SiteScope
SiteScope Overview
HP SiteScope is an agentless monitoring solution designed to help you ensure the availability and performance of distributed IT infrastructures—for example, servers, operating systems, network devices, network services, applications, and application components. This Web-based infrastructure monitoring solution is lightweight, highly customizable, and does not require that data collection agents be installed on your production systems.
SiteScope monitors collect key performance measurements and report topology on a wide range of back-end infrastructure components. The monitors are individually configured to automatically test performance and availability of systems and services in the network environment.
SiteScope monitoring includes alerting and reporting capabilities, along with a dashboard for a real-time picture of the monitored environments. SiteScope can be configured to send alerts whenever it detects a problem in the IT infrastructure. In addition, SiteScope can create reports for monitors or monitor groups that display information about how the servers and applications you are monitoring have performed over time.
To help you deploy monitors with similar monitoring configuration criteria across the enterprise, you can define templates, or use preconfigured SiteScope solution templates. The use of templates enables you to develop and maintain a standardized set of monitor types and configurations in a single structure that can be repeatedly deployed and easily updated, without having to update each object individually.
SiteScope also includes alert template types that you can use to communicate and record event information in a variety of media. You can customize alert templates to meet the needs of your organization.
Key Features of SiteScope
SiteScope has the following features:
- Agentless monitoring. SiteScope monitors without the deployment of agent software on the servers to be monitored. This function makes deployment and maintenance of SiteScope relatively simple compared to other performance monitoring solutions.
- Simple installation and deployment. SiteScope is installed on a single server running as a service or a process. This results in quick installation and easy monitoring configuration.
- Intuitive administration. SiteScope reduces the time spent managing a monitoring environment by providing a user friendly browser-based interface for viewing and administering of the monitoring platform.
- Enterprise-ready architecture. SiteScope provides simultaneous monitoring of a large number of systems, support for secure connections, and failover capabilities.
- Infrastructure performance and availability monitoring. SiteScope has over 100 types of monitors. SiteScope can monitor utilization, response time, usage, and resource availability of a variety of host types and application platforms.
- Integrations. SiteScope can be used to collect key performance metrics and to report topologies to BSM; send common events and metrics data to Operations Manager (HPOM) and to Operations Management in BSM using the HP Operations agent; send events and metrics data to Network Node Manager i (NNMi); and forward data to HP Diagnostics, Amazon CloudWatch, or to an application for which a direct integration does not exist.
- Standardized monitor deployments and updates using templates. SiteScope supports the ability to create and publish reusable templates, enabling you to set up and deploy multiple IT elements with similar monitoring configuration criteria. Using the Publish Template Changes wizard, you can rapidly update your monitoring environment across the entire enterprise, without the need for extensive manual updates.
- Automated deployment with XML. SiteScope enables you to bypass the user interface and deploy templates using an XML file. This saves your IT organization time and money by enabling the introduction of a large number of monitors in a single operation.
- Baseline management. SiteScope can be used to create baselines and schedule specific thresholds based on a time period or date. The baseline calculated for your configuration can be tested against actual performance conditions to view the errors and warnings that would have been reduced by the calculated baseline. Graphs can be used to compare your calculated baseline with current threshold settings to determine potential performance improvements.
- Proactive alerting. SiteScope can be configured to alert whenever it detects a problem in the IT infrastructure. There are several types of alert actions, such as sending email messages, paging, sending Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps, or executing a script.
- Mobile access. The SiteScope mobile application is a free download that enables you to keep track of your monitored IT infrastructure while away from your computer using a mobile device. This enables you to review group and monitor states to verify availability issues, receive email notifications about problems and take corrective action, view monitor statistics and perform actions on the search results to mitigate issues, and create ad hoc reports displaying how servers and applications have performed over time.
- Server-based reporting. SiteScope can collect multiple pre-selected metrics from a specific server and combine them into a single graph—giving you quick access to key performance monitoring data for any server in your environment. One of the key benefits of server-based reporting is the ability to drill down into reports to troubleshoot server related issues.
- Customization capabilities. SiteScope permits the display of customizations of groups and monitors by using custom data fields and HTML-sensitive description tags. In addition, SiteScope permits the customization of alert text and report configurations by using templates and user-defined variables.
- Self-monitoring. SiteScope monitors key aspects of its own operability and identifies monitor configuration problems and critical server load. It also monitors its own integration and data events when configured to report to Business Service Management.
- Failover capabilities. SiteScope offers optional failover support to give you added redundancy and automatic failover protection in the event that an SiteScope server fails.
SiteScope Monitoring Model
SiteScope‘s Web-enabled architecture enables the creation and ongoing administration of a scalable monitoring environment. It consists of the following key components:
- Browser-based interface. Manages end user status information requests, configuration change requests, and access control.
- Scheduler. Coordinates the running of monitors, alert creation, and report generation
- Groups. A group is a container for monitoring assets. Groups may contain subgroups and are used to organize monitors. Groups are created prior to monitors.
- Monitors. A monitor collects performance and availability information about the system being monitored. It checks the status of server components, key application processes, log files, or network devices, to name a few. It also collects data based on selected metrics and displays a status of good, warning, or error with respect to the configured thresholds.
- Alerts. An alert is an action triggered by a change in the status of a monitored asset. Alerts notify required users when negative events or failures occur. An alert can be sent to a variety of media including email, pager, Short Message Service (SMS) messages, or an SNMP trap.
- Reports. A report is a historical representation of monitored data for trending and analysis purposes. SiteScope offers a variety of reports from quick monitor reports to detailed management reports. Reports enable you to track trends and operational performance and to troubleshoot problems.
Venkat Matta 