topic Re: System Health Check in Operating System - OpenVMS

System Health Check

Berlene Herren — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 07:28:35 GMT

If you haven't seen this before, check it out.

System Healthcheck (SHC) is a suite of tools that assesses the health of your computing environment by identifying security, performance and configuration problems before they can impact your critical operations. These tools are used to support the SHC assessment service.

SHC assessments are executed against sets of best practice system management rules for HP-UX, Tru64 UNIX, OpenVMS and Windows 2000.

features and benefits:
SHC assessment features:

A brief report (SHC Lite) outlining potential issues on your system (available locally and free)
A comprehensive report (SHC Professional & Detailed) detailing potential problems, issues, diagnostics and recommendations (available only as part of an SHC assessment service)

http://www.software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=SHCBASE01

Berlene

Re: System Health Check

Lokesh_2 — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 08:46:34 GMT

Hi Berlene,

I have been using this product for my VMS machine for quite sometime now. Its a nice product and give useful information

Thanks & regards,
Lokesh

Re: System Health Check

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 10:28:16 GMT

Berlene,

Do you have a link to something more concrete for us tech boys ? The link info is rather management summary like.

Wim

Re: System Health Check

labadie_1 — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 10:34:58 GMT

I am aware of another similar tool (QVET)...

What does it do precisely, does it really have an added value ?

Re: System Health Check

Mike Naime — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 19:25:18 GMT

Qvet is a testing tool. SHC is a collection tool to tell you what you already know, but put it all in one location. :-)

I found several bugs in the Health Check information itself. Mostly related to the SAN/storage. Hopefully they have fixed those for this years release.

Basically you run the Health check which includes a 24 hour run of the T4 data collector. It sends an output file to HP. They process it, and send you the results.

When we ran the Healthchecks, it messed up our routine T4 data collections by re-defining the T4 logicals. We had to run the Healthchecks, and then fix our T4 logicals on all of our systems.

Mike

Re: System Health Check

Martin P.J. Zinser — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 08:49:48 GMT

Hi,

also the description that the Lite report would
be generated "locally" seems to be misleading after reading the documentation. The data have to be sent to hp and they sent you the report back via your TAM. So if you do not have a TAM this tool is of no use at all.

Greetings, Martin

Re: System Health Check

Ian Miller. — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 03:17:29 GMT

It would be interesting to know what you have to have on a support contract to get this service. i.e what item should I be looking for?

I'm also wondering exactly how and where SHC Lite is produced - does the data have to go to hp or not.

Re: System Health Check

Jim Keeble — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 08:36:05 GMT

The SHC product is free to download and use on any system to produce the lite version of the report. The lite report is produced locally on the tested machine, and written to an html file right on the local disc.

The user has the option of forwarding the collected data to HP for a professional report/analysis with recommended improvements to system configuration. A CS level contract includes a professional healthcheck for one system, and optionally multiple systems.

The SHC configuration utility asks for a designated HP engineer, who by prior arrangement will provide his email address. This HP engineer provides the professional report with his notes and recommendation, and if necessary can make arrangements for additional consulting for implementing those changes. To arrange for a professional report, use the contact information at http://www.hp.com/hps/perevent/valupack . There are valupacks on the site for Windows and Tru64 OS's now, and we are in the process of adding an Hpux valupack now. If you are interested, contact HP, we are ready to deliver.

Re: System Health Check

Martin P.J. Zinser — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 11:09:34 GMT

Hello Jim,

where would that lite report be on the local system? The only thing I got after running SHC on my system at home was a few sample reports from T4.

Greetings, Martin

Re: System Health Check

Jim Keeble — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 14:16:08 GMT

The users guide is located in /opt/hpsmc/shc/doc and has the following info in the "Viewing Reports" section:

SHC Lite reports can also be viewed from the command-line. The SHC Lite reports are stored in the SHC data directory in a series of time-stamped subdirectories:

/var/opt/shc/data//shc/ on Tru64 UNIX
/var/opt/hpsmc/shc/data//shc/ on HP-UX
C:\compaq\shc\data\\shc\ on Windows
To view an SHC Lite report for a particular analysis, you should change directory to one of these subdirectories and open the shc_lite.htm file with your browser.

Re: System Health Check

Willem Grooters — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 01:07:05 GMT

Jim

A few remarks

>and written to an html file right on the local disc

WHY HTML and not plain ASCII? HTML may be useful for Windows, but most servers (at least, the ones I'm familiar with) do NOT allow direct access to their files nor have a webserver up and running, just for this....

