HP NNM iSPI Performance for Metrics Software Release Notes

for the Windows® and Linux operating systems

Software version: 8.13

Publication date: October 2009

This document is an overview of the HP NNM iSPI Performance for Metrics software (iSPI Performance for Metrics). It contains important information that is not included in books or Help. You can find information about the following in this document:

Product Overview
Installation Notes
Known Problems, Limitations, and Workarounds
Documentation Updates
Support
Legal Notices

Product Overview

The iSPI Performance for Metrics adds the performance management capability to NNMi by analyzing, processing, and aggregating 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
• Path Health Report
• Custom Polled Reports

Installation Notes

Installation requirements, as well as instructions for installing the iSPI Performance for Metrics, are documented in the Installation Guide for the iSPI Performance for Metrics provided in PDF (.pdf) format. You can find the Installation Guide at the root directory on the product installation media.

For a list of supported hardware platforms, operating systems, and database, see the support matrix available at the root directory of the product media or at this location:
HP Support matrices.

Known Problems, Limitations, and Workarounds

This release contains certain unresolved problems, some limitations, and there are workarounds to help solve certain problems.

Issues Related to Installation

• The Windows version of this software is only supported on 64-bit versions of Windows; installation on 32-bit Windows systems is not supported.
• Although you can install this application on systems supporting non-ASCII characters (such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), the install directories (both application and data directories) must not include any non-ASCII characters.
• If you are running the iSPI Performance for Metrics enablement script on NNMi and you choose to stop when the script presents you with a list of tasks, the message that displays does not take account of the fact that you have not done anything yet.
• The iSPI Performance for Metrics does not support non-ASCII user names on a Windows system.
• If jboss is not running when you run the iSPI Performance for Metrics enablement script on NNMi, an error message will appear.
• An error relating to ‘ovcatgets fails’ may appear on Linux systems. Ignore this error.
• On a Windows system, which is configured to use a non-English number format, the installer stops responding and the installation process does not proceed.
  To resolve this, follow these steps:
  1. On the Windows system, open the Control Panel.
  2. Double-click Regional and Language Options.
  3. Select English (or a language with a comma separator).
     Alternatively, follow these steps:
     1. Click Customize.
     2. Change Digit Grouping Symbol to comma (,).
     3. Change Decimal symbol to dot (.).
     4. Click OK.
     5. Click OK.
  4. Start the installation process again.
  5. Optional. Return the Regional and Language Options to their original settings after the installation is complete.

Issues Encountered While Removing the Product

• If the iSPI Performance for Metrics is removed, some directories may be left on the file system under the HP and HP Software directory trees (the exact location will depend on your system). For example: C:\Program Files\HP\HP BTO Software, C:\Program Files\HP OpenView\nonOV.
• Running the NNM PerfSPI Disablement utility (nnmdisableperfspi.ovpl) will remove the license and it will also remove actions from the NNMi menu; however, running the uninstall utility will not remove two items configured during installation: the operating system user and the network drive share.
• On a Windows system, after removing the product, Sybase IQ items may remain in the Add/Remove Programs list.

Issues Related to Report Appearance

• When you schedule a report, the filter options are pre-selected. If you are viewing a report that was generated using a schedule, and you try to display the options page, the options page will be empty.
• The name of the tab for Self Diagnostics reports is different from the name across the top of each report (PerfSPI Diagnostics).
• There are multiple buttons and links that appear within the BI Server components of the product, which do not work as a result of the BI Server running as an embedded component. The Add this report -> Add to My Bookmarks feature does not work; use the built-in Show Bookmark panel instead. The Lineage feature (at the top-right corner of each report) does not work.
• All reports can be viewed in the HTML and pdf formats. The system allows you to generate reports in other formats such as CSV or Excel. Some reports are not suitable for all supported formats. Users who require specific report layouts in these file formats should create their own custom report in Query Studio.
• The Top N report, when accessing a small data set with only one data point, will display differently in the HTML format as compared to the PDF version. Specifically, the chart at the bottom of the report may not appear correctly in PDF.
• The x-axis time values on the Calendar report, when viewed with a 7 day time range, can sometimes appear illegible.
• When using the iSPI with non-ASCII topology filters, the Show Links tabs can sometimes incorrectly show a warning that the target report may be empty based upon the current topology selections.
• NULL values for Node Contact or Node Location cannot be used for topology filters.
• Selecting many topology items for filtering can result in a very large filter display area on the report. In turn, the Show Links panel may not appear correctly. The workaround is to reduce the number of topology items selected. An approximate guideline is to restrict the filter display area within four lines.
• The gauges of the Interface Health Dashboard are not uniform in appearance. The right-most gauge has an additional decimal place in the display.
• The Dashboard report within Component Health can display gauge labels poorly when viewed in the pdf format.
• The Report Menu screen, opened when first launching from NNMi, uses a title of ‘NNM iSPI Performance’. It should include the letters ‘HP’ at the beginning of that title.
• The Self Diagnostics – Task Duration report is missing an Add Bookmark panel.
• Launching from NNMi with an interface selected enables you to navigate to the Interface Health reports. Standard checks to verify that the Component Health reports contain data for the parent node are not carried out; therefore, it is possible that a user could launch an empty Component Health report in this scenario.
• The Calendar report can sometimes not show the date and time on the x-axis in situations where there is very little data in the database (new installation). The workaround is to use a different time range.
• Empty reports can appear if you deliberately select the default or null values for some report options such as the time selections.

