Create custom metric for system monitoring

In some cases you want to have your own metric defined to fine tuning the system monitoring template.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

• How do I create a custom monitoring metric?
• Do I need to re-create the custom metric per monitoring template?
• What are examples of custom metrics?

Creating custom metric

In this example we create a custom metric to make sure that the user WF-BATCH is not locked.

There is already a metric in the ABAP template that is called User Lock Status. This can be used as a basis for our custom metric.

Goto your template into change mode and on top left choose Create (you need to be in Expert mode first):

And select Metric. Now the screen opens for a new metric creation:

Fill out the details, and create a custom description:

Now go to the tab Data Collection:

Copy the data from your reference metric here. Don’t forget to fill out the Parameter Value. In this case WF-BATCH. Also make sure you have a reasonable Collection Interval timing. Not everything is need to be collected every 5 minutes.

Now go to the tab Threshold:

Configure your threshold setting.

Now press the Next button and assign the metric to the correct group:

Now press Finish to save the metric.

The new custom metric is now available in the monitoring template:

You see that this one has the Custom created marked. Later you can use the filter on Custom created column to quickly find it again.

Deploying custom metric to other templates

If you have to deploy the custom metric to other templates: so far this is a manual action. Per template you have to re-create the same custom metric. I have not found a nice way of re-using custom metrics yet.

Examples of custom metrics

Examples of custom metrics:

• Checking lock status of critical users (see above example)
• Checking specific SM21 system log messages: for example for message server disconnects, or errors in table locking of table TBTCO
• Checking for specific logon group to be active and working
• Checking for certificates that are about to be expired and already expired certificates (in stead of only one out of the box metric that contains both)
• Checking web dispatcher URL
• Detecting file system mounted
• Detecting long running DIA process
• Detecting missing hardware ID
• Detecting no more free WP (work process)
• Detecting OS signal
• Detecting PRIV modes
• Detecting resource exhaustion
• Detecting specific ABAP short dumps

Author: Frank Umans

Working in SAP since 1998. Started as ABAP developer and later moved to SAP basis and authorizations. Since 2020 working with SAP Focused Run. View all posts by Frank Umans