PeopleSoft Monitoring on the Cheap
Application Monitoring for the Budget-Minded Project
Posted on 12/16/2006 (originally published in print on 7/1/2005)
by Scott Baker
As you are getting ready to go out for lunch, you get a call from your favorite user. He can't log into the HR system. After some quizzing, you decide you better take a look for yourself. So, you try logging in and are successful. This only means that the Portal is up. After clicking on the link to HR, you discover that the system is unresponsive and eventually times out. By this time, the issue has been reported to the Problem Management group by about a dozen users. Since this is Open Enrollment time for benefits, the problem quickly gets escalated to upper management. You soon find yourself on a conference call with six other folks whose main focus is to get an ETA on when it will be fixed. The other DBA is on vacation, so all eyes are on you.
Unfortunately, this scenario gets played out more frequently than we would like to admit. As the person responsible for managing the PeopleSoft infrastructure, you must have a very good understanding of the architecture and excellent troubleshooting skills. When faced with this situation, you need to act quickly, so where do you start?
The best place to start is by being proactive. I know this is a worn out statement, but the PeopleSoft architecture has become much more complex. With all the layers between the user and the database, a good monitoring solution is absolutely essential.
What does monitoring do for us? As a friend of mine likes to say, "You want to hear the whistle before you see the train." Monitoring gives us the ability to see and fix an issue before it has an impact on the business. Application stability is good for everybody. Your user community does not suffer from downtime and their confidence in the technology and resources will grow. The “whistle” also gives you the luxury of troubleshooting a problem in the quiet of your office, making you more effective. I also believe that good monitoring can help reduce the number of resources required for production support.
There are a number of good products on the market to monitor PeopleSoft, including Foglight by Quest and Patrol by BMC. If you have the time and means to purchase a commercial product, I recommend doing an analysis of what is on the market and making a selection that best fits your needs. If you have been unsuccessful at getting the support to buy such a product, there is still hope.
This article is about implementing an inexpensive solution to monitor the essential elements in your PeopleSoft environment. I have created a framework of simple shell scripts that are very easy to understand and maintain. They have been structured so that they can be easily deployed and expanded to monitor additional components.
This article is not about shell scripting. I consider myself only an average shell script writer. While the scripts provided in this article were written by me, there is nothing here that is truly original. They are primarily here to serve as examples of what can be done.
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