This document describes how to download and install the RTView DataServer for Solace for use with RTView Enterprise, how to configure the data server including defining the connection information for the Solution Package for Solace, how to add alert and historian database connections, how to add connections to RTView Enterprise, and how to verify that your setup is working properly in RTView Enterprise.

You can output and store collected monitoring data to RTView Enterprise, InfluxDB or a Solace Broker. Note that if you are going to Output Data to Solace Broker you don't need to configure RTView Enterprise. These instructions describe how to install and setup each of the three options.

You can also monitor Syslog events from Solace Message Brokers using the Solace Event Module application. For details, see Solace Event Module.

Note: If you are NOT going to Output Data to Solace Broker, this flow assumes that you have already downloaded, installed, and have RTView Central Servers (RTView Enterprise) up and running. See the Enterprise Configuration Guide for more information.

Note: If you are interested in setting up High Availability (failover) for your DataServer, review Configuring High Availability for DataServer Deliverables prior to starting this flow.

Note: If you are NOT going to Output Data to Solace Broker, you can use the RTView Configuration Application for configuring your connections, or you can use the Property Editor REST API to import initial connections or automate connection updates. See Property Editor REST API for more information. 

Before You Get Started

• You must have Java installed and you should know the installation directory path.

• You should know the correct full path to the directory containing the jar files for each of your solution packages.

• You should know the connection settings for your solution packages:

• If you are upgrading to a new version of the DataServer, review the General Upgrade Steps document to see if there are any additional steps required. You should also review the upgrade steps for the Solution Package for Solace.

Download the RTView DataServer for Solace

• Open a browser and navigate to https://sl.flexnetoperations.com/.

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• Login using your RTView Download Center account login/password.

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• Click the SL Corporation link in the Browse My Software and Documentation region.

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• Click the RTView DataServer for Solace link.

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• Click the RTView DataServer for Solace link.

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• Click the RTViewDataServerSolace_<version>.zip file or, if you want to download multiple files, select the check box next to the different deliverables and click the Download Selected Files button.

The compressed file(s) is/are saved to your machine.

Register Software

When you install the DataServer, a temporary license key is included. SL Corporation will send you a permanent key that you will need to add to your RTView license key file so that you can extend the operation of your monitoring system.

This is a universal key that will enable you to run RTView on different machines and platforms. It is your responsibility to ensure you use RTView within the terms of your End User License Agreement (EULA).

To update your RTView system with your new license key, open a command window and:

• Navigate to RTViewDataServerSolace/rtvapm/rtview/lib.

• Edit the KEYS file using a text editor.

• Copy/paste the new replacement key to the file.

• Save the KEYS file.

Install the RTView DataServer for Solace

Note: If using UNIX, do not include spaces in your installation directory path. The start_server.sh and stop_server.sh scripts will not function properly if spaces are included in the installation directory path.

• Extract All (Windows)/unzip (UNIX/Linux) the file to the directory of your choice. For UNIX/Linux, use unzip -a to unzip the file.

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• If you are going to output data to a Solace Broker, go to Output Data to Solace Broker. Otherwise, continue to next step.

Start the RTView DataServer for Solace

• Open a command window and set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to your Java Installation. For example:

• In the command window, navigate to the RTViewDataServerSolace directory and type:

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Configure the Data Server

Next, you need to create your connections for each of your solution packages using the RTView Configuration Application.

• Open a browser and type:

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• Log in using rtvadmin/rtvadmin as the username/password.

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• Click RTView DataServer for Solace.

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• As previously mentioned, if you modified the port at startup, you should modify the port prefix so that you do not need to specify the port on the command line every time you run the startup script. To do so, navigate to Server Configuration > General > General Tab > Ports > Port Prefix and define a new port prefix. If you change the Port Prefix to 44 then, after saving your changes and restarting your data server, you would access the RTView Configuration Application for the RTView DataServer for Solace using the following URL: http(s)://localhost:4470/rtvadmin (instead of the default http(s)://localhost:3270/rtvadmin URL)

• Under Solution Package Configuration, select the desired solution package you want to configure and click the link below to view the steps required to set up the configuration for the solution package:

• Optionally, you can create a Historian Database Connection and configure the historian settings. See the link below for more information:

• Alerts are configured in RTView Central Server. Click the link below to view details, and see the RTView Enterprise Configuration Guide for more information.

