IBM Performance Management

Creating a navigator group

In an IBM® Tivoli® Monitoring environment, use Navigator groups to group several related data sources (attribute groups) together so that workspaces can be created that show views that combine the data sources. You can create a navigator group while you create an agent by using the New Agent wizard at the base agent level. You can also create a navigator group while you define a subnode by using the New Agent Component wizard.

About this task

For example, you might be able to collect file system data from more than one data source. It can be useful to create one workspace that shows views of all file system data from those different data sources.

Navigator groups are also a good way to hide data sources on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal. You might decide that metrics collected from two data sources are most useful if the data sources are joined to create a new combined data source. You want to see only the combined data in the Joined data source. You can create a navigator group that contains all three data sources and create a workspace that contains views to display only the combined data source. The two original data sources are effectively hidden from view in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal. See Creating attribute groups from existing sources for information about joining data sources.

Note: When you group data sources in a navigator group, Tivoli Monitoring does not associate a query with the navigator group. It is assumed that you define a default workspace for the navigator group to display the data sources in a useful format.
A navigator group can be defined in the base agent or in a subnode. A navigator group cannot contain another Navigator group.

Navigator groups have no effect in an IBM Performance Management environment.

Procedure

  1. Take one of the following steps:
    • When creating a new agent using the Agent wizard, on the Agent Initial Data Source page, click Data source groupings in the Monitoring Data Categories area.
    • With an existing agent, take the following steps in the Agent Editor:
      1. Click the Data Sources tab to open the Data Source Definition page.
      2. Select the agent and click Add to selected.
      3. On the Data Source Location page, in the Monitoring Data Categories area, click Data source groupings.
  2. In the Data Sources area, click A navigator group.
  3. Click Next.
  4. On the Navigator Group Information page, type the navigator group name and the text for the Help you want associated with the name, and click Next.
    Note: Agent Builder automatically creates navigator groups in certain situations. The following navigator group name is reserved:
    • Availability
    .
  5. On the First Navigator Group Data Source page, select the first source of monitoring data for the new navigator group. Click a category in the Monitoring Data Categories list and a data source in the Data Sources list. Then, click Next.
    Tip: You can create the data source as usual. Alternatively, click Existing data sources and choose to move one or more data sources that you already created into the navigator group.
  6. If you want to create a data source within a navigator group, on the Data Source Definition page, select the navigator group, and click Add to Selected.
  7. If you want to move existing data sources into the navigator group, on the Data Source Definition page, select the navigator group, and click Add to Selected and on the Navigator Group Data Source page, select Existing data sources. In the Currently Defined Data Sources page, select the data sources.
  8. If you want to remove a data source from a navigator group, do one of the following steps on the Data Source Definition page:
    • Select the data source, and drag it to the root of the data sources tree.
    • Select the data source, and clicking Remove.
  9. If you want to create a navigator group, do one of the following steps on the Data Source Definition page:
    • Click Add to Agent.
    • Select a subnode and click Add to Selected.