Affinity Manager Connections Test

The BlackBerry Affinity Manager is responsible for maintaining an active connection between BlackBerry 10 devices and the BlackBerry Infrastructure. Affinity Manager uses either of SRP, internal services or RCP to establish connections with external devices. Given that connectivity with external devices is key to the operation of Blackberry UEM, it is important to monitor connections so that administrators come to know of any prospective issue before it starts creating problem for users.

This test monitors the status of the Affinity Manager connections of the device and reports the transactions that had occurred and if there were any errors that had occurred. This allows for the timely resolution of issues if any, before it is propagated to device users.

Target of the test : A BlackBerry UEM

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for Blackberry UEM.

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter

Description

Test Period

How often should the test be executed.

Host

The IP address of the target server that is being monitored.

SNMPPort

The port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB;

Data Over TCP

By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.

Timeout

Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds.

SNMPversion

By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMPversion list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list.

Context

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVERSION. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the Username provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the Username in the Context text box. By default, this parameter is set to none.

Username

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges – in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against this parameter. 

Authpass

Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned Username. This parameter once again appears only if the SNMPversion selected is v3.

Confirm Password

Confirm the AuthPass by retyping it here.

AuthType

This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:

  • MD5 - Message Digest Algorithm
  • SHA - Secure Hash Algorithm
  • SHA224 - Secure Hash Algorithm 224 bit
  • SHA256 - Secure Hash Algorithm 256 bit
  • SHA384 - Secure Hash Algorithm 384 bit
  • SHA512 - Secure Hash Algorithm 512 bit

EncryptFlag

This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the this flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option. 

Encrypttype

If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:

  • DES - Data Encryption Standard
  • 3DES - Triple Data Encryption Standard
  • AES - Advanced Encryption Standard
  • AES128 - Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bit
  • AES192 - Advanced Encryption Standard 192 bit
  • AES256 - Advanced Encryption Standard 256 bit

Encryptpassword

Specify the encryption password here.

Confirm Password

Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here.

EngineID

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement

Description

Measurement Unit

Interpretation

Status

Indicates whether the connection is currently established or not.

Number

This measure indicates whether the connection is enabled or disabled. The states and their equivalent numeric values are mentioned in the table below:

Measure value Numeric Value
Disabled 0
Enabled 1

Note:

By default, this measure reports the above-mentioned States while indicating the connection status of the BlackBerry Dispatcher. However, in the graph of this measure, states will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents only - i.e., 0 or 1.

Transmitted transactions

Indicates the number of transactions transmitted to the BlackBerry Configuration Database during the last measurement period.

Number

Compare the value of this measure over measurements to understand the trend, if the trend is going downwards there may be a problem.

Transaction errors

Indicates the number of errors encountered for the database connection.

Number

A low value is desired for this measure.