Geneos

TIB RV Plug-In

Introduction

Geneos TIB RV Plug-in monitors TIB Rendezvous Service parameters including network utilisation (transmission and re-transmission rates) and hosts.

The NetProbe is configured to monitor all nodes and users that publish and subscribe on configured service groups, including Multicast and Broadcast traffic.

It is not necessary to install NetProbe on every host to monitor RV. Although you may wish to do so to monitor other non-RV related host parameters. A typical installation has one NetProbe per subnet. The plug-in subscribes to advisory messages that are broadcast by all RVD's that are subscribing or publishing to a particular configuration. A status advisory is sent every 90-seconds by each RVD on the network. Additional advisories are sent when there is an event such as an error condition on a node.

Views

The TIB RV Plug-in produces four views: Fast-Senders, Hosts, Top-Problem-Receivers, and Top-Problem-Senders.

Fast-Senders View

Shows the top ten RV senders on the selected service groups.

tibrv-fast-senders

Fast-Senders Table Legend

Name Description
group:Host The name of the host and the group that it belongs to.
address The IP address of the host.
msgTransmissionRate The rate at which the host is sending messages (per second).
kbitTransmissionRate The rate at which the host is sending (kilobits per second).
averageKBitTransmissionRate Moving average of the last 5 kbitTransmissionRate values.
byteTransmissionRate The rate at which the host is sending (bytes per second).
balance The percentage of the total message transmission rate currently attributable to the host.

Hosts View

Shows RV hosts on the selected service groups.

tibrv-hosts

Hosts Headline Legend

Name Description
totalNodes The total number of nodes that are currently up.
nodesInError The number of nodes in an error condition.
nodesInWarning The number of nodes in a warning condition.
overallPacketTransmissionRate The overall rate of transmission for the packets.
overallTransmissionRate The overall rate of transmission for the service groups (sampled over a 90 second period).
overallRetransmissionRate The ratio between packets sent and packets re-requested (good indicator of overall Network health).
retransmittedPackets The total number of packets retransmitted over a 24-hour period.
totalKBitTransmissionRate The total rate at which the host is sending (kilobits per second).

Hosts Table Legend

Name Description
group:Host The name of the host (if it can be resolved) and the group it belongs to.
address IP address of host.
status The status of the RV daemon on the specific host.
problemDescription The error description as published by RV on the failed host.
timeOfError Time at which the problem was seen.
upTime Time when the node's RV daemon (rvd) came up.
downTime Time when the node's RV daemon was killed or stopped abnormally (nodes down in excess of expiryHours are removed from display).
totalRetransmissionRate (Retransmitted messages / retransmitted messages + sent messages) * 100
totalRerequestRate (Rerequested messages / rerequested messages + received messages) * 100
kbitTransmissionRate Kilobits per second transmitted.
kbitReceiveRate Kilobits per second received.
outboundPacketLossRate Number of outbound packets lost per second. (Data is available for RVD version 7.5 or later)
inboundPacketLossRate Number of inbound packets lost per second. (Data is available for RVD version 7.5 or later)
clientsConnectedToService Number of clients connected to the service. (Data is available for RVD version 8.x or later)
suppressedInboundRetransmissionRequests Inbound data retransmission requests suppressed (that is, requests not sent) by RXC at the receiver (in packets). (Data is available for RVD version 8.x or later)
suppressedOutboundRetransmissionRequests Outbound data retransmission requests suppressed (that is, requests ignored) by RXC at the sender (in packets). (Data is available for RVD version 8.x or later)
communicationID Communication ID. For internal use only. (Data is available for RVD version 8.x or later)
serviceCommunicationID Service communication ID. For internal use only. (Data is available for RVD version 8.x or later)
averageMsgSendRate_(msg/sec) The send rate of the node averaged over a 5 advisory broadcasts.
os The name of the Operating System installed on the node.
version The version of the RV daemon running on the node.
serialNumber Serial Number broadcast in advisory.

Top-Problem-Receivers View

Shows the top ten RV problem receivers on the selected service groups. Problem receivers are ranked by their retransmission rate.

tibrv-top-problem-receivers

Top-Problem-Receivers Headline Legend

Name Description
overallRerequestRate The overall rate at which the host is sending re-request messages.

