This document applies to HP Network Node Manager iSPI Performance for Metrics (iSPI Performance for Metrics) version 9.20 and Network Performance Server (NPS) version 9.20. It contains the following information that is not provided in the product manuals or online help.
Known Problems, Limitations, and Workarounds
NPS stores, aggregates, and provides reports for collected performance data. It is the foundation for operational reports on NNMi. Other iSPIs rely on NPS for report presentation functionality. The iSPI Performance for Metrics adds performance management capability to NNMi by analyzing, processing, and aggregating a range of standard metrics collected by NNMi from different network elements.
This release of the iSPI Performance for Metrics includes the following features:
• Interface Health Reports
• Component Health Reports
• ATM PVC Health Reports
• Frame Relay PVC Health Reports
• Path Health Reports
• Custom Polled Reports
• Self Diagnostics Health Reports
The primary aim of this release is to improve usability across the product. There are many small enhancements that are not listed here individually. However, the major areas of enhancement are as follows:
Usability
• Addition of the Performance Workbench within NNMi, a real time, operational, graphing tool embedded within the main NNMi console.
• Major changes to the NPS navigation panel and report tree structures allowing easier use of advanced reporting features such as scheduling and user-created report shortcuts.
• Improvements to the support of Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD) Type 1 and Type 2 grouping constructs.
• Changes to how drillthrough from one report to another occurs. Destination reports now always open in a new browser window, allowing the user to compare the initial report with the newly launched one.
• Custom attributes created within NNM are now supported for reporting.
• Support for incremental backup routines.
• Addition of relative time attributes within the data models, allowing easy creation of relative time reports using Query Studio. Users can now create rolling time period reports such as “Volume for the last 24 hours.”
• Improvements to the support tools (backup and restore), allowing users to migrate their NPS environments from Windows 2003 to Windows 2008 (see the Installation Guide for full details).
Product Features and Architecture
• Improved data archival and report performance through the addition of a daily aggregate storage area. This is hidden from the report user but can be controlled with the configuration UI.
• The underlying reporting application, from Cognos, has been upgraded to version 10.1.1.
• The underlying database, Sybase IQ, has been upgraded to version 15.4.
• The underlying content store technology has been changed from Apache Derby to Sybase ASE.
• An improved installation routine making it easier to recover from minor configuration issues discovered during installation.
The iSPI Performance for Metrics 9.20 also includes multiple defect fixes seen in previous releases.
NNMi and NNM iSPI Performance for Metrics software must be equivalent in version. NNM iSPI Performance for Metrics software version 9.20 is supported only with NNM 9.20. NNMi 9.20 must be is installed before installing NNM iSPI Performance for Metrics 9.20. Otherwise, data might not be processed and reports might not be displayed.
The support matrix lists supported hardware platforms, operating systems, and network requirements. It is available at the root directory of the product media and at: HP Support Matrices.
This product release is not supported for any language except English. Systems should be configured with a locale of English with UTF8 character encoding.
For Red Hat Linux systems:
export LANG=en_US.utf8
export LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
Restart the NPS services to have the language settings take effect.
To permanently set the locale on RHEL, set the LANG variable in the /etc/sysconfig/i18n file.
This release contains certain unresolved problems and some limitations, which are listed below, with available workarounds where applicable. A searchable database of all known issues is available online at HP Software Support Online.
Performance Workbench
• In certain deployments, the performance panel in the analysis pane for a selected object in the NNMi console may show a login prompt and a password the first time the user logs in to the NNMi console using Firefox. Workaround: Enter the NNMi username and password.
• Using the Performance Workbench feature of NNMi, if a user drags a metric to create a new chart, the time range of the newly created chart may differ from those already shown by default. Workaround: Adjust the time range of the new chart to match.
• The graphs and charts shown within the Performance Workbench show percentages as a value between 0 and 1, rather than 0 and 100. For example, an availability percentage value of 99% is displayed as 0.99.
