Environment Management Framework

Environment Management Framework (EMF) is a collection of software elements that gathers and publishes PeopleSoft installation, configuration, and update information. It enables you to identify and view data about PeopleSoft environments. You can use EMF to obtain a snapshot of configuration and setup information about the file servers, the web servers, the application servers, the individual hosts, and the PeopleSoft Process Scheduler servers that comprise your PeopleSoft system. EMF also provides a vehicle to carry out commands remotely on different machines on the network, directed by Change Assistant, which uses EMF to apply updates to PeopleSoft installations and configurations.

EMF is used with Change Assistant to deploy files contained in an upgrade package. For traditional updates (non PUM-enabled applications), EMF is required to identify PeopleSoft environments, for all other Change Assistant actions configuring and running EMF is optional.

EMF consists of the following core elements:

  • The Environment Management hub (PSEMHUB)

  • Environment Management Agent (PSEMAgent)

  • The Environment Management viewer

The Environment Management hub is a web application that is installed with the PeopleSoft Internet Architecture and portal. It is started along with the rest of the web applications when the user boots the web server. The hub is the broker for all communication between peers.

The Environment Management hub handles:

  • Peer registration.

    The hub registers all of the information that is published by the agents. It also assigns a unique peer ID for every peer that engages in a dialogue with the hub.

  • Maintenance of configuration information.

    The hub handles updates to configuration information, the correlation of information, and the grouping into environments based on the information that is published by the agents.

  • Agent health monitoring.

    The hub keeps track of the state or "health" information of the managed components. It shows whether a peer is still running remotely or not.

  • Message brokering.

    The hub services message service requests and responses from peers. The messages can be delivered to the respective peers even if the peers are not currently running. They are picked up the next time the peers “call in” to the hub. Typical messages include requests to deploy files to managed servers. It's recommended that the managed server agents be left up and running at all times to listen for messages from the hub. This is critical when applying software updates.

The Environment Management hub is installed as part of the standard PeopleSoft Internet Architecture installation. It supports both single-server and multi-server installations. The Environment Management hub is deployed in the J2EE containers as web application modules. They can be managed like any of the standard web application modules.

The following Environment Management hub directories are created on the J2EE container for the hub:

  • With Oracle WebLogic:

    PIA_HOME\webserv\domain\applications\peoplesoft\PSEMHUB

  • With IBM WebSphere:

    PIA_HOME\webserv\server\installedApps\domainNodeCell/domain.ear\PSEMHUB.war

The required JAR files for the Environment Management hub are installed in the WEB-INF\lib subdirectory.

An Environment Management agent is a Java executable installed on the servers in a PeopleSoft environment, such as application servers, Process Scheduler servers, web servers, and so on. The Environment Management agent initiates communication with the hub and is assigned a unique peer ID. This ID persists and is reused for later connections by the agent.

The primary function of the agent is crawling the managed servers to identify manageable components. The metadata of the search results of the crawling are saved to the local hard disk. On startup, if the agent detects missing metadata, it recrawls the hard disk for manageable components. You can configure the drives and directory paths used for crawling.

The agent also publishes managed server information to the hub. After detecting a manageable component, the agent reads the non-sensitive information from configuration files of the component. Some relevant information that is related to environment and patch levels is also fetched from the database with which the application server or Process Scheduler communicates. The agent publishes this information to the hub upon initial connection and upon a recrawl or revalidate.

The agent also determines heartbeat and command execution. On every heartbeat, the agent pings the server to determine whether it has any pending messages. If there are pending messages for the agent, the messages are retrieved from the hub and carried out locally on the agent machine.

Note: You install the Environment Management agent by running the PeopleTools CD installation. The Environment Management agent is installed in the PSEMAgent directory in your PS_HOME with the server installation. If additional components are installed in the same PS_HOME location, the installer warns you that existing software may be overwritten.

Note: Multiple EM Agents can be run, but they must be run using a different agentport.

See PeopleTools installation documentation for your database platform.

The Environment Management viewer is a command-line tool enabling you to view data stored on the Environment Management hub. This data is saved in an XML file that contains data that is specific to individual customer sites—such as, information about environments, software updates, hosts, file servers, application servers, PeopleSoft Process Scheduler servers, and web servers. Users can view this static data in HTML.

The Environment Management viewer may only be executed on PeopleSoft web servers, from its installed location in PS_HOME\PSEMViewer. You don't have to carry out any additional installation steps to install the viewer.

The following terms relate to Environment Management:

Field or Control

Definition
Manageable component

A component that can be individually managed from the Environment Management hub. A manageable component for PeopleSoft is typically a file server, an application server, a web server, individual hosts, or a PeopleSoft Process Scheduler server.
Peer

A manageable component that is involved in a transaction with one or more peers in the Environment Management by using the hub as the intermediary. A peer may also be responsible for delegation of management responsibility to a collection of manageable components. Examples of peers are agents, Change Assistant, and the Environment Management viewer.
Heartbeat

“I am alive messages” sent by every peer to the hub. The default interval is configurable. On every heartbeat, the peer pings the server to see if it has any pending messages. If it does, the messages are taken and carried out.
Environment

All of the manageable components in the enterprise that share the same globally unique identifier (GUID) in the database. There can be more than one instances of a type of managed component in an environment. For example, development environments can contain several application servers, Process Schedulers, and web servers.
GUID

Uniquely identifies a particular PeopleSoft system. PeopleSoft assigns a unique value, referred to as a GUID, to each PeopleSoft application installation. This value can't be customized. When an Environment Management agent notifies the hub that it has found a manageable component belonging to an environment, if the GUID of the environment is not recognized, the hub creates a new environment representation.
Crawling

The process of scanning the hard disk for known PeopleSoft patterns for manageable components. The hub has a set of configurable parameters by which the recrawl intervals can be altered. Based on this, the hub can issue a recrawl command to the agents to discover information about newly installed or changed configurations.

Note: During crawling, the Environment Management Framework uses the psserver property in the peopletools.properties file within each PS_HOME installation to determine the type of server(s) installed. For example, APP is application server, BATCH is Process Scheduler, DB is database server, WEB is web server, and FILE is file server.

Note: Recrawling includes revalidating.
Revalidate

The process of checking whether the last set of managed components that have been discovered is still valid. The agent iterates through the list of components that have been discovered from the last recrawl. It then checks whether the current set of configuration parameters for the managed components have changed the management scope for the component. If so, the information is updated. If the new set of configuration options has made the component not usable, it is removed from the list of managed components. This information is updated in the hub the next time the agent communicates with the hub.