>/var/opt/shc/data//shc/ on Tru64 UNIX
>/var/opt/hpsmc/shc/data//shc/ on HP-UX
>C:\compaq\shc\data\\shc\ on Windows

Where on OpenVMS?

Re: System Health Check

Berlene Herren — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 04:32:22 GMT

Let's not shoot the messenger :-)
For non-technical issues, or to provide feedback on the System Healthcheck tool, please send a mail to the following e-mail address:

E-mail: shc.feedback@hp.com

Thanks all,
Berlene

Re: System Health Check

Jan van den Ende — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 05:35:36 GMT

Berlene,

I don't want to look too picky,but

Let's not shoot the messenger :-)
For non-technical issues,

Martin's question was quite specific: "where would that file be on the local system" and to me that looks pretty much like a specific technical question about a technical detail.

And since the question is asked in the >>>> OpenVMS <<<< forum, it might reasonably be assumed that he IS asking for that info regarding a VMS system!.
And the answer he gets gives the specifications on various Nixes (btw, showing that Unix = Unix = Unix is definitely NOT true!) and some Wdooze.....

Furthermore, I DO agree with Willem: if you drown all that info somewhere within masses of HTML it becomes pretty hard to read with a simple TYPE or EDIT (and I presume native Nixers also prefer a simple "cat" or "more" or even "vi" to having to invoke some browser.

Jan

Re: System Health Check

Berlene Herren — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 05:39:59 GMT

All I meant to say Jan, was that Jim didn't create the app and cannot answer that question concerning the HTML. That should be directed to the SHC group for a satisfactory answer, if it cannot be found here. I didn't mean to ignore or put off Martin's question. And since this is the OpenVMS forum and other members have used SHC before, perhaps they could answer the question of "where?"

Regards,
Berlene

Re: System Health Check

Willem Grooters — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 08:10:30 GMT

Berlene,

I agree.

Who uses it, on what system, and in what context? Most important one, for really a lot of 'us', not able to pay the huge amount of money for a support- or whatever contract besides the (already expensive) VMS licenses: what use is the LITE version?
It's quite obvious that if you require a regular screening of your system - likely to be part of the support- and maintenance contract) must be paid. But is it possible to have these collections be translated by HP on a non-regular basis? That _could_ be something in between...
Who agrees, could signal this to HP (advocacy, perhaps?)

Re: System Health Check

Pat Moran — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 08:14:45 GMT

For System Healthcheck on OpenVMS, the data must be sent to HP to generate the SHC Lite report which is emailed to the contact address specified in the SHC configuration file. The Lite report for Windows, HP-UX and Tru64 UNIX is generated on the local system.

The documentation in the OpenVMS SHC kit makes it clear that the data must be sent to HP. A support contract is not required to get the Lite report but is required to get the SHC professional report.

Re: System Health Check

Jan van den Ende — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 08:14:57 GMT

Berlene: no offence meant!

Willem: count me among those that agree.

Jan

Re: System Health Check

Berlene Herren — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 08:20:07 GMT

It's no problem Jan, but it isn't my job here to irritate the community :-) I know that sometimes miscommunication can result from only being able to express with written words. This forum has me looking for OpenVMS servers to experiment with :-)

Pat, thank you for that explanation for the process of lite on OpenVMS. I will be assigning points as soon as a small glitch is corrected for moderators.

Willem, if I am reading you correctly, it is possible for a full report without a support contract, at whatever intervals you would like. Check under Additional standalone System Healthcheck service offerings for more info.

Best regards,
Berlene

Re: System Health Check

Martin P.J. Zinser — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 10:09:38 GMT

Hello,

well first of all thanks to Pat for his explanation. It is reassuring to know that I am still able to RTFM ;-)

And no, I certainly do not want to shoot any messengers, actually I think it is nice from Berlene to tell us about the availability of such tools. OTOH it also would be nice if they would work as advertised ;-), i.e. if the Lite report could be generated locally on OpenVMS too it would certainly be nice.

Just to give you some background: I do work for a company that is entitled to such servcies actually. We are also quite picky about what SW is allowed onto our production systems. So I tend to run such stuff first on my hobbyist system at home (no support contract ;-) and if I feel comfortable I don't complain if hp wants us to run them on the "real" servers.

Greetings, Martin

Re: System Health Check

Willem Grooters — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 07:57:02 GMT

Berlene,

I didn't intend to shoot ;-)

> Willem, if I am reading you correctly, it is possible for a full report without a support contract, at whatever intervals you would like. Check under Additional standalone System Healthcheck service offerings for more info.

No, I was just ASKING if that were possible. But it seems it is (haven't checked it).
I double Martin: I'll RTFM as well ;-) and give it a try - if cost permits!

Willem