Spool Service Test

The Spool Service monitoring object contains the most important attributes about the spool system. This test monitors the functioning of the spool system, and reports the extent of its utilization, the length of the wait queues, etc.

Target of the test : A SAP ABAP instance

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every SAP ABAP instance being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed
Host	Host name of the server for which the test is to be configured.
PortNo	Enter the port to which the specified host listens.
ClientName	Specify the ID of the client system as what the eG agent will be connecting to the SAP ABAP instance. To know how to determine the client ID to use, follow the instructions provided in Determining the Client ID/Name for the eG Agent to Connect to the SAP ABAP Instance.
SAPUser	Typically, to connect to a SAP ABAP instance and run tests, the eG agent requires the permissions of a SAP user who has been assigned with certain authorization objects. Ideally, you will have to create a new user role on the SAP ABAP instance for this purpose, associate the above-mentioned authorization objects with that role, and assign the new role to an existing SAP user. The procedure for the same has been provided in Creating a New User Role for Monitoring and Assigning it to a SAP User. Once the new role is assigned to a SAP user, specify the name of this user against SAPUser.
Password	The password of the specified SAPUser.
Confirm Password	Confirm the password by retyping it here.
SysNo	This parameter appears only if the Use SAPControl flag is set to No – i.e., if the test uses SAPJCO to collect measures. An indicator of the TCP/IP port at which the SAP server listens. For example, for a server that listens at port 3200, the SysNo will be ‘00’. Similarly, if the SAP server port is 3201, the SysNo will have to be specified as ‘01’. Therefore, in the SysNo text box specify the system number of the SAP server with which the specified client communicates. To know the system number for the ABAP server being monitored, follow the procedure detailed in Identifying the SAP Router String and System Number.
Router	This parameter appears only if the Use SAPControl flag is set to No – i.e., if the test uses SAPJCO to collect measures. If the SAP client with the specified ClientName exists in a network external to the SAP server, then a router will be used to enable the server-client communication. In such a case, specify the router string of the router in the Router text box. If both the client and the server exist in the same network, then specify ‘none’ against the Router text box. To know what is the SAP Router string for the ABAP server being monitored, follow the procedure detailed in Identifying the SAP Router String and System Number.
InstanceName	This parameter appears only if the Use SAPControl flag is set to No – i.e., if the test uses SAPJCO to collect measures. This is set to none by default. This implies that the eG agent automatically discovers the instance name at run time.
Timeout	Indicate the duration (in seconds) for which this test should wait for a response from the SAP ABAP instance. By default, this is set to 120 seconds.
JCO Version	The eG agent uses the SAP JCO library to connect to the SAP ABAP system and pull out metrics. To enable the eG agent to make this connection and query the metrics, you need to specify the version of the SAP JCO library that the agent needs to use. For instance, to instruct the eG agent to use JCO v2.1.19, it would suffice if you specify the ‘major version number’ alone against JCO Version – in the case of this example, this will be 2.x. Note that if you have downloaded the SAP JCO CONNECTOR files for SAP JCO version 3 from the SAP market place (as instructed by Downloading the SAP JCO Connector files Required for Monitoring ), then the JCO Version configuration should be 3.x.
IsPassive	If the value chosen is Yes, then the server under consideration is a passive server in a SAP ABAP INSTANCE cluster. No alerts will be generated if the server is not running. Measures will be reported as “Not applicable” by the agent if the server is not up.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Utilization of the spool work processes	The percentage utilization of the spool work processes.	Percent
Spool work processes	The number of spool work processes.	Percent	Output requests are buffered in the dispatcher queue on the spool server until a free work process accepts them. A high value for this measure therefore, indicates the non-availability of idle work processes for servicing the output requests in the dispatcher queue. This, in turn, could be due to a heavy workload on the spool server.
Requests in the spool service queue	The percentage of space in the spool requests queue that has been utilized.	Percent	The spool requests queue takes output requests from the dispatcher queue when a free work process in the spool server accepts the output request. A high value here, once again indicates a heavy workload on the server, due to which very few work processes are free to accept the enqueued output requests.
Requests in process-specific request queues	The percentage of space being utilized in the special spool request queues for processing requests in sequence.	Percent	If a spool server has several spool work processes, output requests can overtake each other. To maintain the sequence of requests, there are special work process-specific request queues, each with requests for one particular output device.
Pages in spool requests queue	The number of pages in the spool requests queue.	Number
Device cache used	The percentage of the device cache in use.	Percent	The device cache contains device definitions and sever assignments for all work processes. Entries are taken into the cache as required, and can be removed again if the cache becomes full.
Fixed device cache area used	The percentage of space in the fixed device cache that is currently in use.	Percent	The fixed device cache contains information about the output devices for which there are requests in the host spool system that have not yet been reported as finished. The cache must therefore contain at least as many entries as the number of devices that can be concurrently used.
Host spool requests list used	The percentage of space in the host spool requests list in use.	Percent	The host spool requests limit the number of requests in the host spool which can be managed with the spool service. To minimize database accesses, the list must be stored in shared memory. It deals with status queries for the current requests.