Monitoring an IBM i host

Instana retrieves various system details from an IBM i host. You can view the following details of an IBM i host on the Instana GUI in the System pane:

Parameter	Description
OS	The details of the operating system, the kernel version, and the architecture.
CPU	The details of the CPU and the count.
Memory	Total system memory in GiB (gibibytes).
Hostname	The hostname of the IBM i machine.
FQDN	The fully qualified domain name. It is the complete domain name of the host, including the subdomain and top-level domain.
System ID*	The custom identifier used by Instana to uniquely represent and manage the monitored host within its monitoring. System ID is used for correlation with asset management systems.
Host ID	The MAC address of the host's network interface, which is a unique identifier for the network adapter.
Started At	The time at which the IBM i machine started.

*For IBM i, you need to enable System ID by using the agent configuration YAML file as shown in the following example:

"com.instana.plugin.host": 
  "collectSystemId": true
 

The historical availability of an IBM i host is shown in the Reporting Status chart on the IBM i host dashboard. You can see three color indicators that identify the status of a host reporting to Instana.

Status	Description	Color indicator
Reporting	The host reported to Instana without any interruptions.	Green
Reporting - monitoring issues	The host reported to Instana with some interruption (such as, network interruptions or agent monitoring issues) and was not fully available.	Orange
Not Reporting	The host was not reporting to Instana at all during this time.	Red

The metric that is used to show this data on the host dashboard is based on the aggregation of messages received from the agent monitoring the host. A host is classified as Reporting if Instana receives at least 98% of the expected messages in a given timeframe.

For example, if the metric aggregation time window is 5 minutes and the poll rate of the host is once per second, Instana expects to receive 300 messages from the host during that timeframe.

• If at least 294 messages are received (98% of 300), the host status is shown as Reporting.
• If less than 294 but greater than 0 messages are received, the host status is shown as Reporting – Monitoring Issues.
• If no messages are received, the host status is shown as Not Reporting.

The following performance metrics are displayed for the IBM i host.