Issues Related to Report Navigation

• Drill-through capabilities are not available in reports presented in the PDF format despite the fact that URLs are embedded in them. Clicking these links will result in the browser 404 (Page not found) error.
• The BI Server utilizes an asynchronous communications mode between the user browser and the report server. Opening multiple browser windows and launching simultaneous iSPI Performance for Metrics reports may result in the following error: Absolute affinity request ‘asynchWait_Request' failed. This error may also be displayed if a local firewall is interfering with the operation of the BI Server or if the system specification is significantly less than the minimum required for the iSPI Performance for Metrics.
• Report URLs rely on Javascript. Various browser controls (for example, forward, back, and refresh) and bookmarks based on displayed URLs will not work as expected. You will either see the asynchWait_Request error or you will return to the BI Server Portal.
• The system does not operate correctly when NNMi is configured to use SSL only. The links from the Network Topology tab back to the NNMi console will not work. The workaround is to enable both http and https within NNMi.
• Launching from NNMi to the Report Menu with an Interface or Interface Group selected does not automatically select the Interface Health tab.
• Navigating between reports with metrics with non-ASCII names will cause the metric value to return to the default for the report with each report transfer. This problem can apply only to customPoll reports as standard Metrics reports use predefined ASCII metric names. The workaround is that users of non-ASCII systems who define custom collections should avoid creating metrics with non-ASCII names.
• Using the report zoom controls to zoom in or out when the current Time Range selection is ‘Until Now’ will have no effect. Modify the Time Range to some other values for the zoom in or out buttons to operate correctly.
• The Most Changed style report does not operate correctly when the you select Until Now as the Time Range.
• Repeatedly drilling down within the Top N, Most Changed, or Dashboard tables on a topology item that is already part of the existing filter will cause duplicates to appear within the filter.
• Navigating to the Heat Chart or Calendar report with a Time Range of Until Now but a total time interval of less than 24 hours can cause these reports to appear blank.
• Drilling down on topology values with the characters like > in their name can cause problems for report-to-report navigation. This appears in the Self Diagnostics reports while drilling down on task types that are separated by ->.

Browser Specific Issues

• The Firefox browser does not support the dragging and dropping of metrics within Query Studio. Other methods of inserting metrics are available (double-click or the ‘Insert’ button).
• With Firefox, if you drill down on a graph with 1 minute Time Range and As Polled Time Grain, the Report Menu report will display a Java error.
• When using Firefox, occasionally the Show Bookmark URL displayed within the Bookmark panel will be too large for the display and may extend outside the screen.
• When using Firefox, the tool tip values used in the iSPI Diagnostics Calendar report are poorly formatted.

