Service Element Modules Overview

Service Element modules monitor and measure the availability of services locally. These modules are loaded under the Local Applications category in the Sun Management Center 3.5 console. Service Element modules are single-instance modules, except the module that monitors HTTP, which is multi-instance. You can set alarm thresholds on response times for these modules.

These modules send service requests to the services periodically, according to user configuration settings, to determine service availability and local response time.

This following ten Service Element modules are available:

• HTTP – Determines web server service availability and web page retrieval time using the HTTP protocol on a service site. The module provides process monitoring statistics for the HTTP daemon. This module also monitors the access log file and reports statistics such as the number of errors. The module also scans the log file.

• FTP – Determines the FTP service availability and ability to transfer files to and from the FTP servers on a service site locally. FtpGet gets a file from a server. FtpPut puts a file on the server.

• Telnet – Determines the availability of the Telnet service locally.

• DNS – Determines the availability of the DNS Service and the ability of the DNS daemon to resolve a host name. The module measures the server response time locally and provides process monitoring statistics for the DNS daemon.

• NIS – Determines the NIS service availability. It also determines the ability of the NIS daemon to resolve a name in a NIS domain. The supported name resolution types are user name, host name, group name, and mail alias.

• LDAP – Determines the LDAP service availability and the ability of the LDAP daemon to resolve a name. You can also measure server response time locally.

• SMTP – Measures the availability of SMTP mail service and server response time locally when sending email. You must create at least one dummy email account on the target server for sending the test email. Remember to periodically delete the test email to ensure that the mailbox does not fill up.

• POP3 – Measures the availability of POP3 mail service and the server response time locally while retrieving mail.

• IMAP4 – Measures the availability of IMAP4 mail service and the service response time locally for retrieving mail.

• Calendar – Measures the availability of the Solaris calendar service and ability to retrieve calendar appointments from it. You can also measure the service response time locally.

Using Service Element Modules

The IMAP and POP3 modules each require a dummy user name and password. The password is passed in clear text during the synthetic transactions. The password is therefore not secure. Be certain that the test users has no privileges.

Before loading a module, you must specify certain configuration parameters. For example, a service port might be requested. For more information about the configuration parameters, see Appendix A, Configuration and Module Parameters Reference.

Once a module is loaded, the state of the service is confirmed in the Server Details table. For more information, see Chapter 3, Synthetic Transaction Modules.

To Load the Module

1. Load the module.

   For detailed information on loading modules, see “To Load a Module” in Sun Management Center 3.5 User's Guide.

2. Provide the required parameters for each module you want to load in the Module Loader dialog box.

   Each module has specific parameters that need to be defined. Once the parameters are completed, the module is loaded in Sun Management Center under the Local Applications category. For more information, see Appendix A, Configuration and Module Parameters Reference.

To Access the Service Element Modules

1. Click the Browser tab in the Sun Management Center console window.

2. Double-click the Local Applications category to expand this category.

3. Double-click the Service Element module.

   Service Manager displays the applicable folders.

4. Double-click the applicable folder.

To Activate a Service Element Transaction

1. Refer to To Activate a Synthetic Transaction.

To Delete or Edit a Service Element Module

1. Refer to To Delete or Edit a Synthetic Transaction.

To Edit the Server Details Table

1. Edit the applicable parameters in the Server Details table using the Edit Module feature.

   • To access the Server Details table, see To Access the Synthetic Transaction Modules.

   • See “Working With Modules” in Sun Management Center 3.5 User's Guide for detailed information.