Author: Manas Tripathy

SAP Focused Run batch job monitoring overview

This blog will explain SAP Focused Run capabilities for batch job monitoring. The first part of the blog explains the functional capabilities. The second part covers the technical setup of batch job monitoring.

Batch job monitoring

Batch job monitoring in SAP Focused Run is part of Job and Automation monitoring:

After opening the start screen and selecting the scope you get the total overview:

Click on the top round red errors to zoom in to the details (you can’t drill down on the cards below):

Click on the job to zoom in:

Systems overview

Click on the system monitoring button:

On the screen, zoom out on the overview by clicking the blue Systems text top left:

Now you get the overview per system:

Batch job analysis

Batch job analysis is a powerful function. Select it in the menu:

Result screen shows 1 week data by default:

The default sorting is on total run time.

Useful sortings:

  1. Total run time: find the jobs that run long in your system in total. These most likely will also be the ones that cause high load, or business is waiting long for to finish to give results.
  2. Average run time: find the jobs that take on average long time to run. By optimizing the code or batch job variant, the run time can be improved.
  3. Failure rate: find the jobs that fail with a high %. Get the issues known and then address them.
  4. Total executions: some jobs might simply be planned too frequently. Reduce the run frequency.

By clicking on the job trend icon at the end of the line you jump to the trend function.

Job trend function

From the analysis screen or by selecting the Trend graph button you reach the job trend function:

Select the job and it will show the trend for last week:

You can see if execution went fine, or not, and bottom right see average time the job took to complete.

Technical setup of job monitoring

For batch job monitoring settings, open the configuration and start with the global settings:

Here you can see the data volume used and set the retention time for how long aggregated data is kept.

You can also set generic rating rules:

Activation per system

In the activation per system select the system and it will open the details:

First switch on the generic activation for each system

Activation for specific jobs to be monitored

Now you can start creating a job group. First select left Job groups, then the Plus button top right:

Add a job by clicking the plus button and search for the job:

Press Save to add the job to the monitoring.

Grouping logic

You can group jobs per logical block. For example you can group all basis jobs, all Finance jobs, etc. Or you can group jobs per system. Choice is up to you. Please read first the part on alerting. This might make you reconsider the grouping logic.

Adding alerting to job monitor

The jobs added to the group are monitored. But alerting is a separate action.

Go to the Alerting part of the job group. And an alert. First select the Alert type (critical status, delay, runtime, missing a job). Assign a notification variant (who will get the alert mail), and decide on alert grouping or atomic alerts.

If you do not specify a filter it will apply for the complete group. You can also apply a filter here to select a sub group of the job group.

Based on the alerting you might want to reconsider the grouping.

Monitoring Number of Long Running Jobs

In SAP Focused Run there is no standard way of monitoring number of long running jobs either in System Monitoring or in Job Monitoring

With Job Monitoring you can monitor if a specific job is running for more than specific amount of time, but we can’t monitor if there are more than a specific number of jobs that are running for more than a specific amount of time.

And in System monitoring we can only monitor if there are more than a specific number of cancelled jobs or job in status running but we can’t monitor long running jobs.

However, the Focused Run Guided Procedure Framework provides a pre-build plugin by which you can create a custom guided procedure to check the number of long running batch jobs in a managed system.

Setup of long running jobs

To access Guided Procedures App navigate to Advanced System Management area on the Focused Run launchpad and click on the System Management Guided Procedure App.

Then on the Guided Procedure app navigate to Guided Procedure Catalog page.

On the Catalog Page click on the + button to create a new custom guided procedure.

In the next pop-up screen provide a name and description. Optionally you need to select a package if you want to transport your guided procedures e.g. from DEV Focused Run system to PROD Focused Run system.

Then back in the Guided Procedure Catalog screen click on the guided procedure you just created to open it for editing.

In the guided procedure edit screen click on Edit button.

In the Properties section provide a name for the step and a description as shown below.

Then in the Step Content section click on New button to add a step.

In the next popup select the plugin ABAP Long Running Jobs and provide the threshold for time range as long running Job. You can also specify the graphic type as a table or as a bar chart. After selecting, click on Ok button to continue.

Then Save and Activate the custom guided procedure.

Now your custom guided procedure is available for execution.

Go back to Guided Procedures Instances page to execute your guided procedure. Click on the + button to start a new execution.

In the next popup, select the guided procedure you just created and then click on + button to add managed systems for scope of execution.

After selecting the managed system click on Perform Manually to create the instance of the guided procedure for the selected scope.