Connect Your Data Server to RTView Enterprise 

Next, you need to connect your data server to RTView Enterprise. To do so:

• Click Server Configuration > EM Integration.

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• Click the Integrate with Enterprise Monitor toggle.

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• Specify the Central Server URL to be used to connect to your RTView Central Server. By default, a local connection is defined (localhost:10018) and does not need to be modified if your Central Server and Data Server are on the same machine. If they are on different machines, enter the URL containing the IP address and the port like so:

• Click the Announce this RTView Data Server to  the Central Server toggle to automatically connect the data server to RTView Central.

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Save Your Changes and Restart the Data Server

• Once you have created all of your connections, click the SAVE button in the RTView Configuration Application.

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• For your changes to go into effect, you must stop and restart the data server by either:

  • clicking the 

     button (in the upper right-hand corner of the window)...

Verify Your Setup

To verify your setup:

• Open a browser, access the RTView Configuration Application for RTView Central Servers (RTView Enterprise) using http://localhost:10070/rtview-central-rtvadmin, and log in using rtvadmin/rtvadmin as the username/password.

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• Open a browser, access RTView Enterprise (for example, http://localhost:10070/rtview-central-classic), and log in using admin/admin as the username/password.

• Click Admin > Architecture > System Overview and check to make sure that your newly connected data server (Solace_Data_Server in our example) displays in the Data Servers region and that CI Metrics are being collected.

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• You can also check the incoming data in your caches by opening a browser and accessing the following URL:

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• If you are going to output data to InfluxDB, go to Create a Database and Account for InfluxDB.

• If you are going to Output Data to Solace Broker, return to Start StatsPump.

Additional Configurations

Create a Database and Account for InfluxDB

Perform these instructions only if you want to output and store monitoring data to InfluxDB. 

This section assumes you have already completed all RTView DataServer for Solace Quick Start Guide, Version 5.1.1 (On-Premise) instructions.

To send monitoring data to InfluxDB you edit the stats-receiver.properties file, located in the Data Collector directory, define the metrics to poll and store, and specify the IP address and port number on the InfluxDB platform.

• Create a database and a user with read and write privileges in your InfluxDB platform using the following InfluxDB shell commands:

• Edit the stats-receiver.properties file, located in the directory where the data server will be started.

• Enable InfluxDB Tap by commenting out the following line:
  #TAP_PLUGIN_CLASS = com.sl.statsds.RTViewStatsTap

          TAP_PLUGIN_CLASS = com.solace.psg.enterprisestats.receiver.influxdb.InfluxDBStatsTap

• Select the list of topics identifying the fields to write to InfluxDB by copying the list of topics in the DB_FIELD_SUBSCRIPTIONS property. These topics are semicolon separated and multiple lines are appended by "\" at the end of the line. Initially you can choose from the examples that are provided in the stats-receiver.properties file itself. For example:

• Add the connection properties to InfluxDB by scrolling down to the Influx DB Properties and defining the following:

  • INFLUXDB_HOST: the hostname and port used for Influx DB. For example, if you run it locally in the default port: INFLUXDB_HOST = localhost:8086.

  • INFLUXDB_DB: the database name to which InfluxDB will write. For example: INFLUX_DB=yourSolaceStatsDB

  • INFLUXDB_USER: the user previously created in Influx DB to execute the inserts in the DB. For example: INFLUXDB_USER = SolaceStatsUser.

  • INFLUXDB_PASSWORD: the password you set in InfluxDB encrypted with the Solace PSG Password Utility. To use this tool, open a command prompt or terminal and initialize it:
    Change directory (cd) to <installation_dir>/rtvapm> and execute . ./rtvapm_init.sh (UNIX)
    or
    cd <installation_dir>\rtvapm> and execute rtvapm_init.bat (Windows)
    Change directory to rtvapm\solmon\bin (rtvapm/solmon/bin for UNIX) and execute:
    pwd-utility[.bat/.sh] <yourPwdString>
    The following message appears:
    “The encrypted password is: 'encryptedString' (without the quotes).
    You should use this value in the password field in configuration property files."