Miscellaneous Issues

• It can take up to 30 minutes for custom collected reports to appear in the Report Menu tab list from the time you pressed the Generate Report action within NNMi.
  In these circumstances, the system will reprocess all existing extension packs and this can take several minutes for each package. After a short interval, the new reports appear in the tabs on the Report Menu.
• The Headline Report, a part of the Interface Health package, is slower to execute than other reports. This can be observed on systems supporting large networks.
• Some reports may be difficult to interpret when printed unless a color printer is used.
• NNMi administrators have access to extensive configuration options on the BI Server Portal. Administrative users should familiarize themselves with portal features and capabilities. Use online help and the tutorials available from the help link on the BI Server Portal.
• NNMi and iSPI Performance for Metrics must exist on the same network domain. They can exist in different sub-domains. Placing NNMi and the iSPI Performance for Metrics on separate systems which are on completely different network domains will result in double login issues when moving between NNMi and the reports.
• When you run a report, you may see an hourglass and an invitation to let your report run in the background. To do this, you must select an alternative delivery method. Additional configuration is required to ensure that sending reports via email will work. To view a saved report, use the BI Server Portal.
• The iSPI Performance supports application failover settings within NNMi, but does not support them for the iSPI itself.
• The launchReport.ovpl function, used on the iSPI system itself at the command line, can fail to supply the correct time parameter to the called report. The result is a report which may appear to have only one datapoint.
• When running the Reset Utility (resetSPI.ovpl) and selecting the option 2 (restore archived data for reprocessing) on a Windows iSPI installation, which is paired with a Linux NNMi installation using Samba for sharing the drive, the act of copying the files from the iSPI machine to NNMi may fail due to permissions of the iSPI user. The workaround is to copy the files back to the NNMi machine manually.
• The backup and restore utilities should log messages to the log file for the product.
• Command-line utilities of the iSPI Performance fail to run after installing the HP Operations agent on the iSPI Performance server (Windows).
  The HP Operations agent installation resets the environment variable %OVPERLLIB%. As a result, when you try to run one of the command-line utilities of the iSPI Performance, the following error message appears:
  Can't locate perfspi.pm in @INC
  To resolve this issue, manually set the environment variable %OVPERLLIB% to include the Perl library path for the iSPI Performance (<Install_Dir>\NNMPerformanceSPI\lib\perllibs\lib).

Problems and Workarounds

• Using stopALL.ovpl will fail to stop all the iSPI processes if any of the processes are stopped already.
  Workaround: Use stopETL.ovpl, stopBI.ovpl, and stpDB.ovpl separately to ensure all services/processes are stopped.
• Multi-byte user input for customPoll collection names or OID/metric names causes extension packs to function incorrectly on Windows (database columns are not created correctly).
  Workaround: Use ASCII characters for customPoll collection names and metric/OID names.
• Commas embedded in Node Group names or Interface Group names prevent the data from loading. As a result, FATAL errors occur in ETL processing.
  Workaround: Do not use the comma character in Node or Interface Group names.
• On Windows, the restore.ovpl script can fail when restoring a backup.
  Workaround: Contact HP Support for the necessary hotfix.
• Multiple problems caused by multi-byte values for Node Group Names, Interface Group Names, or other fields used as topology attributes:
  • Multi-byte filter values do not work correctly on Windows.
  • The ETL service performs repeated ‘attribute change’ actions when it encounters multi-byte attribute values on Windows.
  • Navigation problems occur with the Firefox browser when multi-byte topology filter is set.
    
  Workaround: Use ASCII characters for group names and other topology attributes.

Documentation Updates

The first page of this release notes document contains the following identifying information:

• Version number, which indicates the software version.
• Publish date, which changes each time the document is updated.

To check for recent updates or to verify that you are using the most recent edition, visit this URL: HP Software Product Manuals

To retrieve a document, select the:

1. Product name.
2. Version list.
3. Operating System.
4. Preferred Language.
5. Document title.
6. Click Open or Download.

You must have Adobe Reader installed to view files in PDF format (*.pdf). To download Adobe Reader, go to the Adobe web site.

HP Software Support

This web site provides contact information and details about the products, services, and support that HP Software offers. For more information, visit the HP Support web site at: HP Software Support Online.

HP Software support provides customer self-solve capabilities. It provides a fast and efficient way to access interactive technical support tools needed to manage your business. As a valued support customer, you can benefit by being able to:

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To access the Self-solve knowledge base, visit the Self-solve knowledge search home page.

Legal Notices

©Copyright 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

Confidential computer software. Valid license from HP required for possession, use or copying. Consistent with FAR 12.211 and 12.212, Commercial Computer Software, Computer Software Documentation, and Technical Data for Commercial Items are licensed to the U.S. Government under vendor's standard commercial license.

The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.

For information about third-party license agreements, see the license-agreements directory on the product installation DVD-ROM.

To view open source code, see the license-agreements/source and license-agreements/CygwinSources directories on the product installation media.

Trademark Notices

Adobe® is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Java™ is a U.S. trademark of Sun Microsystems,Inc.
Microsoft®, Windows® and Windows® XP are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
UNIX® is a registered trademark of The Open Group.

Acknowledgements

This product includes libjpeg library. This software is copyright (C) 1991-1998, Thomas G. Lane.
The Graphics Interchange Format(c) is the Copyright property of CompuServe Incorporated. GIF(sm) is a Service Mark property of CompuServe Incorporated.
This product includes libxml2 library. Copyright (C) 1998-2003 Daniel Veillard. All Rights Reserved.
This product includes libxp library. Copyright © 2001,2003 Keith Packard.

© 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.