8 Installing Observers Overview

This chapter describes the procedure for installing Business Transaction Management observers. Installation of observer libraries are covered in separate chapters and are cross referenced from this chapter.

Prerequisite and Preliminary Setup Checklist

• Ensure that the Business Transaction Management central servers are installed and running (see Chapter 5, "Installing and Configuring the Central Servers").

• Ensure that at least one monitor is installed, registered, and running (see Chapter 7, "Installing Monitors").

• Verify that all system services are running properly.

  You can verify that the system services are running properly by choosing Administration > System Services in the Navigator. The summary area then lists all system services. A round, green icon should be displayed in the System Service Status column for each system service to indicate that it is running properly.

• If there is a firewall between the observer and its associated monitor (the monitor from which the observer retrieves its configuration and sends observations), ensure that the firewall is configured to allow the observer access to the monitor:

  • In step 4 of General Steps for Installing Observers, you will associate the observer with a monitor by configuring the observer to retrieve its configuration at a particular URL. You must configure the firewall so that the observer can access this URL.

  • When you set up the Observer Communication policy, you specified a host and port to which the observer will send observations. You must configure the firewall so that the observer can access this host/port. For more information about this host/port, see step 3 of Applying an Observer Communication Policy.

• If you are using Spring Framework, enter a service request at My Oracle Support to receive special instructions on how to install the observer into an application server that contains the Spring Framework JAR files. Conflicts might arise between the observer JAR files and Spring Framework JAR files.

General Steps for Installing Observers

1. Ensure that the security settings for your observer are set to the same values that are used by the other components of your Business Transaction Management system.

   The components of your Business Transaction Management system use a shared secret and an encryption key in order to secure communications between themselves. If you have configured your Business Transaction Management server components to use nondefault values for these settings, you must, likewise, configure each JVM or .NET execution environment that hosts observers to use identical values for these settings. For an in-depth explanation of these security settings and how to configure them, see Configuring Secure Communications Between Business Transaction Management Components.

2. Ensure that an Observer Communication policy is set up.

   See Applying an Observer Communication Policy.

3. Install the observer libraries and configure them into your application server.

   The procedure for performing this task is specific to the application server and observer type. See the following chapters for detailed instructions:

   • Chapter 9, "Installing Observer Libraries on WebLogic".

   • Chapter 10, "Installing Observer Libraries on WebSphere".

   • Chapter 11, "Installing Observer Libraries on JBoss".

   • Chapter 12, "Installing Observer Libraries for WCF".

   • Chapter 13, "Installing Observer Libraries for ASP.NET".

   Note:

   For detailed information about a specific observer's compatibility and functionality, refer to the README.txt file located in the observer's nanoagent directory after you expand the observer ZIP file.

4. Set the AP_NANO_CONFIG_URL Java system property or AmberPoint:NanoConfigURL Windows key on the application server.

   This property/key associates the observer with the monitor whose URL you specify in the property/key. At startup, the observer retrieves its configuration from the specified monitor and begins sending observations to the monitor. Following is an example of the URL. Edit only the host name and port number:

   http://my_host:8080/btmmonitor/agent/agent/
   

   Setting this property/key is also explained in the application server-specific instructions for installing the observer libraries.

   Note:

   If you are using replicated monitors, you must set the host and port portion of the URL to the host and port of your load balancer's HTTP virtual server. For example, if the HTTP virtual server's IP address is 10.147.46.152, and its port number is 5072, then you would set the URL to:

   http://10.147.46.152:5072/btmmonitor/agent/agent/
   

   For more information about the load balancer's HTTP virtual server, see Configuring Your Load Balancer.

5. Restart your application server.

   Notes:

   For WebSphere – After installing the observer, if you deploy a new application, you must restart the application server for the services to be correctly monitored by the observer.

Specifying the Observer Library Location

This section applies only to Java application servers (WCF and ASP .NET observer libraries are installed in the GAC).

By default, the observer library is located at AP_NANO_HOME/lib. If you want to place the observer library in a different location, create a Java system property in your server named AP_NANO_CLASSLOADER_BASEDIR and set its value to the location of the library.

The observer uses the following order of precedence to locate its library (from highest to lowest):

1. the value of the system property AP_NANO_CLASSLOADER_BASEDIR

2. the value of the deprecated system property apclassloader.basedir

3. AP_NANO_HOME/lib