The Admin Menu and Toolbar

The Admin menu is available as tiles and can be invoked by clicking the icon adjacent to the tab labelled Admin. The tiles that appear and the options they offer are as follows:

• Infrastructure: This menu enables the administrator to discover, manage, and add/modify components to the eG Enterprise system, configure zones, services, segments, component groups, and component topologies.

• Agents: The options provided by this menu allow you to:

  • Configure tests to be executed on target components, so as to extract performance data from them
  • Configure additional external and remote agents for the environment and assign hosts to them
  • View the status of agents
  • Define auto-upgrade settings

  • Define general agent settings such as the following:

    • Define the manager-agent communication settings, and configure remote control commands; remote control is a license-controlled capability and will be available only if your eG license enables it.
    • Define how frequently detailed metrics are to be collected by the eG agents; detailed diagnosis is a license-controlled capability and will be available only if your eG license enables it.
    • Configure vCenter tasks and events; tasks and events are of significance only if one/more VMware vCenter servers are being monitored

• Alerts: Using the options provided by this menu, you can control the alerting capabilities of the eG Enterprise by performing the following tasks:

  • Define the alarm policies, based on which the eG Enterprise will generate alarms
  • Configure thresholds, which govern state changes
  • Add/modify/delete maintenance policies, which when defined, can suppress the alarms pertaining to specific hosts/components for configured time periods
  • Configure the mail server for sending email alerts
  • Some environments may already be using network-monitoring systems such as HP OpenView, Tivoli NetView, etc., for monitoring their networks and systems. Administrators of such environments may desire that eG Enterprise’s alarms be reported to their existing alarm consoles. By configuring the eG manager to send eG alarms as SNMP traps to one/more SNMP management consoles in an environment, you can enable eG Enterprise to support the integrated display and tracking of alarms from a single monitoring console. Using the options in the Alerts tile, you can configure the SNMP managers/trap receivers to which the eG manager needs to send SNMP traps and define the SNMP trap settings. In addition, you can upload SNMP MIBs of SNMP-enabled network devices that are not monitored out-of-the-box by the eG Enterprise system. If the Integration Console plugin is enabled for use by the eG license, then administrators can browse the new MIB tree online and create new SNMP-based tests for the new network devices.
  • Assign agents to primary and secondary managers in Active-Active redundant manager cluster; this option will be available only if your eG license enables the 'Redundant Manager' capability.

• Integration Console: eG Enterprise includes extensive built-in monitoring capabilities for a majority of off-the-shelf applications. However, in any realistic environment, one may encounter applications that are not supported by the eG products. Moreover, administrators may prefer to extend eG’s built-in application models to suit their needs and preferences (e.g., to add specific tests from the model). To support these capabilities, eG Enterprise includes an optional component called the Integration Console.  This license-controlled module allows users to add new components for monitoring, include new layers for diagnosing specific components, and enhance eG’s measurement capability to expose additional information relating to the managed components. The Integration Console tile will be available only if the eG license enables the Integration Console capability. If available, administrators can use the menu options in the tile to do the following:

  • Create new tests and measures;
  • Add new layers and associate the new tests with the new/existing layers;
  • Add a new component-type, define its layer model, and associate new/existing tests with the component type;

  • Take a backup of the eG Enterprise

    Reference:

    To know how to extend eG’s monitoring capabilities using the Integration Console plugin, refer to the Extending the Monitoring Capabilities of eG Enterprise.

• User Management: You can create/modify/delete new users and user roles using this menu option, and can view reports on user logins and user activity.

• Settings: You can configure the key settings that govern manager operations and how state and performance data is displayed in the eG monitoring console. These include:

  • Configuring the eG database cleanup periods
  • Configuring general manager settings such as the threshold lookback period, user account lockout policy, password policy, what should be displayed in the manager message board (i.e., the manager notification window), etc.
  • Configuring general display settings for alarms and graphs in the eG monitoring console
  • Configuring the measures to be included in the Measures At-A-Glance section of the Monitor Dashboard
  • Effecting cosmetic changes to the eG admin and monitor interfaces by including custom logos and defining custom alert messages
  • Choosing the measures for which Operation reports need to be generated in the eG Reporter; the eG Reporter component will be available to you only if your eG license enables it.

