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Chapter 1. Understanding Adapters
Event adapters are software programs that collect information, perform local
filtering, and convert relevant events into a format that can be used by the IBM
Tivoli Enterprise Console product. Because adapters are located on or near their
event sources and can perform local filtering of events, the adapters create a
minimal amount of additional network traffic. Adapters use a minimal amount of
system resources to perform their functions.
Network management applications have become an important part of monitoring
the availability of resources in the enterprise. The IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console
product can seamlessly integrate alarms and events from all the major network
management platforms and can correlate them with other system, database, and
application events.
Adapters are passive collectors of all types of events from systems and
applications, including the network management applications. All of your existing
network management configuration and monitoring of events can be preserved;
these events can simply be forwarded to the event server for correlation with other
events, where automated responses can be triggered or Information Technology
(IT) staff can be notified.
Adapter Overview
An adapter is a process that monitors resources so that they can be managed. These
monitored resources are called sources. A source is an application (for example, a
database) or system resource (for example, an NFS server). When an adapter
detects an event generated from a source (generally called a raw event), it formats
the event and sends it to the event server. The event server then further processes
the event.
Adapters can monitor sources in the following ways:
v An adapter can receive events from any source that actively produces them. For
example, SNMP adapters can receive traps sent by the Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP).
v An adapter can check an ASCII log file for raw events at configurable intervals if
the source updates a log file with messages.
How Events Get Sent to the Event Server
Adapters can send events to the event server using a TME
®
interface or a
non-TME interface. Both types of interfaces send events using an ordinary TCP/IP
channel. The difference between the two interfaces is the method used to establish
the connection. A TME interface establishes a connection using the oserv services
provided by Tivoli Management Framework; therefore, adapters that use this
interface are referred to as TME adapters. A non-TME interface establishes
connections using standard interprocess communication mechanisms (for example,
opening an IP socket); therefore, adapters that use this interface are called
non-TME adapters.
How Events Get to the Event Server From an Endpoint
TME adapters installed on endpoints send their events to the lcfd process, which
then sends the events to an IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console gateway, which in turn
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