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Obtaining connection data on an Agent.

Had a query on how to get information from the TEMS EIB on how long an agent had been connected in the environment, and also if it was offline, how long had it been offline.

There is some information you can get from the EIB about this and here I will just answer the specific of what to look for.

For the details on how to understand the EIB and extract data see these blogs in the Monitoring Academy:

http://ow.ly/UWIU302IZSk

ITM Nuggets: How to extract the full TEMS database schema so you can build your own SQL queries

http://ow.ly/i9GA302IYTk

ITM Nuggets: SPUFI - Feel the power of extracting information directly from the TEMS database with KDSTSNS (SPUFI)

The first piece of information needed was the actual go live date (when agent connects to  the HUB for the first time) of a particular agent irrespective of any HUB restart.  

 
The absolute time an agent reaches the TEMS for the first time is recorded in the system MSL entry
and is generated for the agent upon initial heartbeat. The data is held in the TNODELST.LSTDATE column.
It is the only time a system MSL is generated and the timestamp reflects the initial agent heartbeat regardless of intervening status or TEMS recycles.
These are the records that look like NODELIST=*ALL_UNIX  NODE=myUnixAgent.

                                     
The next information needed was the actual Offline date of a particular agent, in case the agent is still Offline irrespective of HUB restart.

ITM does not calculate how long an agent is offline within an invocation cycle and not at all between invocations.

However there are two possible ways to check this:

If historical data is collected , then the warehouse records should show when the agent went offline.
The data can then be extracted from the warehouse. One way to do this is using TCR (Tivoli Common Reporting).  
Agent types provide reporting packages for TCR and an availability report is often included.  
 
Alternatively it is possible to write situations for the offline condition that can use a Take Action command that will write the date and time to a file, which can then be mined later for the information.
However care should be taken with this, as at times there can be large numbers of off-lines (if there are restarts or outages of TEMS) and you do not want to add extra load to the HUB TEMS at these times.

Personally I would use the historical collection and TCR, as it is easier to maintain than an extra customized set of scripts.

It was also asked what the LSTDATE column in the EIB table O4SRV.TNODELST table reflected.                                                                    
                               
This date record reflects the time the record was either created or last modified.

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