How are applications defined?

[ddaniel]

Sorry for my confusion, but I've found references in the documentation to the definition, in Hyperic's inventory model, of an "application" but I haven't been able to figure out how applications get defined and associated with the services that they comprise. (Is "When you specify a set of resources as an Application..." referring to an action that the admin takes through the UI, or something that gets implemented in a plug-in?) In the UI, I've created a New Application, but there doesn't appear to be anything editable about it. From the Monitor tab, I thought "Set Resources" might allow me to set the resources that are part of this application, but clicking on it seems only to refresh the page and the "No health data is available for this resource." and " There are no indicator metrics to display" messages. (Is that the right behavior?) The Inventory tab allows me to edit only the information about the application (description, location).

I tried instead to make the assignment through the webapp service. From here I can apparently go to Groups containing this resource (although none of my defined groups seem to show up) but nothing for Applications using this resource.

Many thanks!

[cwitt_hyperic · Accepted solution]

On the Inventory tab for your new Application, you should see the fourth header down labelled "Services". At the bottom of the now empty Services table, you should find a button labelled "Add to List". If you click on this button, you are taken to a page that will contain several pages of services about which HQ has informormation. You can check the boxes next to the services you wish to list as dependencies for your Application, then click the blue right-pointing-arrow to move them from the Services list to the Add Services list. You can select several services at a time from the page, but can see only one page of 15 services at a time during this process. Once you've got all your services in the Add Services list, click OK. The newly added services will be listed in the Inventory page's Services list.

Back on the Monitor tab, you will still see only the availability indicator for your defined application in its Charts. Not to worry. If you have added some services, you should also now see some Deployed Services and Host Servers listed under Resources on the left side of the page that match your inventory selections for the application. You can check the boxes next to these resources, and then click Set Resources to get a list of available metrics for them to appear below. From this list, you can click on the blue arrow next to the available metric to add its indicator chart for the application.

DON'T LOSE YOUR NEW VIEW! At the upper-right-hand side of the Charts is a View drop-down menu. You can create a new view, give it a name in the value box, and click the white "play" button, or you can just click the white "play" button to update the Default view. Either way, you will not lose the work you've done to specify indicators for the application you've defined. It is common to create several views on the Indicators tab so that different comparisons can be made between metrics under various circumstances. This use of views works for any Indicator tab for any resource defined in HQ, so you may find use for it outside of Applications too.

[ddaniel]

Thanks, Chip -- that was perfect. Now I'm off and running.

[admin]

Sorry Daniel, the documentation around defining an application is a
bit weak (as in non-existent). After creating an application, you
would add services to it by going to its Inventory tab and adding
services to its list of services. The application model provides a
way to group together the services that comprise your application
(s). The "Set Resources" button is used to select the resources
whose metrics you wish to display. For the application that you have
just created, there are none, that's why it's confusing. You can see
the documentation here regarding the Monitor current health UI:

http://support.hyperic.com/confluence/display/DOCSHQ27/ui-2.2.2

Charles