Then click on the instance to start the guided procedure page.

Click on Perform to execute the guided procedure.

Now you will see the result as shown below.

For more information regarding available plugins you can refer the SAP documentation here.

Relevant OSS notes

<< This blog was originally posted on SAP Focused Run Guru by Frank Umans and Manas Tripathy (Simac). Repost done with permission. >>

SAP Focused Run fine tuning of monitoring templates

This blog explains about the fine tuning of monitoring templates.

Questions that will be answered are:

  • How to update the SAP content for templates?
  • What is a good rule of thumb for the amount of templates to create and maintain?
  • Should I transport the templates or maintain them locally?
  • How to create your own template?
  • How to fine tune a single metric?
  • How to change the alerting settings of a metric?
  • How to assign the template to a system?
  • How to update the template of a system?
  • Which tools can I use to perform fine tuning of alert thresholds?
  • Can I perform a forecast based on the data?
  • Can I perform a sensitivity analysis?
  • Which installation activities are required to enable the forecast and sensitivity functions?
  • How do I define rule bassed template assignments?

SAP content updates

As a starting point you use the SAP pre-delivered content. Also the SAP content gets updated. OSS note 3275006 – Manual content update for FRUN-CONT 400 in SAP Focused Run. is keeping track of the updates. It also explains where to download the content files.

Use program RCSU_MANUAL_UPLOAD to upload the downloaded content. Then use the FIORI tile Content management to activate the new content:

And update the content or see it is already up-to-date:

Before you start fine tuning your own templates, make sure the standard SAP content is up-to-date.

Amount of templates to fine tune

In principle it is up to you to generate as much templates as needed. Initially it seems a good idea to have many different templates. The setback is that fine tuning a specific metric that is valid for all templates, you need to repeat this action. Also when you have fine tuned a template, you need to update the attached systems.

A good starting point for fine tuning is to have 2 templates to start with:

  1. Template for productive system
  2. Template for non-productive system

The template for productive system can have more metrics activated with sharper thresholds for generating alerts.

The main goal for a non-productive template can be focused on system availability only.

For productive system you want to manage all aspects of a system including performance and all content exceptions.

Local maintenance or transport

The template maintenance can be done on a productive Focused Run system directly. Or you can choose to maintain the templates on a trial/test Focused Run system, test it there, and then transport it to the productive Focused Run system. The transport is the best approach that gives the most control.

Who should fine tune a template?

This is an organisational question. If you let everybody maintain the templates and metric content of the templates, you will quickly loose control. Best to limit the amount of people to maintain the template settings. Be careful when handing out template control to a service provider. They tend to change the thresholds to very high levels, so they get less alerts. In stead of solving the alerts….

Creation of own template

Open the template maintenance Fiori tile:

Select the template you want to fine tune. In this example we will fine tune the Technical System template for ABAP 7.10 and higher:

Press the Edit button and then the button Create Custom Template:

Give the template a good name. The most descriptive text must be at the beginning.

Fine tuning the template

Case 1: include or exclude in monitoring

Goto the metrics tab:

In the system monitoring you can switch on or off metrics. Press save after each change to save your setting changes.

Case 2: fine tune data selection

In the standard SAP delivery there is an alert for Number of long running Dialog Work Processes. Goto the Expert mode (button top rights), then select the tab data collection:

Go into edit mode via the Change Settings button, and you can update the field value in parameter value for WP_MIN_RUNTIME to your needs:

This is just an example. You can fine tune a lot of metrics in this way.

Case 3: fine tune threshold and alert settings

If you want to change the thresholds, first click on the expert mode button on the top right corner. Then press the Change setting button to edit the Threshold tab settings:

In this example we changed the type from Numeric (green/red) to Numeric (green/yellow/red) and we changed the values. The modified column indicates that we have changed a metric and

that the definition is different from the standard SAP one.

On the Alerts tab you can make changes to the alert settings:

You can change the following:

  • If an alert is to be generated or not (Active means, alert is generated)
  • Severity of the alert
  • If an alert will be automatically confirmed when the system detects that the issue is solved
  • If an automatic notification will be send or not

In the last tab Managed Objects you can see there are no systems assigned yet to the newly created template:

How to fine tune an alert in practice

In our example we will look at the Dialog Response Time metric. The current threshold for red alert is set to 5000 ms (5 seconds). The alert is triggered too often. But the question to answer now: what is a good threshold to set based on the historical data?