• Miscelleneous: You can view and analyze the manager log files, oversee license usage, check database properties, import/export configuration across managers, and many other administrative activities. You can also add/delete eG Supermanagers. Large enterprises often have thousands of devices, servers, and applications that have to be managed, and a single eG management console may not have the capacity to handle the entire enterprise. To support such enterprises, multiple eG managers may be needed. However, if each of these managers operates independently, they may not provide a common view of the entire enterprise. Hence, it could be very cumbersome to have the IT staff of the enterprise login to different eG management consoles to get a complete view of the status of the target infrastructure. A SuperManager is a manager of managers that provides a consolidated view of the status of the IT infrastructure that is being handled by different eG managers. The eG Supermanager is a 100% web-based component of the eG Enterprise that provides a consolidated view across disparate eG managers.

  Reference:

  For a detailed installation and configuration procedure for the eG Supermanager and an elaborate discussion on how it works, refer to the document titled eG Supermanager.

• Audits: eG Enterprise can be optionally configured to log every user action performed on the eG user interface. Using the Audits menu, a variety of reports can then be generated based on the details logged, so as to enable the administrator to audit the following:

  • User logins to the eG Enterprise system
  • Failed login attempts to the eG Enterprise system
  • Configuration changes effected by users to the eG administrative interface
  • User activities with respect to the eG monitoring console
  • User accesses to the eG Reporter module

  By default, the 'audit logging' capability of the eG manager is disabled. Therefore, the Audits menu will not be available by default.

  At the right, top corner of the Admin interface, you will find a tool bar. The table below briefly describes the tools provided by this tool bar:

  Tool	Tool Name	Purpose
  	Current user	Move your mouse pointer over this tool to know who is currently logged in. Click on the tool to edit the profile of the user logged in.
  	Quick links	Click here to view ‘single-click’ links to important or frequently accessed pages of the eG administrative interface. To know how to configure quick links, refer to Quick Links.
  	Manager notification	Click here to pull down a message board, where the eG manager displays useful messages for the administrator. Such messages may intimate administrator of agents that may not be running, or components recently managed and awaiting test configuration.
  	Quick alerts	You can click on this icon from anywhere in the eG management console to take a quick look at the current alarms.
  	Help	Click here for a context-sensitive help page providing useful information pertaining to the page that is currently open.
  	Signout	Click here to sign out of the eG administrative interface.
  	Technical Support	Click here to check for newer versions of eG Enterprise, contact customer care etc.
  	Switch User Profile	Click here to login/switch as a different user from within the eG console.

  If your user profile has monitoring rights, then a Monitor tab will appear, clicking on which will enable you to login to the eG monitoring console, without having to log out of the admin interface. Similarly, if you have rights to generate reports, then a Reporter tab will appear, clicking on which will allow you to instantly switch to the eG Reporter interface (if your eG license enables it). By default, clicking on either of these tabs will open the monitor and reporter interfaces in the currently open window itself. If you want these consoles to open in a separate window instead, click on the symbol next to the tab page name Monitor or Reporter as the case may be.

  In addition to the tools mentioned above, the eG management console now embeds an intelligent search capability. Regardless of which interface you are on (admin/monitor/reporter/configuration) or what you are doing, you can instantly check on the status of your mission-critical servers, services, segments, and zones using this intuitive search engine. All you need to do is use any of eG’s pre-configured search prefixes and add your search condition to it, and upon clicking the Search icon, within seconds, the element you are searching for and its current status will be made available to you. The default pre-configured search prefixes are Service, Segment, Component, Zone, VM/Desktop and User. The User search is limited to the users who are currently logged into the VM/Desktop.