1. Configure OCI Stack Monitoring for a PeopleSoft environment
  2. Discover the Container and Pluggable Database Tier

Discover the Container and Pluggable Database Tier

You must discover the Oracle Database containing the PeopleSoft schema before discovering the PeopleSoft application. If the database is discovered first, it will be automatically associated with PeopleSoft application once PeopleSoft resource discovery completes. If you perform PeopleSoft application discovery before the database has been discovered, you will need to create the association manually.

Note:

The database system, including its components (Listener, ASM, and so on), is discovered as part of an Oracle Database discovery. Database system discovery and monitoring is supported only in LINUX environments.

For more information on database discovery and monitoring, see "Discover PeopleSoft Database" and "Oracle Database", which you can access from "Explore More", elsewhere in this playbook.

Understand Critical Components of the PeopleSoft Stack Monitoring User Interface

In PeopleSoft's OCI Stack Monitoring page, the Performance, Configuration, Related Resources, and Members sections serve distinct purposes.

Two critical sections of the UI are the Stack View and the Configuratrion panel.
  • Stack View

    Stack View is the feature of Performance Session: Utilize the Stack View to review vital signs across the PeopleSoft stack. Verify that Application Server Domain Health is Ok, its current Load is not Heavy, Server Processes are running and the volume of requests in their corresponding queues is manageable. Perform a similar check for the Process Scheduler Domain’s Health and System Load, and PIA’s Health and System Load. Going down the stack you can review the WebLogic Server’s key metrics such as JVM Memory Utilization and the status of the Thread Pool.

  • Configuration
    This section displays the configuration details of the monitored PeopleSoft stack components. It allows administrators to verify setup details and ensure compliance with best practices. The key features of the Configuration panel include:
    • Details of virtual machines, middleware, databases, and application configurations.
    • Information about software versions, patch levels, and applied updates.
    • Customization and tuning parameters for system optimization.

Complete the Prerequisites

Before starting the discovery process, you need to complete the following prerequisites:

  • Enable the PeopleSoft Performance Monitor Agent.
  • Enable PeopleSoft Performance Monitor for Pure Internet Architecture (PIA).
  • Set the Performance Collator property.
  • Enable JMX agents for the application server and process scheduler domains.
  • Complete the various database prerequisites.

Enable the PeopleSoft Performance Monitor Agent

To enable the PeopleSoft Performance Monitor agent, from the Linux VM command line, open the menu-driven psadmin utility and navigate to the Application Server Configuration File. Update required parameter accordingly:

  1. Navigate to $PS_CFG_HOME/appserv/AppDomain_Name/psappsrv.cfg as user psadm2.
  2. Update EnablePPM Agent=0-1 to EnablePPM Agent=1.
  3. Once you made the change, validate it with this command: 
    [psadm2@psfthr ~]$ cat $PS_CFG_HOME/appserv/APPDOM/psappsrv.cfg | grep -i 'EnablePPM Agent' EnablePPM Agent=1
  4. Reboot the application server domain for the change to take effect.

Enable PeopleSoft Performance Monitor for Pure Internet Architecture

To enable PeopleSoft Performance Monitor for Pure Internet Architecture (PIA), do the following:

  1. From PeopleSoft PIA, navigate to PeopleTools then Web Profile then Web Profile Configuration then open the active web profile, for example, PROD.
  2. If not checked already, select Enable PPM Agent.
  3. Restart PIA.

Set the Performance Collator Property

Enabling the Performance Collator option tells Tuxedo to start a PSPPMSRV process in the Performance Monitor application server domain.

PSPPMSRV servers subscribe to performance metrics published by the web service at the PPMI URL (entered into the Performance Monitor administration pages) and insert them into the database. If you select Y when you are asked whether you want the Performance Collators configured, the number of PSPPMSRVs specified in Min Instances=1 will be started. Minimum and maximum instances should be set to the same value, as new PSPPMSRV servers are not spawned on demand.
To set the Performance Collator Property, do the following:
  1. Run PSADMIN and choose the domain that you want to configure.
  2. Select 4) Configure this domain.
  3. Enter y for the question: Do you want to continue (y/n).
  4. Toggle 10) Perf Collator to set it to Yes.
  5. Select 14) Load config as shown.
  6. Restart the domain.