First click the Open metric in new window icon to enlarge the screen:

The enlarged screen now opens:

As you can see 2 times the red threshold was hit. We want to fine tune now. First select the calendar icon and select last 7 days to get full week overview:

You can use the forecast button to let the system create a forecast:

The forecast will now show mean, mean low and mean high forecast:

In this specific use case the prediction is that the maximum is 3300 ms (3.3 seconds).

Now open the statistics button to see the statistics and the recommended threshold tool button:

By changing the Sensitivity slider, the system will calculate different proposal for the alert threshold. In our case when we move sensitivity to 4 the new recommended threshold value is recalculated:

In this case it is 7669 ms.

So we now have collected following facts:

  • Current threshold of 5 seconds is reached too often
  • Average forecast based on history has a mean value of 3.3 seconds
  • Performing the sensitivity analysis the threshold recommendation is about 7.7 seconds

Based on this data the red threshold is best to increase from 5 to 8 seconds to get a good alert function. It will not reach too soon, hence limiting false alerts, but it will still alert in time in case poor performance happens.

Enabling forecast and sensitivity analysis

The forecast and sensitivity analysis function use the Application Function Library (AFL) and SAP HANA Automated Predictive Library (APL). These must be installed separately. The installation details and post steps for granting permissions are described in the Focused Run master guide in the section “Predictive Analytics Setup – Metric Forecasting”.

After the installation you must activate and assign PFCG role SAP_FRN_APP_PAS_DISP to be able to see the buttons.

Assigning custom template to a system

To assign a new custom template to a system, goto the Individual maintenance Fiori tile:

Select the system and press the button Change assignment and assign the wanted new template:

Now press the button Reconfigure to effectuate the template change.

Automation of template assignments can be configured as well by using rules.

Template updates

If you have systems assigned to a template, and you have executed template changes, goto the tab Managed objects in the template maintenance screen:

Select the systems and press the Apply and Activate button. The system will apply the updated template now.

If you use transport mechanism for template updates: after transport import, you need to go to the updated templates, and still to the update assignment. This is not automatically done after the transport.

Compare templates

In the main screen of template maintenance you can select the button Compare to start the template comparison app. Select the templates to compare:

You now see the delta’s between the templates:

Creating custom metrics

Creation of custom metrics is possible to have metrics for your specific needs.

The setback of custom metric is that it needs to be created each time for each template. This is another reason to keep the amount of custom templates as low as possible.

Read all about custom metrics in this blog.

Rule Based Template Assignment

When we perform Simple System Integration (SSI) on a managed system , it automatically activates the SAP default monitoring template on the managed system. However, in most of the SAP Focused Run (FRUN) implementation scenarios, we create customer defined monitoring templates (Custom Templates), which we then manually assign/activate on the managed system.

Rule Based Template Assignment is a feature in FRUN by which we can define based on managed system category which custom monitoring template to be assigned and activated directly when we perform SSI on the managed system.

Defining Rule Based Template Assignment

For Rule Based Template Assignment navigate to the Fiori tile Individual Maintenance in the Advanced System Management section of Fiori launch-pad.

In the Individual Maintenance App navigate to the Rule Maintenance by clicking on the button as shown below.

In the Rule Rule Based Assignment Screen, on the left hand side panel, select the specific Managed Object type for which you want to define the Rule Based Template Assignment.

In this blog we take the example of defining a Rule Based Template Assignment for managed system of type SAP ABAP BASIS 7.10 and higher and specify the custom template for System Level monitoring template. So we select Technical Systems upon which the right side panel now gives a list of all product types. In the right side panel we scroll down and select SAP ABAP BASIS 7.10 and higher.

Now we need to define the Rule based on which the Custom Defined Template to be defined. In this blog we take the example that we have defined 2 custom templates one for Production Systems and one for Non Production Systems. So we will need to define rule to assign template based on filters System Type ABAP and IT Admin role defined in LMDB. For more information on this function read this blog.

In the subsequent screen select Maintain Rules.

In the Maintain Rule screen we select the following filters.

Name your Rule and Save.

Similarly you can create Rule ABAP Non production, just ensure to select the following IT Admin Roles.

Now back in the main screen select the Rule you created from the drop down.

And for Template select the custom template you want to select for the assignment.

Add the assignment.

Now click in “Continue with Next Step” button until you come to the Reconfiguration tab and then close. This will allow you to save your Rule Assignment.

Once you have assigned the ABAP Production and ABAP Non production rules in the main screen you will see the following assignments listed.

After the assignments done, the next time SSI performed on any ABAP system will take up the custom monitoring template as defined in these rules.

