DBAmon
Installation Checklist

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Installation Checklist

  1. Architecture Familiarization -

    Take a minute to begin to familiarize yourself with the DBAmon Architecture Diagram. It briefly speaks to DBAmon input/output and process flow. One concept that you will have to be familiar with is that of a Master Server. This is the server where the DBAmon software will reside. This Master server will monitor DBMS instances that reside on other servers.

  2. Review Requirements -

    Review the DBAmon Requirements. This document explains what is required to run DBAmon, both hardware and software.

  3. Download DBAmon Software -

    Download the software if you haven't already. It is packaged as a gzip'd tar file about 280K in size. Go to the Download Form. After agreeing to the download terms, you can begin downloading the tar file. Save the tar file in the /tmp directory of the Master server (the server where you will install the DBAmon software).

  4. Install DBAmon Software

    You now need to install the software and configure the Master and the first database instances that you will be monitoring. See: DBAmon Software Installation .

  5. Apache Configuration

    Apache must be configured to work with DBAmon. See DBAmon WWW Configuration .

  6. DBAmon Configuration - Global dbamonrc File

    DBAmon must now be configured to work in your environment. See DBAmon dbamonrc Configuration .

  7. DBAmon Repository Configuration

    The DBAmon Repository is an Oracle database where DBAmon stores data. See: DBAmon Repository Configuration .

  8. DBAmon Configuration - User Exits

    DBAmon User Exits are the way to configure DBAmon to function in your environment. For example, you would configure a User Exit to have DBAmon create a ticket for your Help Desk call tracking system. See: DBAmon UserExist Customization .

  9. DBAmon Configuration - Instance Monitoring DBC File(s)

    DBC files reside in:

    • /opt/dbamon/adm/instances for DBAmon "prod" mode
    • /opt/dbamon/adm/instances_test for DBAmon "test" mode

    A DBC file specifies the parameters that DBAmon will use to monitor 1 database instance. There is 1 .dbc file in /opt/dbamon/adm/instances for every DB instance that you wish to monitor. Any file with the ".dbc" suffix will be read by DBAmon to monitor 1 database instance. There are TEMPLATE* files in /opt/dbamon/instance; one for each DB type that you will be monitoring. To get started, say for example that you will be monitoring an Oracle DB named SID1 on server myserver. Run:

    • cd /opt/dbamon/adm/instances
    • cp TEMPLATE_Oracle.new myserver_SID1.dbc

    See: dbc Customization for information on how to customize DBC files.

  10. Monitored DB Server Configuration

    There are a few standard UX tasks that you will have to do to any server which is being monitored by DBAmon (for example, establishing password-less remsh or ssh connectivity). See: dbc Customization .

  11. Test the DBAmon Installation

    To test your installation, we are going to run "DBAmon Test Mode". To do this, logged into the Master Server as userid dbamon, copy 1 DBC file that you created above from the /opt/dbamon/adm/instances directory to the /opt/dbamon/adm/instances_test directory. Also, copy your /opt/dbamon/adm/dbamonrc file to /opt/dbamon/adm/dbamonrc_test and edit this file to ensure that the Iterations: value is set to 1. To start DBAmon Test Mode, run:

    dbamon test

    and watch all messages that are written to stdout. There will be some messages about creating DB objects. If you get to the end then DBAmon is working. More information can be found in the log files in /opt/dbamon/log for possible errors. The actual output from the monitoring of your DB's will always be written to /opt/dbamon/log/{Day of Week}. If the Error_EMail: dbamonrc parm is properly configured, then most errors will be sent to the EMAil address that you specify there. Note that this is not how you would run DBAmon in a production environment. We will get to that in the next step.

  12. Cron Configuration

    Certain cron entries must be setup for UX user dbamon. See: DBAmon Cron Configuration . This is required for DBAmon to run in Production Mode.

  13. DBAmon Operation

    See: DBAmon Command Reference for more information. During normal operation, you should not have to do anything. The dbamon_checker process which runs under cron every 15 minutes checks to see if DBAmon is running (You configured cron in the DBAmon Software Installation step above). If it is not, then it automatically starts it (by issuing the command: dbamon) in daemon mode. If you need to stop DBAmon for any reason, run dbamon_stop, but beware that dbamon_checker will attempt to restart it within 5 minutes. If you make any chnages to a DBC file, DBAmon will automatically reread the changes during the next iteration.


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