Monday, December 24, 2018

TIBCO Hawk Overview | Hawk Components and Hawk Communication in a Domain


       TIBCO Hawk is a tool for monitoring and managing distributed applications (deployed across TIBCO Domain) and Operating systems. TIBCO Hawk uses TIBCO messaging layer (either RV or EMS) for communication between HAWK components exists in a TIBCO Administration domain.

Hawk Components :

TIBCO Hawk consists of different components but we commonly use following components :

  • Hawk Agents
  • Hawk MicroAgents (HMA)
  • Hawk Web Console (Introduced in Hawk 5.0)
  • Hawk Display (Deprecated in Hawk 5.0) and Hawk console
  • Hawk Event Service

Hawk Agents :

       Hawk Agents are installed on each physical machine (Host) that will be monitored. The Hawk Agents communicate with the outside world(external applications) through the TIBCO messaging layer. The Agents themselves don't do the work and they rely on MicroAgents to do the work.

Hawk MicroAgents :

There are two different types of MicroAgents :

  1. Each TIBCO application comes with pre-coded MicroAgents (Ex : To start and stop engines)

  2. OS MicroAgents -- These provide system-level info such as CPU usage, Memory usage etc. When you install Hawk and provide your OS, the appropriate agents are loaded.

Hawk Web Console :

       This component is introduced from TIBCO Hawk 5.0 version. The TIBCO Hawk WebConsole application is a web application that provides a central view of all the distributed components interacting within Hawk System. It is a pictorial view of each of the infrastructure component that is being monitored with the help of Hawk components.

Unlike Hawk Display, Hawk Web Console is added with support for managing multiple Hawk domains using a single WebConsole, each configured with the same or a different transport.

The Web Console enables you to :

  • View statistical data about events, alerts and actions
  • Enables users to monitor various Hawk Agents, Microagents and other console-API based custom applications.
  • Allows you to administer Rulebases, Rules and actions to be taken.
  • Enables users to create own set of customized dashboards.

Hawk Display and Hawk Console :

Machine and application information retrieved by Agents can be viewed in TIBCO Hawk Display, the Hawk Console in TIBCO Administrator.

       A Hawk Display can run anywhere on the network, as it is not a centralized console. Multiple Hawk displays can be run on the network as well. The Hawk Display discovers agents through the heartbeats that they sent on the network. It can then interact with these agents and configure the Rulebases, Rules, Schedules for these agents. It can also listen to alerts and notifications sent by these agents, and display them in various windows.

The Hawk Console is a browser-based utility available for TIBCO Domains only. This option is available through TIBCO Administrator.

NOTE: In earlier Hawk versions(till 4.x), We use Hawk Display to configure Rulebases, Rules and Schedules across different Hawk agents in a TIBCO Domain, later Hawk WebConsole is introduced from Hawk 5.0 version in place of Hawk Display, to do all these configurations.

Hawk Event Service :

       The TIBCO Hawk Event Service is a process that records TIBCO Hawk alerts and changes in agent status. When communication with an agent is lost, the Event Service can invoke a user-provided script. Alerts and notifications can be recorded to log files or a database.

Typically, the TIBCO Hawk Event Service is installed on a minimal number of computers in the network.


--> The Hawk Agent needs to be configured with a set of rules that it can use to monitor the applications and operating systems on the machines.

Hawk Rulebases and Rules :

       A rule is defined by the user and it is dependent on what kind of monitoring and management is desired. A rule usually performs a query using the microagent method, and then take action based on the success or failure returned by the microagent.

       A collection of rules can be stored in a single file known as rulebase. A rulebase file is then sent to the Hawk Agent of a machine. After this, the Hawk Agent starts executing the rules and taking the right actions.

How Hawk components communicate in an TIBCO Domain?

       You can specify either TIBCO EMS/RV as the primary transport. The communication between TIBCO Hawk HMA and primary Application Management Interface (AMI) session remains through TIBCO RV. This means that if you choose TIBCO EMS as primary transport, you still have to specify the RV settings for the TIBCO Hawk HMA and primary AMI session.

Below diagram depicts the overview of Hawk components and their communication in an Administration Domain to monitor both applications and operating systems on machines.

       Hawk Agent sends Alerts and Notifications to the network using the external transport (EMS or RV). The agents also listen for requests on the network and responds to these requests. A Hawk Display can send a broadcast request to multiple agents at once and multiple agents can reply in a point-to-point fashion to the Display.

The Hawk Agents also sends heartbeats periodically to the network. A Hawk Display uses these heartbeats to display the "Running" status of an agent.



2 comments:

  1. Hawk Web Console is added with support for managing multiple Hawk domains using a single WebConsole, each configured with the same or a different transport? Could you give an example of how to configure two Hawk Domains? So far I can only bring one, I need to bring two, but so far I haven't had success. Tibco Hawk WebConsole 5.2

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good, Just to let you know that I've already had success in bringing the two hawk domains.. Anyway, thanks..

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