In Individual Maintenance system list you can also see whether current assignment is SAP default or Rule Based Template Assignment.

<< This blog was originally posted on SAP Focused Run Guru by Frank Umans and Manas Tripathy (Simac). Repost done with permission. >>

SAP Focused Run configuration and security monitoring overview

This blog will give an overview of the Configuration and Security monitoring function of SAP Focused Run.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • How does the Configuration and Security monitoring function of SAP Focused Run work?
  • How can I quickly check my security baseline against all my systems?
  • How can I quickly check the status of application of the security OSS notes?
  • Can I see a trend in configuration and security monitoring to see if improvements are happening?
  • How can I quickly determine configuration changes done in my systems?
  • How can I quickly determine Cryptolib versions across my landscape?
  • How can I quickly check disablement of webadmin page?
  • How can I quickly check if any system has HTTP port still enabled?
  • How can I monitor changes in RFC’s in ABAP systems?
  • How to use configuration validation for transport tracking?

Configuration and security monitoring goal

The goal of configuration monitoring is to compare system settings for security versus the baseline defined in Focused Run. Deviations from the baseline can be reported.

The security and configuration validation can be used for:

  • Validation of ABAP security parameters
  • Validation of JAVA security parameters
  • Validation of HANA security parameters
  • Security OSS notes
  • Diverse topics like client opening and SAP_ALL assignments
  • Age of system components
  • Cryptolib versions
  • Disablement of webadmin page
  • Check if HTTP port is enabled
  • Monitor RFC changes in ABAP systems
  • Many more

The technical explanation is perfectly explained on the SAP Focused Run expert portal.

Configuration and security monitoring policy

To view the policies for configuration monitoring click on the Fiori tile for Policy Management:

You now reach the policy maintenance overview screen:

By selecting a policy, you can display the XML definition of the policy:

In a later blog we will explain fine tuning these XML definitions.

Running a policy

With the Fiori tile Configuration monitoring analytics you can run the policy against your systems:

After opening the tile you have to set the scope of systems. Then you reach the initial screen:

Now use the Select button to select the policy you want to run. The system will run the policy against the systems selected in the scope and show you the results:

This is the overview across the systems. By clicking on a row you can zoom into that specific system:

Security baseline validation

The example above is a simple single check. You can define your own XML with your security baseline settings. The running is identical as the example above.

What you can do now as well is go to the Checks tab to see which item has the most compliance issues across all the systems:

By clicking the Systems/Checks tab you can list out all items across all systems:

Remark: the default only shows 4 columns. You have to switch to multiple columns.

For the exact setup of this function, read this blog.

Security OSS notes

On the SAP github XML files can be downloaded for security note validation. You upload the XML as a policy in the Policy Administration. You now can run this policy against your systems to follow up on the status of the security OSS notes:

The XML file delivered by SAP checks the base version of the ABAP stack. So not all notes are relevant for all releases. If a note is not relevant the items is blank. If it is green, the note has been applied. If it is red, the note is not applied.

For the exact setup of monitoring security notes, read this blog.

SAP solution manager has a similar function called System Recommendations. The setup is more complex and follow up is far more cumbersome than with Focused Run. The only advantage of SAP solution manager System Recommendations is that the security notes content gets updated automatically. With SAP Focused Run you will need to monthly download the latest XML file on the security patch day.

Determining configuration changes

Go to the Configuration and Security Analytics FIORI tile:

On the left side choose the tool to display configuration changes:

In the next screen you can see the changes per system:

In the details you can see what has been changed and when.

Search for specific configuration changes

You can also search for specific configuration changes. Open the find tool and select the change store (in this example RFC destinations):

Now you get the detailed list of changes:

The easiest overview is the table view. This allows also for Excel download.

Remark: the time frame default 1 week. If you need search different period, change the time frame selection.

Monitoring based on configuration

The configuration and validation rules can also be used to trigger monitoring.

OSS note 3197989 – How to use Configuration and Security Analytics in System Monitoring Alerting – SAP Focused RUN contains a PDF document explaining in detail the steps to perform.

Trend analysis for configuration and security analytics

Since Focused Run 3.0 feature pack 2 a new FIORI tile is present: trend analysis for configuration and security analytics:

For the policy to work, you first need to schedule it in the policy management tile. Select the policy and press the Configure button:

On the popup screen press the Edit button:

Set the scheduling frequency and save the data.

