This blog will focus on monitoring on EWM systems.
Monitoring productive EWM systems
EWM systems are at the often used as stand alone systems that make sure logistics and warehousing can keep running at high availability. If the connected ECC or S4HANA system is down, EWM can continue to support logistics operations.
EWM can be older version based on SCM/BI system core. Newer EWM systems are using S4HANA with EWM activated as standalone.
Extra in an EWM system are the use of qRFC and the CIF (Core interface). And many EWM systems have users that interact with the system via ITS GUI based handheld scanners.
CIF monitoring
The CIF is the core interface between SCM and ECC system. The interface typically uses RFC and qRFC. And it is working both ways.
Setup for the CIF specific RFC’s and qRFC’s the monitoring:
Handheld scanners
Many EWM systems are having interaction with scanners via the ITS server. Basically this is a small web page on a scanning device.
Make sure you monitor the availability of the URL’s that the scanners are using. More on URL monitoring can be found in this blog.
ABAP APPLICATION TEMPLATE
Make sure you cover in the ABAP application template the following items:
Availability:
- Message server HTTP logon
- System logon check
- RFC logon check
- License status
- Certificates expiry
- Update status
Performance and system health:
- Critical number ranges
- SICK detection
- Dumps last hour
- Cancelled jobs last hour
- Long running work processes and jobs (see blog): this is more tricky in a BW system, since it can have longer running extraction and processing jobs
Security:
- Global changeability should be that the system is closed
- Locking of critical users like SAP* and DDIC (see blog)
Fine tune the metrics so you are alerted on situation where the system is having issues.
ABAP APPLICATION SERVER TEMPLATE
Make sure you cover in the ABAP application server template the following items:
Availability:
- Local RFC logon test
- Local HTTP logon test (if any BW web scenario is used)
- Local Logon test
- Message server disconnects (see blog)
Application server performance and health:
- Amount of critical SM21 messages
- No more free work processes (see blog)
- Update response times
You can consider to setup extra custom metrics for the application servers:
- Checking for specific logon group to be active and working
- Detecting missing hardware ID
- Detecting OS signal
- Detecting PRIV modes
- Detecting resource exhaustion
- Detecting specific ABAP short dumps
For a BW system some numbers are typically higher than on an ECC or S4HANA system. Response times of 1.5 seconds would indicate horrible performance on ECC, but are normal on BW system.
System host template
For system host the regular CPU, memory, disc template is sufficient. Finetune the thresholds to your comfort level.
Database template
Important items of the database template:
- Database availability
- Database health checks
- Backup