Greetings!!!
Great to see the questions and dialog on ARE! One of my favorite options
that is part of IBM i.
Going to address a few things...Yea, once upon a time it was called
Application Runtime Expert...and that was a charged option. We remained
it and added it to the bonus pack a number of years ago now.
If you are going to use it to manager PTFs, ensure you have the latest
PTFs on the box that ARE is installed on, there are a number of
enhancements and improvements in this area specifically.
Speaking of the box ARE is installed on. If you have 15 partitions
running in your environment, you only have to have ARE installed on 1 of
them. This would be considered your master partition. From this partition
you would launch the GUI interface, the GUI is used for 2 things. 1.
building the template for comparing against any other partitions. The GUI
provides an interface for building the 'compare template'. This is an XML
file (yea.. was created before JSON was really there...) the XML file has
the master keys, ie what we are comparing on each of the other partitions
you end up pointing at. 2. a console from which to launch compares, and
manage the compares.
The actual ARE runtime... that is already on every ibm i partition
everywhere... we have been using it internally for customer support
problems for many many years. SO... that is why ARE only needs to be on
the master partition!
As for the list of checks that you want to do below....YES! All of those
can be easily checked (I think with the base simple support...) You can
create the template, and there is a scheduling facility that is part of
ARE where you can run regular verifications and yes. email results!
ARE also has the capability to be hight customized! There are a few ways
to do this, we have an SQL interface, where you can run an SQL statement
on the targets partition! With all the SQL services, that makes what you
can do almost limitless. Additionally, if the is not enough, this is a
Java based app, and we have created it such that you can easily extend
things and create and register your own custom java plugin, ie you can do
basically anything you want in that. I have one customer that is using
ARE in their own support center, anytime they update their application
across their 50 Partitions they support, they run an ARE verification, in
addition to doing some checking..that also start various jobs and
subsystems using ARE to insure that the entire application environment is
up running and happy. Using ARE they have fully automated a startup and
verification process that used to have to be done manually and take a
person a couple of hours to perform. Now... automated.. runs in seconds,
and its done correct every time :).
Shameless plugs... (even have these!). yes, I have a session at
PowerUp2019
Tuesday, May 21 • 10:30am - 11:30am
[1]Manage PTF's and Monitor Your Systems with Administration Runtime
Expert
Are you interested in checking on your system's overall health and
well-being? How about attributes required for your applications to run
smoothly? Disk utilization? PTF currency? Come to this session to learn
about how Administration Runtime Expert (ARE) can help you accomplish all
of these tasks!
I will not only talk about ARE... I like to do live demos... so will have
several of those as well.
Tim Rowe, timmr@xxxxxxxxxx
Business Architect Application Development & Systems Management for IBM i
IBM i Development Lab, Rochester, MN
(507) 253-6191 (Tie) 553-6191
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/i/are/index.html
message: 2
date: Fri, 1 Mar 2019 15:22:09 +0000
from: "Steinmetz, Paul via MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: RE: How to get 5733ARE - Administration Runtime Expert for
IBM i
Rob,
There's some need stuff in 5733ARE - Administration Runtime Expert for
IBM i
I haven't had a chance to mess with it yet.
>From what I'm reading, you can customize and create your own checks.
Question, instead of visiting the IBMARE browser daily, can it be setup
to email any errors/warnings that are discovered?
Sample below.
The daily checks template will perform the following on all our systems:
Check TCP/IP ports 80 (Intranet) & 10081 (Zend Administration) are
open
All PTF groups are up to date
Check all licensed programs are in a healthy state
Check user profile F_User exists and is not *Disabled
Check the owner of application F_Ftp is FormaServe
Check directory F_Ftp exists
The performance adjuster System Value QPFRADJ is set to 2
Are there any damaged objects?
Check our applications RPG programs are using the FSS activation
group
Paul
References
Visible links
1.
https://powerup19.sched.com/event/JlxZ/manage-ptfs-and-monitor-your-systems-with-administration-runtime-expert#
midrange.com
