Using the system dashboard

The IBM® Content Collector system dashboard is a tool with which to quickly determine which nodes and which task routes are actively processing documents, and which are not. It is aimed to provide a quick insight to the health of the IBM Content Collector system.

About this task

The system dashboard is deployed with the installation of IBM Content Collector Server. It must be run from a machine on which Content Collector is installed.

The system dashboard is intended to be run from the primary node in the Content Collector system configuration. It can run with or without the IBM Content Collector Configuration Manager started. To be able to capture performance counter data from extension nodes running on a 64-bit operating system, ensure that the Performance Counter DLL Host Service is running on the extension nodes.

Status information for all nodes and the task routes for these nodes is displayed. You can reorder the nodes by moving the columns or hide nodes by adjusting the column width. Information for each task route is displayed in a separate section. You can collapse task route sections to display only those of interest to you. When a section is collapsed, no data is collected for that task route. These changes are persisted to your local settings.

For each node, status information is shown, along with the total number of errors the node has experienced. For each task route, various performance counters and the number of errors that task route has experienced on a node are displayed. All node and task route information is obtained and updated dynamically. This means that the display reflects all changes, for example, if the primary node changes or task routes are added or deleted.

The dashboard window can be set to always appear as the top window by selecting Options > Always on Top on the system dashboard interface.

Procedure

To start the system dashboard:

Select one of these options:
  • All Programs > IBM Content Collector > System dashboard
  • Tools > System Dashboard in the IBM Content Collector Configuration Manager
  • Run the SystemDashboard.exe executable file, which is in the ctms subfolder of the IBM Content Collector installation directory

Results

In some cases, a counter value might not be a number but might display the string Unknown. This can happen if performance counter information cannot be accessed, or if a task route's event log could not be found. The Windows event log for a newly created task route is created only after the task route has run at least once.

All error information gathered from the system dashboard while it is running is logged in the system dashboard log file, located in the ctms\Log directory.