Enable JMX Agents for the Application Server and Process Scheduler Domains

This prerequisite enables Stack Monitoring to collect availability and performance data for a PeopleSoft application. Do the following for each application server and process scheduler domain:

  1. Using the psadmin command-line interface, navigate to Domain Administration, access the Edit configuration/log files menu and then edit the domain configuration file.
  2. In the file psappsrv.cfg/psprcs.cfg, under the PSTOOLS section, locate the following parameters and set these values:
    • Enable Remote Administration=1
    • Remote Administration Port=10100
    • Remote Administration UserId=admin
    • Remote Administration Password={V2.1xxx}.
    Use the PSCipher utility to encrypt the password.
  3. Reboot the application server and process scheduler domains, after which the change will take effect.

Complete the Application Tier Prerequisites

Before discovering the PeopleSoft application tier, you need to complete these prerequisites:

  • Add your PeopleSoft DNS entries to your local machine’s /etc/hosts file and access the PeopleSoft console by using the following commands:
    • Console URL: 
      http://hostname:http portnumber
    • WebLogic Console URL:
       http://hostname:http portnumber/console
  • Follow the instructions in "PeopleSoft Metrics", in the OCI "Metric Reference" documentation, to ensure additional PeopleSoft-specific parameters are set. See "Explore More", elsewhere in this playbook, for a link to this document.
  • Set the Remote Administration to Application Server and PRCS.

Complete the PeopleSoft Database Prerequisites

When discovering the PeopleSoft database, you should use an alternate user. You can also use Sysadm for this task. This solution uses dbsnmp for CDB/PDB discovery and SYSADM to discover the PeopleSoft application.

Complete the following tasks:
  • Create a monitoring user and assign privileges

    To enable monitoring of a PeopleSoft application, create a special database user and provide the required privileges to the user. Typically, in the UNIX environment, the database is located at /db/oracle-server/19.3.0.0 in the PeopleSoft installation directory. You can log in to the database instance as SYSADM user or with any SYSDBA role.

    The sample code below uses the schema name SYSADM. If the schema name is different in your setup, replace SYSADM in the following code with that name.

  • Provide the PeopleSoft specific grants to the user (for example, DBSNMP)
    Use these grants:
    GRANT SELECT ON SYSADM.PSSTATUS TO DBSNMP;
GRANT SELECT ON SYSADM.PSRELEASE TO DBSNMP;
GRANT SELECT ON SYSADM.PSPMAGENT TO DBSNMP;
GRANT SELECT ON SYSADM.PS_PTPMJMXUSER TO DBSNMP;
GRANT SELECT ON SYSADM.PSIBWSDLDFN TO DBSNMP;
GRANT SELECT ON SYSADM.PSIBSVCSETUP TO DBSNMP;
GRANT SELECT ON SYSADM.PS_PTSF_SRCH_ENGN TO DBSNMP;
GRANT SELECT ON SYSADM.PSPRCSRQST TO DBSNMP;
GRANT SELECT ON SYSADM.PSXLATITEM TO DBSNMP;
  • Create the following synonyms for the PeopleTools tables:
    CREATE OR REPLACE SYNONYM "DBSNMP"."PSSTATUS" FOR "SYSADM"."PSSTATUS";
CREATE OR REPLACE SYNONYM "DBSNMP"."PSRELEASE" FOR "SYSADM"."PSRELEASE";
CREATE OR REPLACE SYNONYM "DBSNMP"."PSPMAGENT" FOR "SYSADM"."PSPMAGENT";
CREATE OR REPLACE SYNONYM "DBSNMP"."PS_PTPMJMXUSER" FOR "SYSADM"."PS_PTPMJMXUSER";
CREATE OR REPLACE SYNONYM "DBSNMP"."PSIBWSDLDFN" FOR "SYSADM"."PSIBWSDLDFN";
CREATE OR REPLACE SYNONYM "DBSNMP"."PSIBSVCSETUP" FOR "SYSADM"."PSIBSVCSETUP";
CREATE OR REPLACE SYNONYM "DBSNMP"."PS_PTSF_SRCH_ENGN" FOR "SYSADM"."PS_PTSF_SRCH_ENGN";
CREATE OR REPLACE SYNONYM DBSNMP.PSPRCSRQST FOR SYSADM.PSPRCSRQST;
CREATE OR REPLACE SYNONYM DBSNMP.PSXLATITEM FOR SYSADM.PSXLATITEM;