Use of the trend analysis

Opening the trend analysis tile starts with the overview screen:

You can change the timeframe of the analysis and scope with the normal icons top right.

Selecting a policy will open the trend graph below:

Below that graph are the details for the systems:

Organizational use of the trend analysis

The trend analysis can be used to quickly see for your important security policies how the situation is developing.

When strengthening the policies, you will see many non compliant systems initially. Often some sandboxes, or development systems are forgotten. The trend analytics will spot it, and you can act on it.

Age of system components

From the text below or from the github site of Focused Run you can download this policy:

COMPONENT like '%' and VERSION like '%' and SP_REL_DATE != '' and <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--
Exclude software components for which SP_REL_DATE is empty
Version: 002
Date:    July 16 2021
-->
<targetsystem xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" desc="Age of component level" id="AGE_COMP" multisql="Yes" version="0000" xsi:schemaLocation="csa_policy.xsd">
  <!-- Basic -->
  <configstore name="COMP_LEVEL">
    <checkitem desc="Age of Component Level - ABAP" id="ABAP.AGE_COMP.01" not_found="ignore" system_attributes="SYSTEM_TYPE:ABAP">
      <compliant>
      COMPONENT like '%' and VERSION like '%' and SP_REL_DATE != '' and (add_days(current_date,-730)) &lt; (CASE WHEN SP_REL_DATE like_regexpr '^\d{8,8}$' THEN SP_REL_DATE WHEN SP_REL_DATE = 'NEWER' THEN CURRENT_DATE ELSE '00000000' END)
      </compliant>
      <noncompliant>
      COMPONENT like '%' and VERSION like '%' and SP_REL_DATE != '' and not (add_days(current_date,-730)) &lt; (CASE WHEN SP_REL_DATE like_regexpr '^\d{8,8}$' THEN SP_REL_DATE WHEN SP_REL_DATE = 'NEWER' THEN CURRENT_DATE ELSE '00000000' END)
      </noncompliant>
    </checkitem>
    <checkitem desc="Age of Component Level - JAVA" id="JAVA.AGE_COMP.01" not_found="ignore" system_attributes="SYSTEM_TYPE:JAVA">
      <compliant>
      COMPONENT like '%' and VERSION like '%' and SP_REL_DATE != ''and (add_days(current_date,-730)) &lt; (CASE WHEN SP_REL_DATE like_regexpr '^\d{8,8}$' THEN SP_REL_DATE WHEN SP_REL_DATE = 'NEWER' THEN CURRENT_DATE ELSE '00000000' END)
      </compliant>
      <noncompliant>
      COMPONENT like '%' and VERSION like '%' and SP_REL_DATE != '' and not (add_days(current_date,-730)) &lt; (CASE WHEN SP_REL_DATE like_regexpr '^\d{8,8}$' THEN SP_REL_DATE WHEN SP_REL_DATE = 'NEWER' THEN CURRENT_DATE ELSE '00000000' END)
      </noncompliant>
    </checkitem>
  </configstore>
</targetsystem>

Use this to set up a new policy called AGE_COMP:

By default the rule is taking 730 days. You can adjust the value as per your needs.

Now you can run the query to get an easy overview across the systems:

Don’t be afraid if you have high number in the beginning; most of the cases this is due to HR components being outdated.

Use configuration analytics to determine Cryptolib versions across your landscape

SAP Cryptolib is use for diverse security scenarios. In many cases it is simply installed and never updated. We will explain how to use the configuration validation tool to quickly list all Cryptolib versions across your landscape.

Open the configuration and security validation FIORI tile:

Top left choose the searching for configuration items icon:

The search screen opens:

Now select the CRYPTOLIB store:

Now press the find button in the Find in configuration data field:

Results show:

Remark: the result is depending on your scope selected. Use the scope selection button to change the scope.

This method can be used for many different use-case as well!

Configuration validation to check for disablement of webadmin page

OSS note 2258786 – Potential information disclosure relating to SAP Web Administration Interface is describing the issue that the web administration interface is publicly available if you didn’t configure your system correctly. More background can be found in this blog. This item is misconfigured on a lot of systems. It is present in ABAP, JAVA and web dispatcher.

If you start to fix this item, you want to keep track of the progress, and also in the future you want to check if the setting is done correctly for new systems and after updates, upgrades, etc.

