Released on: July 3, 2008, 12:44 pm

Press Release Author: CCSS Corp

Industry: Software

Press Release Summary: CCSS, the IBM Power Systems solution developer, today
announces a major new product innovation in the form of MQSeries* Monitoring. This
new capability forms part of the latest release of their well known system
performance monitoring and reporting solution, QSystem Monitor, and marks a
significant entry by CCSS into the complementary arena of application monitoring

Press Release Body: CCSS, the IBM Power Systems solution developer, today announces
a major new product innovation in the form of MQSeries* Monitoring. This new
capability forms part of the latest release of their well known system performance
monitoring and reporting solution, QSystem Monitor, and marks a significant entry by
CCSS into the complementary arena of application monitoring.

The new monitoring functionality targets four key components of MQSeries: MQ Queue
Managers, MQ Listeners, MQ Channels and MQ Queues. Development Managers will now be
able to target each of these components with a series of dedicated monitors that
will impose all the benefits of pro-active monitoring and management in their
MQSeries environment. Increased efficiency and the ability to save time, as well as
fast problem identification and resolution are just some of these benefits already
enjoyed by system manager colleagues who already use QSystem Monitor.

Managing Director of CCSS, Ray Wright, explains why CCSS has now embraced
application monitoring: "In many ways, this MQSeries monitoring functionality is a
very natural extension of the traditional system monitoring we focus on in our core
business. We've always believed that improving systems management for customers was
as much about helping them to create a pro-active approach to management as it was
about any one particular function or feature of our solutions. With that in mind,
many customers that had already made this transition wanted to extend the same
approach to core applications, and more specifically, to their MQSeries environment.
Happily, the structure of the MQSeries solution lends itself so well to this type of
approach - we feel that it's a very complementary addition of functionality to
QSystem Monitor and one that customers will feel is intuitive to use."

New monitors for MQ Queue Managers will keep a watchful eye on four key elements
including the status of the MQ Queue Manager itself, the Command Server Status,
Initiator Status and Connection Count. The status monitoring is vitally important as
if any one of these elements becomes inactive and this is not immediately detected,
requests won't be issued or received, channels won't be started and the Queue
Manager will cease to run. Similarly, the status of critical MQ Listeners, which
must be started for MQ communications to be received, can now be monitored around
the clock.

Additional Monitors for MQ Channels include a number of performance indicators which
can assist in fast problem resolution. These comprise Bytes Received/second, Bytes
Sent/second, Compression Ratio, Compression Time, Exit Program Time, and Network
Time. As with all such metric measurements, users are able to define thresholds for
each one and will be automatically alerted (via SMS, Email or Pager) should a breach
occur. The Average Message Time on Queue is another important monitor as any spikes
in the time spent on a queue prior to processing could be an indication of a problem
elsewhere (for example, the communications environment) that is directly impacting
the queue and causing a delay.

Completing the round up of new MQ Series monitors are those that surround the MQ
Queues. These include the Application Status, Age of Oldest Message, Average Queue
Time, and Queue Depth, all of which offer insight into any unresolved issues. Queue
Depth/Maximum gives users a percentage view of the number of messages - often a more
meaningful expression than a straight number count. Similarly, Queue Depth/Trigger
offers a view of the number of messages as a percentage of the trigger depth. In
this case, a figure of 100% would mean that a trigger program or event should have
taken place. Open Count - Input and Open Count - Output monitors show the number of
applications that are putting on and taking off messages from a queue. Depending on
the time of day, if either of these two monitors read zero, there could be a problem
that has caused the applications to stop interacting with the queues.

The final two monitors for MQ Queues are the Uncommitted Message Count and the Dead
Letter Queue. The first is a very important check as it identifies messages on a
queue that were unable to be sent. Resolving these particular messages puts them
back on the queue or alternatively, users can choose to delete them. Uncommitted
messages, by definition, exist on this queue if they are problematic. If MQ cannot
send a message for a particular period of time, it would be sent to the Dead Letter
Queue. Pro-active environments can set a threshold of 1 for this particular monitor
to maintain rigorous, precision control of the MQ environment.

In addition to the newly created monitors, many of QSystem Monitor's existing
functionality also plays neatly into the MQ environment such as IFS Monitoring (as
MQ files are stored here), Subsystem/Job Monitoring (as MQ runs in its own
subsystem) and Thread and Library Monitoring (showing the number of threads as a
measure of activity and dedicated MQ Libraries for each Queue Manager.)

MQ Series monitoring is available in QSystem Monitor V12 (R9) from July 2008.
Contact CCSS for more details.
http://www.ccssltd.com

* MQSeries, now known as IBM Websphere MQ®

ENDS


About CCSS

CCSS develops, supports and markets IBM Power Systems (System i/ i Series)
performance monitoring and reporting, message management and remote management
solutions. An Advanced IBM Business Partner, CCSS develops powerful solutions to
support some of the world's most demanding System i environments across many
industries including insurance, banking, pharmaceutical and manufacturing. All CCSS
solutions are IBM ServerProven.

Existing customers that rely on CCSS's feature-rich solutions include leading
organisations such as Volvo, Mattel, Newell-Rubbermaid, The Royal Bank of Scotland,
Siemens Medical, RWE npower and Waterstone's.

CCSS is headquartered in Gillingham, Kent, UK with key regional headquarters in
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Bonn, Germany and Makati City, Philippines together
with a global agent network spanning Portugal, Brazil, the Netherlands, Switzerland
and Sweden.

www.ccssltd.com

MQSeries is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation.


Web Site: http://www.ccssltd.com

Contact Details: news@ccssltd.com
+1 919 256 8266