The Computing Center Management System (CCMS) has long been used for its monitoring and alerting features to keep track of SAP system performance. With SAP Solution Manager 7.1, SAP has introduced new monitoring functionality with a feature called Technical Operations.

Technical Operations is a work center-based functionality. It offers an improved UI and more functionality, though as NIMBL consultant Michael Pytel notes in a podcast with SAPexperts, it takes longer to set up. “In terms of effort, my mantra [is] four to six hours per managed system in order to get both managed system config done and the Technical Operations piece set up,” says Pytel.

The results are that the look and feel of Technical Operations is stronger than that of CCMS. “It’s got a really beautiful dashboard where you see the components of whatever system you’re managing,” says Pytel. “It’s Flash based, you have the graphic on the center of the screen, the metrics on the right side of the screen. You can drill down into logs and things like that. The presentation is fabulous.”

From a technical standpoint, there are fewer agents to be deployed. You don’t need all the CCMS agents required with the use of CCMS and SAP Solution Manager 7.0 and prior. Instead, you have diagnostics agents — but this can result in some connectivity issues. “[You] have to deploy the diagnostics agent, make sure that connectivity is happening there, [but] there can be little kinks here and there when you’re connecting systems,” says Pytel.

If you’re considering an upgrade to SAP Solution Manager 7.1, Technical Operations is a functionality you should be aware of. For prior systems, CCMS is still the monitoring system of choice. For more about Technical Operations, listen to my podcast with Michael Pytel, available for download here. If you’d prefer to read about it, the transcript of our conversation is below.

Transcript

SAPexperts: I’m here with Michael Pytel, a consultant with NIMBL Consulting. How are you doing today, Michael?

Michael Pytel: Very good. It’s a little chilly here in Denver, but I’m excited to kick off this podcast.

SAPexperts: All right, great. So we’re going to be talking about the Technical Operations functionality in Solution Manager 7.1 today. First question I have for you: Is CCMS still going to be supported in Solution Manager 7.1?

MP: Yes, CCMS is still supported, and we have worked on a couple of projects where customers had had extensive use of CCMS. They had multiple agents deployed, they had auto-reactions, maybe an auto-reaction to send an email when something alerted, maybe a reaction sent data to an SNMP trap that was picked up by IBM or HP or what not. But CCMS is still there, still available, and usable within Solution Manager 7.1.

SAPexperts: What is the relationship between the new Technical Operations and CCMS? Are they dependent on each other or do they interact in a different way?

MP: So far in my experience — and I’ve got about four different projects under my belt right now for Technical Operations in varying sized landscapes — so far I have not seen a relationship at all between CCMS and Technical Operations. So, CCMS you install CCMS agents, you use the transactions RZ20 and RZ21, it can be any NetWeaver-based system, and that’s how it’s been for several years. Technical Operations is 100 percent work center based and the only agents you need deployed for certain agents are the diagnostic agents. So I no longer need to deploy these CCMS agents. Diagnostic agents have been automatically installed for you as of NetWeaver 7.0 SR3, so every NetWeaver installation you may have done on your landscape you more than likely already have diagnostic agents installed. In the end, I have less agents to deploy, which is a good thing.

SAPexperts: How much effort is Technical Operations from the proactive monitoring side of things?

MP: CCMS has been around for eight, nine years, so it’s well documented, a lot of people have done it, there’s a lot of great blogs, great content, so CCMS is something that’s very easy to stand up and deploy. I decide which system is my central system, I connect the RFCs, I choose what I want to alert and I set a reaction like an email alert.

Technical Operations is a little bit more involved. What you’re going to do in Solution Manager 7.1 is you’re going to navigate to the SOLMAN_SETUP transaction or to the Configuration work center within SOLMAN_WORKCENTERS. From there you’re going to navigate to Technical Monitoring Setup, which is Technical Operations. This setup is basically done by system. It’s important that you have what’s referred to as managed system configuration complete on that Solution Manager system before you move on to Technical Operations. In terms of effort, I’m still sticking with my mantra of four to six hours per managed system in order to get both managed system config done and the Technical Operations piece set up.

SAPexperts: What are some of the key tasks involved?

MP: First you need to make sure your diagnostic agents are reporting to Solution Manager. Looking at the solution you want to manage, is it NetWeaver 7.0, is it R/3, is it CRM, is it BW? Then making the decision internally — do we want to go ahead and make the jump to the new diagnostics agent? With Solution Manager 7.1, we can use the new diagnostics agent 7.3. That diagnostics agent is actually a really easy install, it has a great installation assistant, it actually also installs what’s called a host agent for you as well. So it’s a very nice packaged-up installation. Additionally, that new diagnostics agent has an uninstall feature, so if you have old agents out there, when you go to do the installation you can uninstall the old agent and then easily install that new agent. So that’s the first key task: It’s determining what is my diagnostic agent strategy, is it using existing agents or am I going to upgrade everybody?

