Vital Signs for IP: Versatile, Robust, Reliable, Easy to Use IP Monitor

Complete monitoring, alerting, diagnosis, and repair for IP Networks on z/OS

FEATURES

See Real-Time Data Regarding Configuration, Status, and Performance:

• Application status and round-trip times
• FTP, telnet, OSA, Enterprise Extender, and socket application traffic
• CSM buffer capacity and utilization
• CPU utilization
• Interface configuration, connections, traffic
• TCP/IP stack configuration and buffer use
• Configuration, routes, round-trip times, and status changes for any remote node in your network

Versatile Alert, History, and Logging Features:

• Customize alerts for specific configurations and performance thresholds
• Send alert notifications to e-mail, browser displays, and/or Netview
• VIP automatically discovers the local z/OS network configuration
• Easily search event logs for the entire network
• On-line reports of performance history for a quarter-year or more
• Fully-automated chart drawing for history data
• Export history data to comma-delimited files for other uses, spreadsheets for example

State-of-the-Art Diagnostic Tools:

• Run complete packet traces on any stack
• Filter trace data to display for specific interfaces, addresses, ports, and/or protocols
• View traces in real-time, as packets move through stacks, and/or save them to mainframe datasets
• Send ICMP and UDP pings
• Translate between IP addresses and domain names
• Trace routes and round-trip times between mainframes and remote nodes
• Easily retrieve complete SNMP data from any SNMP-able node on the network
• Quickly find and get the status of all the connections for a given address, application, interface
• Easily drop individual connections
• Send system operator commands directly from the browser to z/OS

Intuitive Graphic Interface for Web Browsers:

• High-level summary screens take the pulse of your entire network
• Easily drill down to specific applications, buffers, interfaces, and stacks
• Quick access to pie, bar, and line charts for recent history on hundreds of fields
• Monitor multiple mainframe hosts from a single screen
• Built from the ground up as a browser-based product —displays significantly more information on one screen than a 3270-based offering

VIP Monitors All these System & Network Resources

• FTP, telnet, OSA, Enterprise Extender, CSM, and socket-application status, availability, performance
• IBM First Failure and Intrusion Detection data
• ICMP message traffic
• SMF and SNMP record data
• System console messages and control blocks
• TCP/IP connections, interfaces, regions
• Remote and tier-1 stacks and interfaces

SPECIFICATIONS

Reliable Agent-Server-Browser Architecture:

VIP Agents reside on z/OS, where they report on the status and configuration of their hosts—including data on TCP/IP stacks, applications, buffers, and interfaces.

Multiple VIP Agents pass data to a VIP Server, a fully portable service that typically runs on z/OS Unix System Services (USS).

The Server delivers z/OS network data to users at common desktop web browsers.

Robust, Secure Architecture

• Monitor multiple z/OS systems through a single VIP Server, or run redundant Servers
• Redundant access to VIP data in case a communication path is lost
• Ensured data integrity between host and server
• Supports host-level security via RACF (user’s option)

Environment

• VIP Agents install on z/OS
• VIP Servers install on z/OS Unix System Services (USS), and/or on Linux, Unix, Windows.
• Server is a pure Java system, fully portable and cross-platform compatible
• Displays to Internet Explorer or Firefox browsers.
• Installation time, roughly 40 minutes

NEW WITH VIP 7.1

VIP 7.1 Makes z/OS Network Monitoring Easier and More Efficient

An even more efficient and simple-to-use version of VIP became available in mid-May 2009.

Described by the product developers at SDS as a "Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability" (SAR) release, VIP 7.1 consumes an absolute minimum of network and CPU overhead, while delivering the most thorough monitoring and diagnostic tools in the mainframe industry.

In VIP 7.1, users will see:

• A single sign-on for VIP monitoring of multiple z/OS systems, even when those systems use different security databases.
•  An all-new Remote Application Monitor that tracks the availability of any remote TCP server -including web servers- with a minimum of network overhead. Administrators can receive immediate alerts to unreachable or unresponsive applications.
• The ability to define specific groups of z/OS systems any one user is interested in, and to easily switch VIP displays from one group or another.
• TCP Client Monitoring that shows VIP users the outgoing traffic from TCP clients - database requests, for example.
• VIP’s tool for IP packet tracing, already the most productive packet trace tool in the mainframe world, has been improved to allow a trace to run indefinitely - making it much easier to track down fleeting, intermittent problems.
• VIP’s tools for pinging, tracing routes, and monitoring remote hosts can now send TCP requests to specific ports, thus they more accurately report the state of the network as seen by production applications.
• Mouse-click on almost any IP address reported by VIP; VIP will immediately display the associated domain name. And vice-versa: click on a domain name; VIP will show you its IP address.
• For monitoring FTP, telnet, and TN3270, VIP’s reliance on IBM’s System Management Facility (SMF) has been entirely replaced with a newer, simpler, more efficient option, the Network Management Interface (NM API).

This latest version of VIP follows VIP 7.0, which introduced configuration and performance monitoring for SNA-HPR-Enterprise Extender networks and for TCP/IP Sysplex Distributors.

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VitalSigns for IP is a SDS product.