Complete the Oracle Database Prerequisites

Prior to discovering a database within Stack Monitoring, ensure you have access to the monitoring user. You can either use the DBSNMP user that is built-in with the Oracle Database and has the privileges required to monitor the database or create a custom user with only the necessary privileges. As a prerequisite for discovering the database, run this on the database node.
To enable DBSNMP user, follow this procedure at CDB level:
  1. Log in to the PeopleSoft node by using SSH and set the ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID to the CDB. 
    sudo su – psadm2
    export ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/psft/db/oracle-server/19.3.0.0
    export ORACLE_SID=CDBFSCM
  2. Create the DBSNMP password and set it's PASSWORD_LOCK_TIME to unlimited: 
    cd $ORACLE_HOME
    ./bin/sqlplus / as sysdba
    alter user dbsnmp identified by xxxxxxyyyyyyzzz account unlock;
    alter profile default limit PASSWORD_LOCK_TIME unlimited;
    Now try logging to PDB as the DBSNMP user.

Discover External Databases

You can discover databases outside of OCI ("external databases"), both single-instance Oracle Databases and Oracle RAC instances, including the database system, by using the Stack Monitoring service. The entire database system is discovered as part of Oracle Database discovery.

Once you've met the prerequisites, do the following:
  1. Navigate to Cloud Menu, select Observability & Management, Click Stack Monitoring under Application Performance Monitoring.
  2. Under Resources, select Resource Discovery.
  3. Select Discover New Resource.
  4. For Resource type, select Oracle Database.
  5. Enter the CDB details.
  6. Click Discover New Resource to discover the CDB.
  7. After the successful discovery, follow the preceding steps to discover the PDB.
  8. Navigate to resource discovery and select Discover New Resource.
  9. Enter the PDB Details and choose the CDB.
    The name will be displayed on the list of CDBs.
  10. Post the successful discovery of CDB and PDB, Check the status of the targets on the Resource Discovery page and All Resources page.

Discover the PeopleSoft Application Tier

PeopleSoft discovery involves 3 mandatory resource families: Application Server Domain, Process Scheduler Domain, and PeopleSoft Internet Architecture (PIA) with its underlying Weblogic domain(s).

Each resource family may include one or more resources such as Application Server Domain, Process Scheduler Domain, and PeopleSoft Internet Architecture (PIA) with its underlying Weblogic domain(s) which may span across several servers. Composite PeopleSoft resources cannot be associated with a host directly. However, PeopleSoft children resources can be associated as follows:
  • Application Server Domain uses Host
  • Process Scheduler Domain uses Host
  • PIA uses Host

For more information on discovering the PeopleSoft Application Tier, see "PeopleSoft", in the "Resource Discovery and Promotion" OCI documentation, which you can access from "Explore More", elsewhere in this playbook.

Discover the Application Tier

After the prerequisites are met, follow these steps to discover the Application Tier:

  1. Navigate to the stack monitoring home page and, under the Resources pane click Resource Discovery.
    1. Click Discover New Resource.
    2. On the Resource Discovery wizard, select the resource type as PSFT Application.
    3. Provide a name for the resource and select the management agent.
    4. Enter the DB details under PSFT Database
    5. Next enter the Application Server Domain and Process Scheduler Domain Credentials.
    6. Finally Enter the PIA/Weblogic Credentials and select Discover New Resource.
  2. Wait for the discovery to complete. Check the status on the resource discovery page.
  3. After the discovery, navigate to the Enterprise Summary screen and check the PeopleSoft Application.
  4. Click the graph to display the resource’s detailed view.
  5. Expand each application and check the graphs.
  6. To see the Stack Configuration, click the Configuration under resources pane.
  7. Click the related resources to see the PSFT components.

Complete the Post-Discovery Tasks

After the discovery, you can setup alarms based on the metrics for Application and Databases. See "Setting Up Alarms" in the OCI documentation for more information. You can find a link to "Setting Up Alarms" in "Explore More", elsewhere in this playbook.