IBM DS6000, DS8000 Series KM for PATROL

Release Notes for v1.1.00

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What's New

The KM now fully supports version 9.0.00 of the PATROL Agent.

Changes and Improvements

Miscelleneous

Overall performance has been dramatically improved for the discovery and collection.
With the implementation as a separate component of a collection hub shared by several modules, it is now possible to configure several aspects of this collection hub separately. Separate options for the debug mode, for example, are now available.

Java Settings

The product can now be installed with an embedded Java Runtime Environment, thus preventing failures of the KM when a compatible version of Java could not be found.
Java.exe location has been modified to optimize its utilization throughout the KM.
A username and a password can now be specified to execute java instead of using the PATROL default account.

Thresholds Management

In order to optimize the discovery process and improve the scalability of the solution, several important changes have been implemented in the way alert thresholds are managed by the KM.

Default thresholds are set in the agent’s configuration, only once, the first time the KM runs. In previous versions, the KM would set default alert thresholds during each discovery (every hour by default) according to its internal policy, thus overwriting any changes that were made manually by the administrators. Administrators can now customize the default thresholds using the Event Management KM or PCM (PATROL Configuration Manager) and do not need to use the KM’s interface to make sure these customization are overwritten by the discovery of the KM.
Thresholds are set globally at the class level (or at least for a group of instances). In previous versions, the KM would set alert thresholds for each and every instance of each class, leading to extremely large configuration files (which could cause PCM to crash in some occasions). A limited set of parameters still require alert thresholds to be set at the instance level. This results in a much smaller agent configuration file and vastly improved performance.
The “Modify Thresholds” KM Commands has been removed from most classes, as the thresholds can now be managed by PATROL administrators in a standard way through the Event Management KM and PCM (or any other method used in their environment).
The “Alert After N Times” KM Command has been removed, as this setting can now be managed by PATROL administrators in a standard way through the Event Management KM and PCM.
To reset the alert thresholds to their default values (as when the KM first runs), the administrator can either use the “Reinitialize KM” KM Command with the “Reset alert thresholds” option enabled or use the Event Management KM or PCM to delete the corresponding configuration variables. The KM resets the threshold configuration variables to their default values when such variables do not exist.
The “Thresholds Mechanism Selection” KM Command configures the location of the default alert thresholds configuration variables that are set during the first initialization of the KM: either in the /AS or in the /___tuning___ configuration tree. It is recommended to leave this setting to “Automatic” to make sure the thresholds configuration variables are stored in the proper location and avoid instability in the threshold settings.

noteDuring the upgrade from an earlier version, the KM will remove all of the instance-specific thresholds configuration variables. These numerous identical instance-specific thresholds are replaced with global thresholds at the class level. Thresholds that had been manually customized through the KM interface remain in place.

On version 9.0.00 of the PATROL Agent on Windows systems with the default account configured with a domain account, "Invalid username/password" error messages were displayed in the System Output Windows of the PATROL Console.

Fixed Issues

Reporting: Traffic Reports were not generated if at least one of the selected parameters was offline.

Known Issues

During its first discovery after an upgrade, the KM may take a long time to migrate the thresholds in the agent configuration.