PowerConnect for SAP Business Objects Agent Installation

Overview

The PowerConnect Java agent can be installed as an application on a SAP Business Objects Tomcat instance to monitor job metrics and logs, java virtual machine metrics and operating system metrics (cpu, memory, disk etc.)

Hardware Requirements

x86 64-bit chip architecture
1 CPU cores at 2GHz or greater
256 MB RAM

Software Requirements

SAP Business Objects 4.2 or 4.3

Network Requirements

HTTP or HTTPS outbound to send data to the target platform

Pre-Installation Steps

The PowerConnect Business Objects agent requires:

A user to connect to the Business Objects APIs and JMX interface to collect metrics
JMX to be enabled in the Business Objects platform
A configuration file to be created to store it’s configuration

The step to achieve these are detailed below:

PowerConnect User creation

Login to the SAP Business Objects CMS console as a Administrator user
In the Menu click Users and Groups
In the User and Groups section click the Create a user button
Fill out the details for the new PowerConnect user and note down the new username and password
- Notes
  - Authentication Type - Should be set to Enterprise
  - Checking the Password never expires option will mean the data flow is not interrupted if the password expires (otherwise remember to update the password when it does)
  - Access Type - the PowerConnect agent should only ever use a single session for data collection and will close that session when the agent is stopped
Click Create & Close
In the User List double click the newly created PowerConnect user
Chose Member Of then Join Group
Add the PowerConnect user to the Monitoring Users Groups

Click OK
The PowerConnect user is now created

Enable JMX in the Business Objects Platform

Login to the SAP Business Objects CMS console as a Administrator user
For SAP Business Objects 4.3
- In the Menu click Applications then double click BI Admin Studio
For SAP Business Objects 4.2
- In the Menu click Applications then double click Monitoring Application
Ensure that the Enabled Monitoring Application is checked and the Enable RMI protocol for JMX is checked
Note down the RMI agent end point URL
Click Save and Close
JMX is now enabled

Create the PowerConnect Agent Configuration files

Browse to the directory:

$BOBJ_HOME/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost

Create a file in that folder called powerconnect-java.xml
Add the following contents:
```
<Context>
    <Environment name="configurationPath" value="${catalina.home}/conf/powerconnect.properties" type="java.lang.String"/>
</Context>
```
Note - This file is used by Tomcat to point to the location of the PowerConnect Agent configuration file. In the above example we are storing the file in $BOBJ_HOME/tomcat/conf/powerconnect.properties but you can change this to wherever is suitable for your system as long as the Tomcat user can access this file.
Browse to the properties file location in the previous step and create the file

Note - This properties file is used to store the configuration of the PowerConnect Agent. It can be updated directly by editing the file or it can be updated via the PowerConnect Agent UI

The pre-installation steps are now complete

Installation Steps

Obtain the PowerConnect for SAP Business Objects WAR package from your local distributor
Copy the package to the SAP Business Objects CMC host
Login to the to the SAP Business Objects CMC host
Copy the package to the Tomcat webapps folder
```
$BOBJ_HOME/tomcat/webapps
```
Tomcat will now automatically deploy the PowerConnect Agent
In a web browser go to : http://<cmchost>:<port>/powerconnect-java/index.html
e.g. http://localhost:8080/powerconnect-java/index.html
The agent is now installed, follow the configuration steps to configure the agent