A Better TM1 Monitor Tool

Compared with traditional TM1 Top, in 10.1, IBM issued a new web-based TM1 monitor tool - TM1 Operations Console.

It provides the basic server monitoring functionality provided by the TM1Top utility with some important additions:

• The Cognos TM1 Operations Console can monitor multiple Cognos TM1 servers at the same time.
• The Health feature allows for instant feedback on the current state of servers.
• Filtering helps highlight specific states for multiple servers.
• Sorting allows administrators to quickly identify which servers are in specific states.
• The Cognos TM1 Operations Console can use Scheduled Logging to monitor activity offline.

The following sample show multiple servers being monitored in the Cognos TM1 Operations Console:

It is one of default components if you intall TM1 package and default web server is Apache Tomcat provided with Cognos TM1. Here is the location: Select and install the Web Application Tier > Cognos TM1 Operations Console component.

Use the following set of steps to install it (IBM Link for detailed installation steps):

• Add certificates to the JRE keystore
  The IBM Cognos TM1 Operations Console requires a certificate in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) keystore.
• Deploy Cognos TM1 Operations Console with the provided version of Apache Tomcat
  Use the IBM Cognos Configuration tool to deploy the IBM Cognos TM1 Operations Console with the version of Apache Tomcat provided with the Cognos TM1 installation. The Cognos TM1 Operations Console uses the same version of Tomcat as the IBM Cognos TM1 Application Server.
• Create a user group for the Cognos TM1 Operations Console
  The IBM Cognos TM1 Operations Console requires a designated Cognos TM1 user group that you create in Cognos TM1 Architect.
• Edit the OpsConfig.xml file
  The IBM Cognos TM1 Operations Console uses an XML file to identify the user group, server, and admin host to use. Before you can run the Cognos TM1 Operations Console, you need to update this configuration file with the information that describes your new monitoring group.
• Configure Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 for the Cognos TM1 Operations Console
  You need to do some additional configuration to use the Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 web browser with the IBM Cognos TM1 Operations Console.
• Start and log into the Cognos TM1 Operations Console

According to my practice, the first one is pretty important. Please make sure you have done that otherwise the Admin Hosts you added would be "None of the servers are contactible". After that, restart your TM1 Application Server to make it effect. 

 

If you already have some groups, you can just skip the third step to use existing ones. And then update OpsConfig.xml to add your admin host, tm1 server and group name. You can just add one admin host because from there, you can also monitor other admin hosts. (But make sure all admin hosts are listed in this server's tm1s.cfg file.) 

Then go to your IE, type http://server_name:port_number/tm1operationsconsole, this address can be found in your TM1 Application Server.

After adding Operation Group -> Admin Host -> Server, you can start to monitor all your TM1 servers in one window. It is pretty convenient and no need to configure TM1 Top one by one.

One more thing, to kill one process, just right click the line for that ID and kill it.

Have fun and that makes our life easier!