version number, click another button or two, and you have a CSV file! Here are the categories for each parameter that the tool gives you in the CSV file.

Let me know how you and your teams are re-mixing the content. I’m envisioning database queries, XML output, other types of outputs that can be created with a CSV file. What’cha got? What other reference material might be good to output in this way? I’ve done some work with XML output for error messages so that’s another type of content I’m interested in single-sourcing. Bring it on.

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Photos from the forum

I took some photos at the BMC Forum in Dallas October 2005

I had some fun with my digital SLR pretending to be a photojournalist. Here are some photos of activity at the forum.

Chip and Stephen work for Dell and Temple-Inland, respectively, in Austin, Texas, and they’re brothers. I had to ask them if I could play paparrazi and snap some shots.

Checking email between sessions like a lot of us were doing.

A lively discussion in the hallway requiring hand guestures and everything.

Another discussion after the Marimba 101 lesson.

Here’s a partial shot of the expo area where you can go see products in action.

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Tuesday BMC Performance Manager session at the BMC Forum 05 in Dallas

Reporting from a conference room set at 60 degrees Fahrenheit, here’s your roving blogger reporting from Dallas

Blogging live is harder than it sounds. Fortunately the wireless connection is behaving in two of the session rooms I’ve been in so far. But, beyond the technology (which is the easy part), it’s difficult to take notes and figure out what to report on. So here goes. Let me know if you’d like to hear more.

There are plenty of sessions to choose from and at least five tracks. This morning I went to the BMC Performance Manager Roadmap and Strategy session with about 35 attendees. Sean Duclaux started with a trick question by asking for a show of hands. How many PATROL Express customers? (a few) How many PATROL Classic customers? (a bunch) How many BMC Performance Manager customers? All! We’ve changed the PATROL product name to BMC Performance Manager. Of course with a product evolving like this, lots of questions ensue. I’ll try to capture the questions and answers here.

Q: How do you decide which to use, agent-based or agentless monitoring?
A: Based on collection policies that you set, the agent might deploy automatically, perhaps by pushing a lightweight local presence onto the computer to be monitored. More on this below the question/answer set.

Q: What kind of pricing is available for people who are already invested in the PATROL Classic product line?
A: The licensing scheme has been completely redesigned in a few ways. One is that there’s a CPU metric, so if you want to monitor a server, it doesn’t matter if it’s Windows or UNIX or Linux — you can switch between them. Also there are tiers of deployment that are simplified, such as a departmental license. I’m sure I’m missing some layers here but the overall answer is that PATROL Classic is not going away, but you will see infrastructure cost savings as you upgrade and decommission old infrastructure.

Q: What technological help is available for upgrading our KMs?
A: The BMC Performance Manager SDK was just released in August and you can request it (it comes free with BMC Performance Manager). With this SDK you can create application classes and XML config files that will pick up all the info that your KMs do (as long as it makes sense to do so), and there are third party implementers being trained on the SDK right now. (OTL is in Austin this week for training, apparently).

Q: What about about the install footprint — how much disk space for this lightweight local presense?
A: It shouldn’t be a big space hog. Just looking at my own Marimba client install I’m seeing a less than 50 MB install, and Marimba is the one that gathers the most information, not a lightweight local presense. I’m guessing lightweight should be MUCH less than this.

Q: What about bandwidth, will it fill up my network sending data back and forth?
A: This is all configurable, but typically only when an event is raised will it be sent back. Of course if you’re going from PATROL 3, which apparently didn’t send data anywhere (I’m no expert on this but that’s what was said), you’re going to see a difference in network capacity.

Q: The Million Dollar Question (according to a guy in a UNIX-only shop) — will the RSM (Remote Service Monitor) run on a UNIX box or is it Windows only?
A: The product manager and architect are arm wrestling over that right now. The basic answer is that we (well, the architect) wants to do everything, but … a Windows RSM can monitor both Windows and UNIX, but a Solaris/UNIX RSM can only monitor UNIX, so we need to know whether that’s worth building — does it fit into the environment that you envision? UNIX doesn’t exactly listen well (ok, at all) to perfmon information, for example, so there’s no monitoring of Windows with a UNIX RSM.

Q: Will a lightweight local presence (LLP) incorporate auto recovery actions?
A: Even if you are managing a solution remotely, as long as dynamic connection can happen, we’ll let you do recovery actions for remote connections (not til after December though.) PATROL Express can do remote restarts right now.

The gee-whiz factor for me with the new direction is the combination of agent-based and agentless options. Both are available now with a single view point, meaning your PATROL Express data can be viewed alongside your PATROL data. You can apply a policy to determine whether you monitor something with an agent or not. Here’s an example of a policy application out of the BMC white paper, “Effortless System Management.”

Policy example: If a small file/print server is reassigned to serve the office of the company’s chief executive,
the IT staff may decide that it wants an autorecovery capability on that server. The IT staff simply sets the
new performance management policy for that server, and BMC Performance Manager makes the
appropriate changes, which may include pushing an LLP out to the server.

Another recurring topic so far is compliance efforts such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA, Basel II. As Sean put it, “You don’t want to see your CEO on the cover of a magazine in an orange jumpsuit.” So, if Sarbanes-Oxley or other compliance efforts are your concern, figure out how to get your policies in place. I’m hearing this over and over.

All the presentations are available with a username and password, so if you’re attending, here’s the site to download the presentations. Your packet has the username and password.

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