Integration Plumbers // Docs

Documentation for Integration Plumbers products.

Getting started

The shortest path from a fresh plug-in to a target you can look at. Each step links to the page with the detail.

Prerequisites for this page

OMS access that can import an OPAR and deploy plug-ins, for example sysman. See Prerequisites.

A Management Agent that can reach the SQL Server instance on its TCP port, by default 1433.

A SQL Server login for monitoring. See Credentials for the grants it needs.

A beta licence key for ip.em.xmsb, from your Integration Plumbers contact. See the Open Beta notice.

In this page: Before you start · Install · Add your first target · Check it worked · What to look at first · If something is wrong

Before you start

You need Enterprise Manager 13.5 or 24ai, an agent that can reach the instance on TCP, and the ability to create a login on that instance. Full list in Prerequisites.

Have to hand: the instance address and port, and — if it is a named instance — its instance name.

Install

Import the archive, deploy it to the management server, then to the agent that will do the monitoring. Commands are in Install and upgrade.

Use the build that matches your Enterprise Manager release. The two are not interchangeable, and the wrong one is refused at import.

Add your first target

Create the monitoring login on the instance, with the grants in Credentials.
Add the target against the agent, giving the host, port, the instance name if needed, and your beta License Key. See Targets and properties.
Apply the credentials to the target afterwards. They are not passed inline when the target is created; doing so is silently ignored and leaves a target that never collects.
While you are there, set the two job credential sets described in Jobs. They are not needed for monitoring, but setting them now means console actions work the first time somebody tries one.

Without a valid key, the target still collects, but the License metric raises a CRITICAL incident until one is entered — see the Open Beta notice.

Point at the listener rather than a replica if the instance is in an availability group and you want the target to follow the primary.

Check it worked

The target should reach Up within a few minutes. If it does not, see If something is wrong below.

Then open its Overview page. Server configuration, availability, instance status and the database list should all be populated.

The Overview page of a healthy target, showing the server configuration, availability history, instance status, monitoring and licence, database space, availability group and processor utilisation cards

The cards below those show the sessions consuming the most CPU, and every open incident on the target.

The Top Sessions by CPU region of the Overview page

What to look at first

Look at	For
Overview	Whether the instance is healthy right now
Compliance results	The settings worth changing on a new instance — start with the end-of-support rule
Alerts and thresholds	What will alert you, and at what values, before it does
AG Failover Readiness	If the instance is in an availability group

Reading the thresholds page early is worth the five minutes. Fourteen thresholds are live from the moment the target exists, and it is better to know what they are than to meet them at 3am.

If something is wrong

Target is Down straight after being added. Almost always the credentials — check they were applied after the target was created, not inline with it.

Target is Up but pages look sparse. Expected in the first 24 hours. Configuration and per-database space collect daily, so anything depending on them is empty until the first collection. The Overview page works around the two slowest with a live read. See Targets and properties.

Target Down only when certificate verification is on. Set TLS Mode to required briefly: if it comes Up, the problem is the certificate chain rather than the network or login. TLS connections has the specifics.

A job fails on a target that is monitoring fine. Jobs use a different credential path. See Jobs.