Tuxedo PIA Services Test

Server processes invoke services to perform application logic and issue SQL to the RDBMS. When a PeopleSoft application sends a request to the application server in a group, it sends a service name and a set of parameters, such as MgrGetObject and its parameters. Tuxedo then queues the transaction request to a specific server process that is designed to handle certain services. When a server process boots, it advertises to the system the predefined services it handles.

If the server process is down or is not ready to handle any requests, then all services it handles will also be unavailable; this can severely hamper request processing by the server. Moreover, if even a single service processes requests slowly, user experience with the application server will be adversely impacted. Using the Tuxedo PIA Services test, administrators can quickly detect such anomalies and initiate measures to correct them, so that requests are serviced promptly. Additionally, the test also periodically reports the count of requests handled by each service, thus highlighting the most popular/busiest services delivered by the application server domain.

Target of the test : A Tuxedo Application Server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every service invoked by each server process in every application server group in a domain.

First-level descriptor: Application server group; Application servers in a domain are logically divided into groups. These groups permit the same service to be configured differently on different servers in different groups.

Second-level descriptor: Server process name

Third-level descriptor: Service name

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter	Description
Test period	How often should the test be executed
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port number at which the specified Host listens to. By default, this will be 12345.
PSAdmin Home	To collect metrics from a Tuxedo application server, this test runs PeopleSoft Server Administration (PSADMIN) commands on the target server. The first step towards this is to launch the psadmin.exe. To enable the test to run the psadmin.exe, you need to configure the test with the full path to the directory in which the psadmin.exe resides. Therefore, in the PSAdmin Home text box, specify the location of the psadmin.exe. Typically, this will be the install directory of the Tuxedo application server. For instance, on Windows, your specification can be C:\ps\appsrv and on Unix, your specification can be: opt/ps/appsrv.
Domain	An application server Domain is the collection of server processes, supporting processes, and resource managers that enable connections to the database. A single application server machine can support multiple application server domains running on it. A server process is executable code that receives incoming transaction requests. The server process carries out a request by making calls to a service. Using a managed Tuxedo application server, you can monitor only those server processes and transactions that pertain to a single domain. This is why, the eG agent needs to be explicitly configured with the application server Domain it needs to monitor.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretatione
Service status	Indicates the current status of this service.		The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed in the table below: Measure Value Numeric Value Available 100 Not available 0 Note: By default, this measure reports the Measure Value mentioned above to indicate the current state of a server. The graph of this measure however, represents the same using the numeric equivalent only.
Requests handled	Indicates the number of requests handled by this service since the last measurement period.	Number	A very high value could indicate that the service is overloaded with requests. You can compare the value of this measure across services to know which services have the maximum number of requests; this way, you can find out which services are most popular or are the busiest.
Request rate	Indicates the rate at which requests were handled by this service.	Requests/Sec	A consistent dip in the value of this measure is a cause for concern as it indicates that the service is unable to process requests quickly. This could hint at a processing slowdown.