Operations Sentinel can interface to the same managed system through two or more connections. If an event occurs on either connection that requires action on the other connection, you can use SP-AMS to generate a command that, when executed on the managed system, causes a message to be displayed on the other management interface. In this manner you can communicate events from one interface to another and can alter the behavior of the system or applications being controlled by that interface.
Note: For connections that are configured for ping monitoring, SP-AMS receives status messages that you can use to initiate actions on other managed connections or to raise alerts. However, there is no input interface available for SP-AMS to submit a command across a ping monitored interface.
For example, you can have the following two connections to the same system:
Through the console, typically accessible through the device file, /dev/console
Through an expansion serial port (for example, /dev/term/100)
You can use Administration mode of Operations Sentinel Console to define these two connections as two distinct UNIX or Linux systems even though they refer to the same physical system.
Assume that the expansion serial port connection is used to manage message events sent by an application program. If an event that occurs on your application monitor is matched by SP-AMS and requires action to be taken from the console port, you can forward the event to your console port monitor by using an echo command that pipes its output to /dev/console. For example,
echo "\n Application has failed, reboot the system" > /dev/console
For this to work, the permissions on /dev/console must allow the application monitor user to write to it. The console managing session receives the message and, using SP-AMS, can be conditioned to recognize the message and take appropriate action. Likewise, if an event occurs in the console managing session that requires notification and action from the application monitor, a similar operation could occur. For example,
echo "\n System is degrading, stop your application" > /dev/term/100
The permissions on the managed serial port, /dev/term/100, must allow the message to be displayed and passed through to Operations Sentinel. The application monitor can be conditioned to recognize the message and take appropriate action. A newline control character is explicitly included at the beginning of each echo message, and the echo command automatically adds a newline character at the end of the message. This is to ensure that the message is identified as one message separate from any other data that may be sent to the managing port.
This technique establishes two separate connections to the same managed system. You use Administration mode of Operations Sentinel Console to define these two connections as two distinct UNIX or Linux systems, even though they refer to the same physical system. In an Operations Sentinel Console topology window, these two connections then appear as two separate system icons, each with a connection line to the network. To avoid confusion, select an appropriate name and label for each logical system to indicate the physical relationship and purpose of each connection (for example, SYS_A_CONS and SYS_A_APPL).