Agentless Monitoring

Agentless monitoring or Remote Monitoring in Avantra is a powerful way to monitor and manage objects within your landscape where you are unable to install an Avantra Agent on the host in question. This is particularly useful for scenarios such as "Rise with SAP" or "HEC" implementations where the customer (and/or service provider) retain responsibility only for the application layer (client 000 and above). Avantra supports Agentless monitoring for:

  • SAP Systems and Instances

  • Databases

  • Cloud Services

Agentless Monitoring means another agent located close enough from a network perspective will take over the management of the object and will access the monitored components over the network only. The only prerequisite is the Avantra Agent performing Agentless Monitoring is allowed to connect to the SAP Instances and Databases. Please make sure no firewalls on either host or network level are preventing this access.

Configure Agentless Monitoring

While Agentless Monitoring works perfectly well for almost all SAP-related Checks, there are a few restrictions. Obviously, there are no operating system related Checks as there is no agent installed on the host. Additionally, some Database-related checks do not work or only work with certain restrictions, like ORA_ALERTLOG, ORA_DATAFILES. This is due to the lack of access to the file systems. See Restrictions of Agentless Monitoring for more information.

Perform the following steps to define a new SAP System:

  1. Select Systems  SAP Systems from the menu and push the New button, then choose Agentless SAP System from the drop-down menu.

  2. Fill the Unified SAP SID and Real SAP SID into the corresponding fields, choose a Customer, a System Role, and the SAP System Type. Hit the Next button.

  3. You can set up Agentless Monitoring with or without an SAP Control User. Agentless Monitoring without an SAP Control User is supported for ABAP and JAVA systems, and there are a few limitations as outlined in Restrictions of Agentless Monitoring.

    1. If you want to use the SAP Control user for monitoring, set the flag SAP Control User available. Define the SAP control URL as an entry point for Agentless Monitoring. The Avantra Agent will use this URL to get the list of instances of this system. The URL usually is composed like http(s)://host:5<sysnr>13. Additionally, you need to fill in the SAP Control User, which is an OS user of the host the SAP Instance is running on. Usually, this will be <sid>adm. You also need to enter the password of this user.

    2. If you do not have access to the SAP Control User, set the flag No SAP Control User available.

    Then you have to define an existing Avantra Agent to be in charge of the Agentless Monitoring. This agent should be located close enough from a networking perspective. Furthermore, you must select an agent belonging to the same Customer as you defined for the remote SAP System. Hit the Next button.

  4. Depending on the system type, you need to define other users and passwords as well. See Defining SAP Systems for more information.

  5. In case you do not use the SAP Control User, you have to manually add the SAP Instances to the SAP System. Push to add a new instance, select the Instance Type, and fill in Sysno and instance host.

  6. Push the OK button to create the new monitored SAP System.

  7. In case you defined an SAP Control User, the Avantra Agent in charge of Agentless Monitoring will now start to detect the instances of the SAP System using the previously defined SAP control URL. The result of this detection will be reported to the Agentless Monitoring agent’s SelfCheck, sub-section Detection.

    In case of success, you will see the instance names in column System with messages like

    Instance will be monitored as type ...

    You will then see the instances created in the System Inventory tab of the monitoring server, and in the SAP System Details → SAP Instances tab of the SAP System.

    In case of failure, you’ll see the SAP system SID in column System probably with a SOAP error message like

    Failed to get profile of instance vagabund_00 from remote: Exception during SOAP call on method parameterValue to URL http://vagabund:50013: SOAP-ENV:ServerInvalid Credentials

    Please fix the errors indicated, e.g. credentials problem above.

Upon successful completion, your SAP System is now monitored remotely.