I/O Concepts Supports OS/400 with Systems Management Tool

Published: January 3, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Organizations looking for a multi-platform monitoring and management tool may want to check out I/O Concepts's Enterprise Management System (EMS), a new suite of products launched last summer. In December, the Bellevue, Washington-based company announced support for the iSeries within EMS, and says a promising use of the new functionality is logging user activity on OS/400 servers for regulatory compliance purposes.

EMS is a Java-based offering that enables companies to funnel messages generated from a variety of systems--including OS/400, Unix, Windows, Linux, and mainframe servers and any SNMP-enabled network device--to a single management console. Once messages are being routed to one place, EMS has various ways of tracking events and status changes, and also includes workflow routing capabilities for doling out tasks and tracking measures taken to fix problems.

EMS provides users with several interfaces, including graphical and command-line consoles, for tracking events occurring across their data center. With the graphical cross-platform console, which is called the Enhanced Workbench, events are highlights in different colors, including red, yellow, blue, and green, to signify their importance, and how much time has elapsed since the event hit the system. The Enhanced Workbench also lets users sort the events in different ways, such as by importance or by device, by clicking on a column header.

When an administrator sees an event that requires action, EMS lets him assign a task to an IT staffer, and then tracks that event until it has been resolved. It also includes a note-taking feature so users can enter pertinent details.

Depending on the event and the message source, EMS provides the IT staffer or administrator with access to tools (via emulation screens) for resolving the problem. So, if an administrator or operator sees a problem with a mainframe printer queue, for example, it would automatically open up a 3270 session when the problem event was clicked in the Enhanced Workbench console. While EMS supports mainframe terminal emulation, it does not yet offer the capability to automatically open a 5250 screen to tackle OS/400-related problems. This capability is in the works, according to a company official. In the meantime, users must manually open their 5250 screens, the official said.

In addition to providing a centralized view of events, and quick access to platform-specific tools, EMS also features a rules-based event management tool for enabling automatic responses to certain events. These responses can be resolutions to relatively unimportant events, or they could initiate escalation procedures for notifying an administrator or operator of critical system events via e-mail or pager.

OS/400 Functionality in EMS

I/O Concepts did its best to avoid the traditional agent-based approach to systems management in the development of EMS. Deploying a piece of software on the system to be managed can lead to unwanted side effects, namely consuming precious computing resources and decreasing the performance of the target system. As a result, the engineers at I/O Concepts looked at this "growing conundrum" and concluded that most (but not all) platforms had standard mechanisms for extracting status information.

Unfortunately for OS/400 shops, the iSeries is not one of the platforms where setting up an agentless monitoring and management is easy, so EMS uses agents to gather data from the iSeries server.

This EMS agent is useful for gathering a variety of data from OS/400 servers. The product monitors the message queue, job logs, spool files, the system audit journal, and can monitor active jobs. It checks for general system activity and status, checks the hardware error log, and any log files on the IFS.

These capabilities make EMS useful for monitoring iSeries performance. Users can configure the software to send an alert when certain performance measures have been exceeded, such as disk space or disk-arm utilization, or the utilization of ASPs and iASPs. The software has alerts for various CPU measurements, including total CPU usage, interactive CPU usage, total high-priority CPU usage, average user response time, and job duration.

EMS also monitors iSeries' network usage, and will sound out alerts when certain measurements are out of whack or have exceeded pre-set thresholds, including communication devices, distribution queues, TCP/IP connections, the number of connections, and the total number and average number of inbound and outbound bytes. The software also monitors security-related activity on the iSeries, including invalid log-on attempts, object access violations, and changes made to authority or system values.

I/O Concepts first introduced EMS in August, and shipped a new release of EMS last month that featured expanded support for OS/400. "Our large customers told us we needed to integrate AS/400 and iSeries support into EMS to help them lower their operating costs and increase operational efficiency," said Bill Redinger, the company's vice president of sales and marketing.

Michael Millspaugh, president of I/O Concepts, says supporting iSeries is critical for the success of the new product. "This latest announcement of adding iSeries support to our EMS suite keeps us on track in expanding the way we help customers manage their increasingly complex platform infrastructures," he said.

I/O Concepts is looking for business partners with iSeries expertise in the United States and Canada.

EMS is available now. The software supports OS/400 V5R1 through V5R3. Pricing was not disclosed. For more information, go to www.ioconcepts.com.