Setting up IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor to monitor FTP servers

By monitoring an FTP server using IBM® Sterling Control Center Monitor, you can gather information on the files transferred to and from the server.

IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor SLCs can be written to make sure that FTP file transfers occur on time. Rules can be written to check FTP server status (up or down) and make sure that files are transferred successfully. Finally, reports can be generated to show historical server activity.

IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor monitoring of FTP servers is enabled by an FTP agent. IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor ships with FTP agents for z/OS, UNIX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows platforms. A separate FTP agent must be installed on each FTP server to be monitored.

IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor supports the monitoring of two types of FTP servers:

• FTP servers that use FTP logs to record transfer activities (W3C, xferlog, and IIS)
• FTP servers that use SNMP traps to record transfer activities (Ipswitch's WS_FTP and z/OS-based FTP servers)

FTP servers also differ according to the types of environments in which they can operate. The following chart lists where you can run a particular FTP server:

IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor monitors FTP servers through an FTP agent that is installed on the computer where the FTP server is running. To install and configure a non-z/OS IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor FTP agent, go to the appropriate section for the platform and type of FTP agent you are using.

Based on Monitor Rest Time, IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor periodically collects information on the transfer activities of the FTP server via the FTP agent. It generates notifications for each transfer. Some mapping is done between the transfer log information and these IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor notifications. For example, for an FTP PUT, IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor reports a Process name of “PUT.” Source file name is mapped to the ID of the user who did the transfer, and destination file name is the name of the file found in the transfer log. When an FTP GET is done, the Process name value is “GET,” the source file name is the name of the file received and the destination file name is the ID of the user who initiated the transfer. In terms of FTP commands, RETR, SENT, and DOWNLOADED display as a GET in IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor while STOR, STOU, CREATED, UPLOADED, and APPENDED display as a PUT.

In addition, all other FTP commands will generate Statistic records. GET and PUT commands will generate Event Types: Process Start, Process Step Start, Process Step End and Process End. All other FTP commands will generate Event Type: Server Command and the Process Name will be the FTP Command. Possible Process Names are USER, PASS, RNFR, RNFO, REN, DELE, MKD, LIST, CWD, PORT, PASV and LOGN.

In a high availability environment, you must configure your WS_FTP server and other FTP servers monitored through SNMP traps to send traps to the active event processor. If the controller event processor fails, you must reconfigure the servers to send the traps to the new controller event processor. You might lose traps if you do not reconfigure the servers.