Application Grouping

Applications are logical collections of components, such as processes, hosts and disks, and/or subordinate applications. The monitoring of applications for availability can often provide more meaningful information about the impact on a business of a collective process being DOWN rather than monitoring just the individual entities.

Creating an Application Group is accomplished by associating a user-defined application name with each of the components required for the task to be performed. These components must already be included as individual entities in the AVAILABILITY Configuration as valid entities such as TCPIP HOSTS, SERVICES, DISKS or PROCEXE’s before including them in the application group statement.

Once all of the processes, devices and/or objects have been included in the AVAILABILITY Configuration, Availability will then consider the application to be in an UP state only when all the individual entities of the group are in an UP state. If any one particular entity changes to a DOWN state, then the application is considered to be DOWN.

For example, an application called MAIL may comprise of multiple servers, a number of services and logical drives or HPE NonStop volumes, all of which must be in an UP state for the application to be considered available. Availability Reporting will flag the application as DOWN whenever any one of the defined entities for that application is DOWN. Availability Reporting will also keep statistics as to how much of the last interval the application and all related entities were DOWN.

Each entity that is to be included in an application must already be a defined entity in the AVAILABILITY configuration, such as TCPIP HOSTS, APPLICATIONS, DISKS or Objects.

Previously defined applications may become components of other applications with each application being seen and managed as a component type.

How it works

All of the processes, devices and/or objects to be included in an application are defined in the AVAILABILITY Configuration in a number of APPLICATION statements that specify the application name.

In the example illustrated below, Application-A contains a Process ($CBP1), a TCP/IP Host ($ZB018) and a Disk ($SYSTEM). Application-B contains a Service (EVENT LOG), a Port (1860) and a Disk (E:\). Application-C contains both applications A and B together with additional components, a TCP/IP Host ($ZB018), an Object (SPOOL) and a Process ($X25L1).

Application Grouping

Example AVAILABILITY Configuration

The corresponding Availability Configuration used to set up the Application Group would look similar to the following:

SUBSYS AVAILABILITY

APPLICATION ADDEXE (Application-A, \XTWO.$CBP1)
APPLICATION ADDTCPHOST (Application-A, \XTWO.$ZB018)
APPLICATION ADDDISK (Application-A, \XTWO.$SYSTEM)

APPLICATION ADDSERVICE (Application-B, \WIN-A.EVENT LOG)
APPLICATION ADDPORT (Application-B, \WIN-A.1860)
APPLICATION ADDDISK (Application-B, \WIN-A.E:\)

APPLICATION ADDTCPHOST (Application-C, $ZB018)
APPLICATION ADDSERVICE (Application-C, SPOOL)
APPLICATION ADDEXE (Application-C, $X25L1)
APPLICATION ADDAPP (Application-C, Application-A)
APPLICATION ADDAPP (Application-C, Application-B)

Once this has been done, Availability will then consider Application-C to be in an UP state only when all the individual entities of the group and the two associated groups are in an UP state. If any one particular entity changes to a DOWN state, then Application-C is considered to be DOWN.