Instana provides a terrific application performance monitoring capability, that is now enhanced with the inclusion of z/OS traces and metrics. This integration comes via Instana Observability for IBM z/OS. The metrics are provided through the connection with the OMEGAMON Data Provider that streams data from IBM OMEGAMON agents.
OMEGAMON Data Provider can work with any of the OMEGAMON agents running on z/OS and currently is capable of streaming over 600 attribute tables and over 18,000 fields from within those tables. Any customer trying to get all of that data into their analytics platform of choice would find a pretty hefty increase in CPU utilization and associated software license charges to go with it.
But even with all that data available, Instana's approach is different. Instana supports a select set of Key Performance Indicators from OMEGAMON. With a smaller set of subject matter expert curated KPI's, an anomaly can be detected within Instana and the business can leverage the OMEGAMON user interface for further diagnosis and remediation of the problem.
Given this approach to leveraging KPI's, it is important to make sure that the setup within OMEGAMON is correct to send the right data to Instana. You want to avoid problems where too little data is sent, and the Instana user interface has a no data situation or too much is sent and you spend extra processing cycles sending extra data and then rejecting or ignoring it upon arrival.
With the introduction of the IBM zSystems Integration for Observability offering, customers now have the choice of sending a single OMEGAMON agent's information to Instana or all the OMEGAMON agents data. To facilitate the ease of set up, a special document has been created on GitHub, to identify the three tasks necessary for each OMEGAMON agent that will stream data to Instana and one final task common to all agents to help filter the data specifically to Instana.
For each agent, the following tasks are necessary:
1. Update the ODP collection configuration - On z/OS, edit the ODP collection configuration member RKANPARU(KAYOPEN) to specify the attribute groups required by the Instana support for each agent and then issue the modify command to update the configuration:
F <job_name>,KPQ RELOAD_CONFIG,KAY
2. Create historical data collections - Create historical data collections for each agent. This can be done via the E3270UI or the Tivoli Enterprise Portal within each agent's workspace.
3. Activate controls to drive near term history collection - To ensure that Near Term History is collecting data properly, some specific subsystem and/or agent configuration changes may be necessary. These should be set up via the E3270UI or TEP user interfaces.
And then common to all agents:
4. Configure your OMEGAMON Data Connect to send data to Instana - The file, connect.yaml, must be updated to make the connection to the Instana environment. This can be found in IBM Z OMEGAMON Data Provider Version 1.1 Installation and User's Guide
The details for each OMEGAMON agent are available in the previously mentioned GitHub documentation. Should you have any difficulties, don't hesitate to reach out for assistance.
If you'd like more information regarding OMEGAMON Data Provider and Instana integration, please check out our master blog for additional material.
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