Self-describing agents

Self-describing agents include all the application support files required to recognize and process data from those agents. At startup, self-describing agents automatically push application support updates to their local monitoring server. The data is then replicated to the hub monitoring server and all other Tivoli® Management Services components that require it (such as the OMEGAMON® Enhanced 3270 user interface, the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server, and the Tivoli Data Warehouse). Self-describing monitoring agents eliminate the need to recycle the monitoring server after application support updates, and to ensure that application support files are current. If the self-describing features is not enabled, application support must be installed manually from a DVD and can easily get out of sync with the agent.

By default, the self-describing agent feature is enabled within any remote monitoring server and any monitoring agent that provides self-describing support but the feature is disabled at the hub monitoring server. If your enterprise includes self-describing agents, you can enable the self-describing agent feature by changing parameter values for the hub monitoring server.

For more information, see Enabling the self-describing agent feature at a monitoring server.