EMS Manual

Introduction to EMS
EMS Manual—426909-005
1-8
Applications of EMS

You can have any convenient number of distributors on a system.

Collector processes support many configuration options to let you tailor the
logging strategy according to your requirements for performance, reliability,
and use of resources.

In general, both interactive and programmatic methods are provided for
configuring and controlling collector and distributor processes.

Reliability. Both collector and distributor processes can run as process pairs,
enabling them to run continuously through any single-component failure. Collector
processes are designed to log more than 50 event messages per second without
overloading. (Collector performance highly depends on the type of system on
which the collector is running and on the settings of various configuration options,
as described in Section 12, Configuring EMS.)

Extensibility. The token-based message format lets subsystems add information to
existing event messages without requiring that applications accessing those
messages be reprogrammed.
Applications of EMS
EMS is a set of tools that you can apply to any of several system or network
management tasks, including these application areas:

Monitoring a running network or system. You can use the ViewPoint application or
your own management application to recognize situations needing attention as
they arise. Depending on the problem and the sophistication of the application, the
operator or application can resolve the problem through the appropriate command-
response interface.

Managing operator tasks. You can use a management application, or a distributor
that routes messages to a display device, to select and display action event
messages—those requesting operator attention. If operators see an integrated
picture of the required tasks, they can focus on accomplishing the tasks, not on
finding out what they are.

Analyzing problems. To determine what went wrong and why, you must often
retrace a series of events leading up to the problem condition. Log files, filters, and
other EMS components can help you or your service provider by providing the
historical record and the tools needed to sift through it.

Detecting potential problems in advance. You can write a management application
to analyze collector log files. Have it look for repeated warnings or persistent minor
problems that singly would not require a recovery action but might disclose a
correctable condition when taken together.