Once you’ve done that, make sure they’re all registered and make sure they’re connected up to Solution Manager and for people who have used Solution Manager 7.1, they’ll know that you do that in the SOLMAN_SETUP transaction managed system configuration.

The next key task is something that a lot of people don’t do. It’s figuring out what do we want to monitor? What do we want to alert against? SAP gives you thousands and thousands of things to monitor and alert against but if you just turn them all on it can be overwhelming and then it’s no longer useful. What I like to do is come with a top 10 list — pick out the top 10 things I want to alert against and then activate those things for email alerts and for proactive SMS alerts and for things like that. Then add alerts as I need or find them.

So for key tasks, make sure they’re installed, make sure they’re registered, and then sit down and determine, what do we need to monitor, what do we need to monitor proactively and then what do we need to monitor maybe from a service level reporting standpoint? Document those things and then the Technical Operations setup will be much easier for you.

SAPexperts: We’ve covered this a little bit in some of the other questions, but generally speaking how is Technical Operations better or worse than CCMS?

MP: Well, in terms of better or worse, some of the advantages of Technical Operations, it’s got a really beautiful dashboard where you see the components of whatever system you’re managing, it’s Flash based, you have the graphic on the center of the screen, the metrics on the right side of the screen — if it’s green it’s good, if it’s red it’s bad. You can drill down into logs and things like that, so from a plus standpoint, Technical Operations looks great. It’s Flash based, the presentation is fabulous.

In terms of downsides, CCMS is still the quick and dirty way to set up monitoring really quickly. Deploying an agent, registering it, and setting up some alerts takes less than an hour. With Technical Operations, I have to deploy the diagnostics agent, I need to make sure that connectivity is happening there, there can be little kinks here and there when you’re connecting up managing systems. In terms of presentation I think Technical Operations wins. In terms of being able to easily get something quickly, CCMS is still tried and true.

SAPexperts: You mentioned alerts. Can you still get email alerts for issues on your systems?

MP: Absolutely. SAP still provides multiple alert methods. We can integrate actually right into Service Desk in Solution Manager so an alert is triggered, create a Service Desk ticket, an incident in Service Desk in Solution Manager 7.1. I can create an email alert, or I can do nothing. I can just record my entry into my central performance history, but not act on that alert. So yes, we can still do proactive email alerting. There are actually some additional features in the email alerting, in that I have more flexibility in setting up “go to email address 1 during the day and go to email address 2 at night,” for example. Everybody carries a smartphone these days, and every smartphone has an email address — usually it’s [phone number]@[carrier].com or .net. What you can do is you can set up an email alert for after hours that sends you an SMS, but if it’s during business hours it sends you an email. In essence, there are a little more features in Solution Manager 7.1 email alerting.

SAPexperts: The last question I had is something you sort of touched on before. You mentioned agents before and previously companies would have a CCMS agent on each system and I’m just wondering if you can clarify how the agent process works now. Is there a new one to be deployed?

MP: If you decide to do a full migration from CCMS to Technical Operations you no longer need to deploy the CCMS agent and again there is that one agent called the diagnostics agent, the DAA. The latest version out is 7.3. This agent is used in a multitude of areas. It’s used in the monitoring side, it’s used in the diagnostics side, and then for a lot of people who have been hearing about this thing called End User Experience Monitoring, that architecture relies upon that same diagnostics agent. Basically, SAP has somewhat simplified how many agents I have to have on my landscape by just using this one diagnostics agent. The agent install is a little bigger than it was previously, it requires a little bit more resources, but it performs more functions. Again, it’s the diagnostics agent 730, it’s used for monitoring, it’s used for log analysis, trace analysis. For a future podcast potentially we could talk about End User Experience Monitoring, and how I can use that same agent deployed out to multiple locations and have some end user experience monitoring.

SAPexperts: Great, that’s all the questions I have. Is there anything else you want to share with people about Technical Operations?

MP: All I can say again is when I say to success factors and what I see as companies having success with Technical Operations, it’s start small with alerting, pick your top 10 or your top 20 alerts, maybe it’s file systems or CPU, or logon quality, focus on getting those alerts active and then add alerts as you’ve proven out the other ones. That’s definitely been one of the key success points.

SAPexperts: All right, thanks for joining us Michael.

MP: Thank you, Scott.

Scott Priest

Scott was the senior managing editor at SAPexperts, responsible for the content development and acquisition for topics including HANA, mobility, and Solution Manager. He graduated from Bates College with a BA degree in English. You may follow him on Twitter at @priestWIS.

You may contact the author at scott.priest@wispubs.com.

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