• When a user clicks on a connection, the Performance Analysis pane will show graphs for each interface. If the names of the interfaces are long, the displayed name may be truncated, making it difficult to distinguish between interfaces. Similar behavior happens with the metric labels for the graphs. Workaround: Pass the mouse over the truncated label to see the full text.
• Newly added nodes to NNM may show inconsistent Performance Workbench graph data immediately following their addition.
• Selecting the same metric from multiple different collection classes (for example, iSPI Performance for Traffic and iSPI Performance for Metrics) can lead to duplicate graphs being shown and no easy way to distinguish which is which.
• When examining a layer 2 connection, separate graphs are shown for each interface. However, labels may be missing from the graphs, which can make it difficult to determine which interface each relates to.
• Some graphs that display times in microseconds (µ) may have a garbled character shown instead of the µ character.
• When NPS is configured to use secure sockets layer encryption (SSL/HTTPS), the Performance Analysis pane shows an empty page if the NNMi console is launched using Internet Explorer. Workaround: To view the Performance graph in the Analysis Pane, perform the following steps:
You must cross launch the NPS home page using the NNMi console.
Accept the Certificate related warning displayed on the Internet Explorer.
The performance graph for the selected object will now be displayed.
• The Performance Analysis pane and troubleshooting workbench shows an empty page when iSPI Performance for Metrics is installed in an HA environment.
NPS Reports and Their Use
• The time zone specified in the user preferences in the BI Portal is not used for reporting purposes. Instead, the data displayed in reports is adjusted according to the time zone setting within the time panel of the report controls.
• The BI Server time zone is initially set to Eastern time. This does not affect reports, but does affect time stamps used by the BI Server for catalog objects such as output version creation time, etc. Workaround: runBIConfigGUI.ovpl, open Actions > Edit Global Configuration, click the General Tab, and set the time zone.
• Reports generated by a schedule will be missing the interactive links at the top to control behavior such as report options, or displaying the bookmark. Only reports run in real time have these features enabled.
• Help page content regarding the meaning of collected metrics is extensive, but not all metrics are included. For most, the meaning is self-explanatory.
• The Top 10 Task Duration report, part of the Self Diagnostics package for administrative users may have slightly obscured x-axis labels when examining data over a long interval with a fine display grain.
• The Report History tab of the navigation panel records which reports have been run by a user. If the Launch Separately preference is set, report launches may get recorded twice in the history.
• The Self Monitoring reports, and some items within the BI Portal area, are intended for administrative use only. Non-administrative users can see that these items exist but are not able to launch them.
• The Path Health report, launched by identifying a path within NNM and selecting an action from the menu system, may take longer than other reports to render if there are many items in the path. Users can expect render times in excess of 1 minute for a multi-part path.
• The Dashboard report may display with a very wide colored chart if the grain chosen by the user is fine compared to the interval. Workaround: Use the Time Control tab of the navigation panel to select a default grain for the chosen interval. The report will display correctly.
• The Self Monitoring reports allow administrative users to see how long individual reports take to launch. The name of some reports includes a full directory structure. As a result, the name can be long. Long names may appear truncated, making it difficult to determine which report the displayed data relates to.
• Some reports support the idea of filtering the data based on the value of a selected metric; for example, list the top 10 interfaces by volume where discard rate percentage is greater than 5%. Although the numeric filtering will work as expected, the filter display area at the top of the report that describes the filters and grouping currently in place will not inform the user that a filter is in place. This could lead to a report's being misunderstood if the user is not aware that filters were used.
• Report views that are saved into the My Folders area of the BI portal will not have a Bookmark URL available. Workaround: Save the report view into a User Group folder instead, where it will be given a bookmark URL.
• You can launch and view reports after logging on to the NNMi console as an administrator, operator, or guest. If you plan to log off, log on to the NNMi console again as a different user, and then launch reports again, you must clear browser cookies.
• When a report is launched using a bookmarked URL, or as a result of having the Open Separately check box enabled, the Topology Filter area may show some additional parameters that seem unrelated to the choices the user made. These can include, but are not limited to, ‘showNav=1 username=ErsAdmin run.prompt=false’. Workaround: These values can safely be ignored and will vanish the next time a report is launched within the same navigation pane area.
