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Instana for z/OS metrics monitoring

By Neha Ghongade posted Fri December 20, 2024 08:29 AM

  

Authors:  Clyde Foster, Rajesh K. Jeyapaul, Neha Ghongade

 

High performing, highly resilient security and agility systems such as mainframes host complex, heavily transaction-oriented applications. These real time transaction-oriented applications require a capable observability system that can offer the following capabilities: 

  • extensive metrics monitoring 
  • complete end to end tracing 
  • incident reporting 
  • Smart Alerts and Smart Actions

The end-to-end application performance monitoring (APM) framework of Instana provides extensive monitoring capability for z/OS-based systems. Instana collects various metrics regarding the application performance on z/OS systems, which are used to identify critical incidents. The built-in AI-based smart action framework of Instana then takes automated actions to address these critical incidents. 
In this blog, learn how to use Instana to collect metrics for the host, runtime, services, and z/OS subsystems.

z/OS metrics monitoring capabilities

Architectural Diagram
You can monitor z/OS metrics with Instana in the following different ways: 
  • Using IBM OMEGAMON: Integrating IBM OMEGAMON with Instana provides monitoring capabilities for various z/OS components such as IBM IMS, CICS, Db2, and IBM MQ. For more information on z/OS metrics collection using OMEGAMON, see the Metrics collection topic in the IBM Instana Observability on z/OS documentation. 
  • Using Instana host agent: The Instana host agent provides you with monitoring capabilities for JVM-specific applications only. Host related metrics as of now it's only through omegamon. 

Monitoring z/OS metrics with OMEGAMON

The integration of IBM OMEGAMON with Instana involves two main steps: configuration and communication.

Architectural Diagram
First, you must configure the IBM Z OMEGAMON Data Provider (ODP) on the z/OS logical partition (LPAR) that you want to monitor. Then, the Instana OMEGAMON sensor, which is deployed on host agent (non-z/OS system), can be used to send data to SaaS or self-hosted Instana server.   
To enable OMEGAMON-based monitoring, complete the following actions: 
  1. Ensure OMEGAMON Data provider is configured in the z/OS system that contains the sub-systems to be monitored. For more information about configuring IBM Z OMEGAMON Data Provider, see IBM OMEGAMON Documentation. 
  2. Deploy the Instana OMEGAMON sensor in any of the (remote) host outside the z/OS environment. For more information, see the Installing the host agent on Linux topic in the Instana documentation. 
  3. Enable the OMEGAMON sensor in your Instana host agent to receive IBM OMEGAMON data. 

Note: Metric ingestion by using the OMEGAMON sensor in the host agent is deactivated by default. To activate this support, you must complete the following step. 

Enable the OMEGAMON sensor in your Instana host agent to receive IBM OMEGAMON data. Instana collects data from monitored systems by using a single agent on each host. To enable the OMEGAMON sensor, locate the ibmomegamon section of the agent configuration file, and uncomment the lines for the sensor. See the following example: 

<agent_install_dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml: 

The metrics that are related to z/OS, Db2 for z/OS, CICS, JVM, IBM MQ for z/OS, and IBM IMS are collected from IBM OMEGAMON and visualized within Instana.

See the list of all configuration and performance metrics that are related to z/OS  

Monitoring z/OS JVM-based metrics using Instana native agent

The native Instana agent supports metrics monitoring for Java applications. This is the only monitoring supported using Instana-native agent.

Architectural Diagram
Note: JVM-based applications such as WebSphere Application Server is currently not supported with Instana agent.
To enable z/OS JVM-based monitoring, complete the following actions:
  1. Deploy the native agent on the host that contains the z/OS sub-systems. For more information on deploying the agent, see the Agent section of Tracing WAS/Liberty on z/OS topic in the IBM Instana Observability on z/OS documentation. 
  2. Update the instana-agent/etc/instana/com.instana.agent.main.sender.Backend.cfg file with your Instana server details such as host, port, and key.
  3. Open the instana-agent/bin/setnev file and update JAVA_HOME as shown in the following example: 
  4. Open Instana-agent/bin file and start the agent by executing ./start script.

When the agent starts sending data to Instana SaaS or self-hosted server, you can see the metrics on the Instana UI. 

See the demo that explains how z/OS JVM based metrics are monitored using Instana-native agent. Also refer this demo which showcases z/OS metrics are retrieved through OMEGAMON and monitored by Instana Server. 

FAQ

  1. Can I monitor Websphere Application Server/Liberty using native agent?

    • No, currently metrics monitoring is not supported on z/OS, supported on other Os's like Ubuntu, Rhel(x86, Power, s390x), Refer this for more details. This will be available to leverage in the near future for z/OS.

       Tracing is supported for WebSphere Liberty by using native agent. For more information, see the Tracing WAS/Liberty on z/OS topic in the IBM Instana Observability on z/OS documentation.

  2. Where Can I find IBM Z Omegamon related details?
  3. How can I get custom metrics using Prometheus, and Stasd?
  4. Can Instana consider custom metrics for any alert notification?
  5. How to raise a support ticket?
    • To raise a support ticket, go to IBM Support portal and click Open a case. To check your existing tickets, click View your cases.

For questions that are not included in this section, contact IBM Support.  

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