IBM Integration Bus, as the market-leading enterprise service bus, has come a long way from the previous WebSphere Message Broker product to the latest version 10 of IBM Integration Bus. So has the monitoring agent, which used to be called WebSphere Message Broker Monitoring Agent, then ITCAM Agent for WebSphere Message Broker, and now Monitoring Agent for IBM Integration Bus. The terms or resource names might be changed, but the focus and capabilities of the monitoring agent still aim to help you verify, analyze, and tune message broker topologies associated with the IBM Integration Bus product.

Agent capabilities

The Monitoring Agent for IBM Integration Bus is now delivered as part of IBM Cloud Application Performance Management (available for both SaaS and on-premises). The IBM Integration Bus agent can provide the following key capabilities in the IBM Cloud Application Performance Management (Cloud APM) offerings:

• Resource monitoring (IIB related KPIs, such as message flow statistics, message flow node statistics, JVM heap memory information)
• Transaction tracking (such as interactions between IBM Integration Bus and IBM MQ, transaction performance across all brokers, transaction request and dependency information)

Easy setup

Compared with its predecessor, i.e. ITCAM Agent for WebSphere Message Broker, monitoring deployment and configuration is much easier.

In the previous ITM infrastructure, you should set up the whole ITM infrastructure, which means you must install several ITM components (e.g., TEMS, TEPS, TEP desktop client), install the agent, and then install the agent support files on the ITM components.

Now with IBM Cloud APM, installation procedure is required only for the server component named Cloud APM server and the monitoring agent itself. You first install the server. Then you get the pre-configured agent installation image to install an agent. After that, you can configure the agent for necessary monitoring options and the agent can automatically connect to the server. Monitoring data is presented via Could APM dashboards, the graphic user interfaces.

Eventing thresholds

With eventing thresholds, you can detect specific application behaviors and conditions based on actively monitored definitions, such as the connection between the broker and the queue manager is broken, or the maximum elapsed time spent processing an input message exceeds a specified value. The IBM Integration Bus agent provides dozens of predefined thresholds to alert you of abnormal situations in your IBM Integration Bus environment. You can also use the predefined eventing thresholds as a starting point for event monitoring, and create your own eventing thresholds as conditions arise.

Integration with ITM agent

If you are still using the ITCAM Agent for WebSphere Message Broker or OMEGAMON XE for WebSphere Message Broker Monitoring, you can decide whether to integrate the existing ITM monitoring infrastructure with IBM Cloud APM. After integration, you can view monitoring data from both agents in the single user interface, Cloud APM Dashboards. To integrate with ITCAM Agent for WebSphere Message Broker, you will need to install the Hybrid Gateway component as part of IBM Cloud APM. To integrate with OMEGAMON XE for WebSphere MQ Monitoring, you will need an extension pack named IBM OMEGAMON for Application Performance Management.

Learn more

Ready to get started monitoring applications? Visit IBM Marketplace at http://ibm.co/1SDvOV3 or Application Performance Management at https://developer.ibm.com/apm.

If you are already using IBM Performance Management, join the Application Performance Management group to connect with other members and collaborate with the experts by accessing blogs, forums, and wikis at https://ibm.biz/BdFBdh.