Associate instrumentation with policies


If you develop policies that require custom instrumentation, you can associate the policies and instrumentation using categories. This ensures that the management server automatically deploys the instrumentation when it deploys the policy.

To associate instrumentation with a policy, you must first add a category to the policy. You then copy the instrumentation to a specific folder on the management server. All instrumentation is in the following folder on the management server:

<data_dir>\shared\Instrumentation

This folder contains the "Categories" folder, within which you create a new folder with the same name as the category that you added to the policy. You can copy your instrumentation directly into this category folder.

Note NOTE:
The name of the category folder that you create must have no more that 32 characters.

However, you may also need to deploy specific instrumentation to nodes that run on different platforms. To do this, you use a hierarchy of folders under the category folder. You then copy the platform specific instrumentation into these folders, use the same file name for each instance. The following figure shows the structure of the instrumentation folders. (Brackets show optional levels in the hierarchy.)

data_dir\shared\Instrumentation\Categories\<category>[\<OSFamily>][\<OSType>[\<AgentBinaryFormat>[\<OSVersion>]] | [\<OSVersion>[\<AgentBinaryFormat>]]]

The instrumentation folder structure enables you to distinguish between nodes according to the following attributes:

OSFamily
The only supported OS family is UNIX. If you copy instrumentation to the UNIX folder, the management server deploys it to nodes that run any of the following operating systems: AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64.
OSType
Example names for OS type folders are AIX, HP-UX, Linux, OpenVMS, Solaris, Tru64, and Windows. You can create OS type folders directly under category folders, or also under an OS family folder.
AgentBinaryFormat
Example names for agent binary format folders are Alpha, IA32, IA64, PA-RISC, PowerPC, Sparc, x64. Within an OS type folder, you can create one folder for each agent binary format. The agent binary format folder can be either directly under the OS type folder or under an OS version folder. For example, you must not create two folders called Instrumentation\ExampleCategory\Windows\IA64\5.2 and Instrumentation\ExampleCategory\Windows\5.2\IA64 on the same management server, because IA64 appears twice under Windows.
OSVersion
Supported names for OS version folders correspond to version numbers of operating systems on which the agent is currently supported. For each OS type, you can create only one OS version folder, but it can be either directly under the OS type folder or under an agent binary format folder.

For more information on supported operating systems and agent binary formats, see the support matrix at HP Software Support Online.

The following figure shows an example hierarchy of folders for a category called ExampleCategory.

An example instrumentation folder hierarchy. The Instrumentation\Categories folder contains the ExampleCategory folder. ExampleCategory contains OpenVMS, UNIX, and Windows. UNIX contains AIX, HPUX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64. HPUX contains IA64, PA-RISC. IA64 contains B.11.23, B.11.31. Windows contains 5.1, 5.2. 5.2 contains IA32, IA64, x64.

You can copy instrumentation to any folder in the hierarchy, and you only have to create the folders that you need. A good strategy is to create the most general folders possible. For example, if you can develop platform independent instrumentation, which is compatible with all nodes, you can create just the category folder and copy the instrumentation into it. This means that you only have to maintain one instance of the instrumentation on your management server.

If you have instrumentation files with the same name more than once within a category, the management server always deploys the most platform specific instrumentation. For example, if you have two instances of the same instrumentation in different folders:

Note NOTE:
Up to OVO version 7.50, the structure for instrumentation folders was different. Therefore, if the management server was upgraded from a previous version, you could have instrumentation folders that follow the deprecated structure. For more information, see Migrate existing instrumentation.

Caution CAUTION:
The management server deploys all instrumentation to the same folder on managed nodes. Ensure that you do not inadvertently use duplicate file names for different instrumentation anywhere in the instrumentation folder hierarchy. (Only use duplicate file names for platform specific instances of the same instrumentation.)

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