APM Technical Support is actively working your cases, creating new knowledgebase articles, and retiring old KBs. This month we focus on five KB articles about TIM (Transaction Impact Monitor) that should be aware of. These are two areas: information and warnings.
Information
Link: https://comm.support.ca.com/?legacyid=TEC601879
Description: Which versions of CentOS for APM 9.x MTP TIMs are supported?
Comment: The big thing to take away for the above is supported and tested for APM TIM 9.1.x on MTP 9.2 with 64-bit CentOS 5.5 and CentOS 5.7 as well.
Link: https://comm.support.ca.com/?legacyid=TEC601083
Description: How to download APM Software from support.ca.com
Comment: There are a steady stream of questions of how to download APM Software. This link with screenshots will help.
Link: https://comm.support.ca.com/?legacyid=TEC600885
Description: What is collected by default when using the Collect TIM Logs menu options?
Comments: It was not always clear what TIM logs are collected and why. I created this KB to rectify it. This includes the first time explanation of the stats directory. Note that core files are not collected by default
Warnings
Link: https://comm.support.ca.com/?legacyid=TEC601421
Description: Important notes concerning applications using SSL/TLS DEFLATE compression with APM CE (CEM) monitoring
Comments: This is the most important KB of the bunch. If your applications are using SSL/TLS with DEFLATE Compression, then they may be vulnerable to a security attack. (This feature is not supported in the latest versions of SSL/TLS.) Also note that the DEFLATE compression method is not supported by APM CE. So transactions using it will not be decoded.
Best Practices
Link: https://comm.support.ca.com/?legacyid=TEC600884
Description: Can full TIM logging create a nospace or frequent TIM Restart condition in a production MTP?
Comment: Too often APM CE Administrators do not realize that turning on full logging in a busy production enevironment can lead to TIM restarts, High CPU, and an unstable environment. So as a general rule, turn on logging as needed.