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| rxm8778 |
 Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 12:30 pm Post subject: MQ volume metrics reports |
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Apprentice
Joined: 15 Sep 2005
Posts: 37
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I have been pondering upon this for a while and I can't figure out...is it even possible? Here is the gist...
I was asked to provide a report for some of our UNIX queue managers outlining:
- the average # of messages processed per hour
- the average size of the message size
- total number of messages process during the day
ect...
This would not be an issue if I was focusing on just one queue but the report is needed at the queue manager level. Overhere, the queue managers have 300+ queues and 100+ channels... (very large environment)
Now if it was on Z/OS, I could have used the Z/OS facilities like message manager or data manager... to pull some of that data. But on UNIX I am stuck since these facilities do not exist. We do have Qpasa as our enterprise monitoring tool but with so many objects on one queue manager, It will take months to set up...if it is even possible....(did I mention that it will be tedious as well)
Anyway, I wanted to gather your thoughts on this and maybe one of you have a better solution. Maybe you had to fullfill a similar requirement in the past if so how did you handle it.
As of now this sounds like a suicide mission to me. 
thanks in advance for your input on this.
ps. I have been reading mqseries.net for a while now...and this is only my first post because the search button is my best friend: I make good use of it.  |
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| jefflowrey |
| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 12:56 pm Post subject: |
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Grand Poobah
Joined: 16 Oct 2002
Posts: 19981
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Qpasa should allow you to a) store data ABOUT your system (not the actual message data) into a database, from which any kind of reporting you want can be made, b) use templates to drive what information is monitored and apply that to several qmgrs/machines at once.
So it shouldn't be as hard as you think it is. But it has been a while since I've worked with QPasa, so maybe I'm entirely wrong.
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I am *not* the model of the modern major general. |
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| rxm8778 |
| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 1:34 pm Post subject: |
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Apprentice
Joined: 15 Sep 2005
Posts: 37
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Well in order to monitor anything in Qpasa you have to manually select it in the config manager. Without a "select all" option this could take a while for 300+ queues, 300+ channels. Besides from a performance standpoint selecting these from the gui will impact performance and may crash the qpasa topic service. I would have to do it maybe 10-15 at a time...
Adding all these objects to history templates is another long daunting task in QPasa. Finally being able to compile and add up the information collected would have to be a manual process. Tallying up this info would be another mission impossible since I would have to manually browse each report (all 600 of them individually) and mark down the numbers to later add them up in a calculator. Now should I want to have the totals automatically summed up (for all objects) I would have to create a custom reports which in turn requires the creation of logical views.... blah blah blah... (you get the picture if you are a current QPasa user)
Maybe other tools handle mass request like this better than Qpasa?!?!
At the end of the day this is just not intuitive and way too tedious considering the amount of objects involved. (especially for a one time use)
I was hoping that I am not the only one who has been asked to provide these type of numbers about an MQ environment and hopefully that person has better approach that he could share with me. |
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| jefflowrey |
| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 2:10 pm Post subject: |
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Grand Poobah
Joined: 16 Oct 2002
Posts: 19981
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Perhaps you should raise these questions with MQSoftware support?
And perhaps you should use this requirement as an opportunity to revisit your use of QPasa, and get software vendors to try and sell you on their tool instead.
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I am *not* the model of the modern major general. |
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| fjb_saper |
| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 2:57 pm Post subject: |
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Grand High Poobah
Joined: 18 Nov 2003
Posts: 20756
Location: LI,NY
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| Quote: |
We do have Qpasa as our enterprise monitoring tool but with so many objects on one queue manager, It will take months to set up...if it is even possible....(did I mention that it will be tedious as well)
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Have you talked to MQSoftware Support ? If I remember my documentation well there is a way to script this....
Enjoy 
Your only limits are the ones imposed by your own mind..... 
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MQ & Broker admin |
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| PeterPotkay |
| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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Poobah
Joined: 15 May 2001
Posts: 7722
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QPASA has the info. But some days its click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click in the QPASA GUI.
It has gotten a little better since QPASA 2.0, but still.
If you ask for help as we have it can be scripted. One of my teammates is pretty good at digging around in the QPASA tables and writing scripts. He manages to get some of things done via script, but its not easy and he's further handicapped by virtue of our QPASA server running on Windows (prevents him from using his UNIX scripting mojo).
Everytime we come up with a requirement that SHOULD be handled in the GUI, but forces us to go trolling thru the internal tables we submit an enhancement request. Please do the same maybe they'll start listening!
For instance a user comes to me and says "What are the alerts and suppressions for these 25 queues?" A user should be able to use the QPASA GUI to plug in that q name and find out what that object is assocciated with. But nooooooo, I have to go open each and every template and manually see if that queue is there.
QPASA is pretty cool. I use it every day to prove MQ is not the problem! But some days I wonder how much real life end user experience they consider (dozens of QMs with 1000s of queues with users that are not power scripters familiar with every table they have in their DB).
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Peter Potkay
Keep Calm and MQ On |
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| fjb_saper |
| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:31 pm Post subject: |
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Grand High Poobah
Joined: 18 Nov 2003
Posts: 20756
Location: LI,NY
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| PeterPotkay wrote: |
| But nooooooo, I have to go open each and every template and manually see if that queue is there. |
Peter, I'm disappointed. I would have thought you'd create an ODBC connection to the qpasa DB and would query that information directly from the QPasa DB? Yes it is sometimes difficult to query from the GUI...
Enjoy
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| PeterPotkay |
| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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Poobah
Joined: 15 May 2001
Posts: 7722
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Buy why do I have to do this for the users? The GUI should have something as simple as a Search button where anybody, from a green user to the Sr. QPASA admin, can just ask QPASA to nicely display anything associated with an object.
An industrial strength monitoring tool should make it easy for users to get monitoring info. I can't let every Tom Dick and Harry open ODBC connections to the DB and tell them "Hey, figure it out, the info you want is in the DB somewhere." Nor should I have to do it myself. My QPASA experts maybe do do it this way. But the fact that I would have suggested going thru the templates manually, and I consider myself pretty well versed on QPASA, underscores its occasional user friendliness problems for shops with lots of queues. It has gotten better. We'll see what Version 4.0 brings. The webinar on 4.0 I attended did not highlight any of these requirements if they do exist in the new version.
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Peter Potkay
Keep Calm and MQ On |
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| Michael Dag |
| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:44 pm Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 2607
Location: The Netherlands (Amsterdam)
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| PeterPotkay wrote: |
| My QPASA experts maybe do do it this way. But the fact that I would have suggested going thru the templates manually, and I consider myself pretty well versed on QPASA, underscores its occasional user friendliness problems for shops with lots of queues. It has gotten better. We'll see what Version 4.0 brings. The webinar on 4.0 I attended did not highlight any of these requirements if they do exist in the new version. |
I smell another opportunity
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Michael
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