Congrats! You have finished setting up the the RTView DataServer for Solace to output and store data to InfluxDB.

Output Data to Solace Broker

Perform these instructions only if you want to output and store monitoring data to Solace Broker. 

This section assumes you already downloaded, installed and registered the RTView DataServer for Solace and set the Java home var. If not, see the Quick Start Guide, Version 5.1.1 (On-Premise) instructions at the top of this page.  

To send monitoring data to a Solace Broker you edit files that are located in the rtvapm/solmon/bin/config directory.  Refer to Solace documentation for additional information about the available message formats you can choose for sending the data.

Define Solace Brokers to Monitor

• Define the Solace Brokers to monitor by editing the <primary> … </primary> section of the appliance_config_demo.xml file (this adds connection properties to the monitored Solace Brokers). Add as many <primary> … </primary> sections as brokers you want to monitor. 

• Define the Solace Broker to receive monitoring data by editing the <mgmt.-msg-bus> … </mgmt.-msg-bus> section from the appliance_config_demo.xml file. You should define the message format for the data being transmitted by choosing one of the container factories: SempXmlFragmentFactory, .JsonMapFactory or StdMapFactory for SEMP, and JSON or standard message formats respectively.

• If the data to be polled isn't already defined in the preconfigured XML files, or you need additional poller groups for different monitoring options, do the following:

  • Define the monitoring data to poll by editing the pollers_sl.xml file (this file contains SEMP request details and response parsing specifics which the poller sends to Solace Brokers).

  • Define the poller groups that you want to use by editing the groups_sl.xml file (this file enables you to separate published statistics into groups of interest, publishes the statistics on the associated topic, and provides the configured poll interval).

Start StatsPump

• Start StatsPump as follows: 

  • In a Windows command prompt or UNIX terminal, go to the RTViewDataServerSolace/rtvapm directory and execute rtvapm_init.bat (Windows) or rtvapm_init.sh (UNIX).

  • Change directory (cd) to rtvapm/solmon/bin directory and execute the following in the order provided (if you change the order it will not execute properly):

Congrats! Your monitoring data is now output and stored to a Solace Broker. 

Solace Event Module

You can monitor Syslog events from Solace Message Brokers by using the Solace Event Module application. The Solace Event Module receives and stores Syslog events generated by Solace Message Brokers and generates Syslog event-based alerts when required.

To use the Solace Event Module you Configure Message Broker & Syslog Destination to send Syslog events, set the Solace Event Module to run, listen for the Syslog events the broker sends, and Configure RTView to run and receive data from the Solace Event Module.

The Syslog event messages generated in the message brokers are forwarded to the SolEventModuleEvents cache from the RTView Solace Data Server. The events that trigger alerts are stored in the SolEventModuleAlerts cache from the RTView Solace Data Server.

The Solace Event Module is not executed by default and requires additional configuration.

To start the Solace Event Module you add a command line argument to the rtvservers.dat file, configure the severity level of the Syslog event-based alerts and the Syslog destination address and port.

This section contains:

• Configure  Message Broker & Syslog Destination

• Configure RTView to Execute the Solace Event Module

• Solace Event Module Properties.

• Solace Event Module Log Properties File.

Configure  Message Broker & Syslog Destination

To use the Solace Event Module, you configure your Solace Message Brokers to send Syslog events for either the system.log or the event.log and also configure a receiver for those events. It's recommended that the host in which you execute the RTView DataServer for Solace be the host in which you configure the Syslog receiver.

For details about configuring Solace Message Brokers to send monitoring Syslog events, see:

https://docs.solace.com/System-and-Software-Maintenance/Monitoring-Events-Using-Syslog.htm

Configure RTView to Execute the Solace Event Module

Do the following to configure RTView to execute and receive data from the Solace Event Module.

• Stop RTView by executing the RTViewDataServerSolace\stop_servers.bat /sh script.