Top-Problem-Receivers Table Legend

Name Description
group:Host The name of the host and the group that it belongs to.
address The IP address of the host.
rerequestRate The rate at which this host is sending re-request messages. (Rerequested messages / received messages) * 100
averageRerequestRate rerequestRate averaged over 5 advisory broadcasts.
totalRerequestRate (Rerequested messages / rerequested messages + received messages) * 100
kbitReceiveRate Kilobits per second received
byteReceiveRate Bytes per second received
balance The percentage of the total re-request messages currently attributable to this host.

Top-Problem-Senders View

Shows the top ten RV problem senders from the selected service groups. Problem senders are ranked by their retransmission rate.

High retransmission rate may be caused by:

  • A sender flooding the network with excessive updates that the receiving nodes can not keep up with.
  • A sender having intermittent network card or cable problems.
  • A receiver may just be too slow to keep up.
  • The network may be generally overloaded.

The Top-Problem-Senders and Top-Problem-Receiver views help to determine the cause of retransmissions.

One top problem sender and many top problem receivers indicates a problem with the sender. Many top problem senders and one top problem receiver indicates a problem with the receiver. Many of each indicates a network that is generally overloaded.

tibrv_top-problem-senders

Top-Problem-Senders Table Legend

Name Description
group:Host The name of the host and the group that it belongs to.
address The IP address of the host.
retransmissionRate The rate at which the host is responding to re-request messages (Retransmitted messages / sent messages) * 100
averageRetransmissionRate RetransmissionRate averaged over 5 advisory broadcasts.
totalRetransmissionRate (Retransmitted messages / retransmitted messages + sent messages) * 100
kbitTransmissionRate Kilobits per second transmitted
byteTransmissionRate Bytes per second transmitted
balance The percentage of total re-request reply messages currently attributable to this host.

Plug-in Configuration

The following parameters can be configured for this plug-in:

groups

This section contains a set of service groups that will be monitored by this plug-in.

Mandatory: Yes

groups > group > name

The alias given to this service group for display purposes.

Mandatory: Yes

groups > group > command

This section defines the RV listen parameters that will be used to monitor this service group.

Note: NetProbe uses the defined parameters, but does not actually run the tibrvlisten command. It is possible to verify that the correct parameters have been entered here by trying with tibrvlisten on the command line.

More details on the specifics of the listen parameters can be found in the TIBCO rendezvous documentation.

Mandatory: Yes

groups > group > command > service

The Rendezvous service parameter. This is the UDP or PGM port number that will be used to subscribe.

Mandatory: No
Default: A service defined on the machine called rendezvous. If this does not exist then the following hard defaults exist: TRDP 7500, PGM 7550.

groups > group > command > network

The Rendezvous network parameter. This is formed of three parts colon separated. The interface name and a set of comma separated multicast addresses.

e.g.

"<ifname>;<mcgroup1>,<mcgroup2>" or "eth1;239.10.10.1,239.10.10.2"

Note: The send address part of this configuration is not relevant as the plug-in only subscribes.

Mandatory: Yes

groups > group > command > daemon

The hostname and address of an RVD to connect to and subscribe from. Specify using the format <hostname>:<portnumber>. For example:

myhost:7500

If using a local daemon the host part can be omitted.

Mandatory: No
Default: Will default to the local daemon port 7500.

maximumNumberOfNodes

The maximum number of nodes declared to the Geneos licence daemon.

The number of NODES declared is counted against the <RVNODE> licence token. Monitoring will continue to work if the number of licensed tokens is exceeded, but the extra hosts will be shown with '-no licence' in the Name field and without any values.

Mandatory: No
Default: 100

messageCountResetTime

The time of day at which the retransmittedPackets variable will be reset.

Mandatory: No
Default: 01:00 am.

problemResetInterval

The number of seconds to display a problem for any given rvd before resetting it.

Mandatory: No
Default: 60

hostLookup

Whether to resolve ip addresses to hostnames for each monitored RVD.

Mandatory: No
Default: True

rvdDownTimeout

The number of seconds after which to remove an RVD which after it has moved into a down state. Setting to 0 means that the RVD will never be removed from the view.

Mandatory: No
Default: 0

messageFile

If specified, points to a flat file that contains RV advisory messages rather than subscribing across the network. Used for debugging\testing purposes.

Mandatory: No