• After launching a report, choosing Alternate Delivery Option > Save Report appears not to do anything. However, clicking the Save Report option will cause the report to run in the background. The report output will be saved later as a new output version associated with the report or ReportView that was launched.
• It is important that you synchronize the NNMi management server clock and the NPS server clock. This ensures that the analysis panes that retrieve data from the NPS server yield accurate results. If you experience blank analysis panes, check that your clocks are synchronized between the servers.
•
On Windows, if HP Operations agent is already installed, and NPS is then installed,
the new Performance Troubleshooting features will fail to install correctly and
will not function after installation. Workaround: Install NPS before installing
HP Operations agent.
Install / Uninstall and Product Maintenance
•
Upgrading a 9.00 or 9.10 NPS installation to 9.20 can take some time.
The upgrade routines can run for several hours. During this time
the user might consider them stalled or hung but this is not the case.
Workaround: Monitor the progress of the upgrade by watching the prspi.log file
in the NPS logs directory.
•
When installing on Linux, the installer may advise the user to install some pre-requisite packages. The recommended installation command might look like this: “yum install unixODBC.i386 unixODBC.x86_64 unixODBC-devel.i386 unixODBC-devel.x86_64”. Workaround: Run the commands in
the following order: yum install unixODBC-libs yum install unixODBC.i386 unixODBC.x86_64 yum install unixODBC.i386 unixODBC.x86_64 unixODBC-devel.i386 unixODBC-devel.x86_64
•
The process of starting the BI Server (the reporting application
server and web front end) can take longer than in previous releases. Users can
expect a startup time of up to 10 minutes.
•
Uninstalling an Extension Pack from NPS does not halt the associated
collections within NNMi. This can lead to data being collected and stored by NNMi
but not processed. Although NNMi will eventually stop collecting the data, the
files can take up a substantial amount of disk space. Workaround: Users who
uninstall custom collections or those associated with content iSPIs should
disable the associated performance collections within NNMi at the same time.
•
Uninstalling an Extension Pack from
NPS will remove the associated reports and aggregation routines, but will not
remove Quicklaunch ReportViews or user-created ReportViews on content within
the Extension Pack. Workaround: Users should identify their links and
ReportViews that reference no longer available reports and remove them using
the BI Portal functions.
•
Setting the environment variable JAVA_HOME to point to an unsupported version of Java can cause the BI Server to not operate correctly, but the ‘statusBI.ovpl’ command will display a status of
normal.
•
Users who upgrade from version 9.0 with Patch 2 on a Windows platform will find
that the uninstall routine for the patch is still visible in the Windows start
menu. Workaround: This shortcut menu item can be removed manually using Windows.
•
In a High Availability environment, after enabling SSL on the on-line node and then on the passive node, the passive node will say that SSL is already enabled. However, if the passive node
is subsequently failed over to (making it active), the NPS report menu and
pages will not be available. Workaround: The originally passive node is
reporting (incorrectly) that it has SSL enabled. The user should run the
configureWebAccess.ovpl command again on that node when it becomes active.
•
If you are upgrading from version 9.0 or 9.10, you must stop the BI Server and capture two configuration files that contain user and group information. These files are only updated at BI Server shutdown. The backup script needs to copy the following files: Security
•
On a system running https for security, if a user launches the NPS front end, by visiting port 9300, they will be redirected to the authentication screen of NNMi for login.
However, when they are redirected, the browser will have switched from https to
http. Workaround: Users in an environment running https should always log in
through NNM.
•
When finishing a session, users are advised to close ALL browsers of the type they were using to access NPS, especially if the machine they are using is shared. Leaving one browser open is
enough to maintain the session parameters and allows another user to begin
browsing reports again without needing to log in.
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<DataDir>\NNMPerformanceSPI\contentstore\npssecgroups.properties
<DataDir>\NNMPerformanceSPI\contentstore\npsusergroups.properties
You should place them alongside the other content store information in the cm directory inside the backup.
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