Setting up the configuration validation rule

Create a new policy with the following syntax for ABAP:

<configstore name="ABAP_INSTANCE_PAHI">
<checkitem desc="icm/HTTP/admin_0" id="ICM_HTTP_ADMIN">
  <compliant>NAME = 'icm/HTTP/admin_0' and VALUE  like '%ALLOWPUB=FALSE%' </compliant>
  <complianttext/>
  <noncompliant>NAME = 'icm/HTTP/admin_0' and not ( VALUE like '%ALLOWPUB=FALSE%' ) </noncompliant>
  <noncomplianttext/>
</checkitem>
</configstore>

For JAVA and webdispatcher:

<configstore name="DEFAULT.PFL">
<checkitem desc="icm/HTTP/admin_0" id="ICM_HTTP_ADMIN">
      <compliant>TEXT like '%admin_0%' and TEXT  like '%ALLOWPUB=FALSE%' </compliant>
      <complianttext/>
      <noncompliant>TEXT like '%admin_0%' and not ( TEXT like '%ALLOWPUB=FALSE%' ) </noncompliant>
      <noncomplianttext/>
</checkitem>
</configstore>

The rule says: if the subparameter ALLOWPUB is defined with value FALSE it is ok. In all other cases it is not ok.

Now you can run the rule and check if your systems are compliant:

Setting up security and configuration validation rule to check if HTTP port is active

Security & configuration validation can be used to check if on any ABAP stack the HTTP port is activated. Depending on your security concept this might be forbidden (only HTTPs is allowed). Checking across all systems is a cumbersome job. Here the security and configuration check function of SAP Focused Run can help.

Create a new policy with the following syntax:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<targetsystem xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" desc="Checks whether only HTTPS is active in SMICM" id="SMICM_HTTPSONLY" multisql="Yes" version="0000" xsi:schemaLocation="csa_policy.xsd">
  <configstore name="ABAP_INSTANCE_PAHI">
    <checkitem desc="item description" id="1.0.0.0">
      <compliant>NAME like 'icm/server_port_%' and NOT (VALUE like '%HTTP,%' ) </compliant>
      <complianttext/>
      <noncompliant>NAME like 'icm/server_port_%' and VALUE like '%HTTP,%'   </noncompliant>
      <noncomplianttext/>
    </checkitem>
  </configstore>
</targetsystem>

Basically the rule says: no http found is ok and any http found is not ok.

Run the check will give you all systems in red where HTTP is active and green if only HTTPs is active, or nothing is active:

Monitoring changes in RFCs in ABAP systems

With SAP Focused Run 3.0 FP 2, its now possible to monitor changes in RFCs in SAP ABAP Systems.

In SAP Focused Run 3.0 FP 2, you can activate alerting and notification for any changes to the content of a CCDB config store. Using this functionality we can activate alerting and notification on the CCDB store that contains information about RFCs.

First we need to identify which CCDB store keeps the information on RFCs. For this you need to click on Configuration & Security Analytics – Administration app in the Advanced Configuration Monitoring section of SAP Focused Run Launchpad.

In the app select any of the SAP ABAP systems. Upon selecting a system you will see the list of available CCDB stores for the system.

Now you can filter on Description for text “RFC” to see RFC related CCDB stores.

You will see the following CCDB Stores. To monitor changes to RFCs either you can use the generic CCDB store to monitor on all type of RFCs or you can use the specific RFC type CCDB store. In this example we will use the RFC destinations type ‘3’ CCDB store.

Next you need to go to the main Configuration and Security Analytics app.

In the app, in the navigation area click on Related Links.

Select Configuration Validation Alert Management.

In the alert management app, click on create button.

Enter Alert ID, Description and then select the Alert Source as Store content change.

Click on Select a Config Store

In the next pop-up to select the store, filter on description “RFC”.

Then from the list select the specific RFC CDDB store you want to report on and then click on close.

Then back in Alert creation screen, you can select the scope as ALL or for specific system. In this example we selected a specific managed system.

You can set the frequency between Hourly, Daily or Weekly.

Then, set the Severity and click on Active button and then save.

Upon activation it will start monitoring is there are any change is performed to the specific RFC store. Changes include Creation/Deletion/Update.

Upon any change detected an alert will be generated of the below format. This alert will be visible in the Alert Inbox.

Automatic email for Security Validation of SAP Systems

You can also setup Automatic eMail for Security Validation of SAP Systems. For this you need a guided procedure that can run a security validation policy instead of running the system health check.

Follow the following steps to create the guided procedure that can automatically execute the policy check on your SAP systems.

Creating Guided Procedure for Configuration and Security Analytics

For creating the guided procedure navigate to the Guided Procedures app in the Focused Run launch pad.

In the Guided Procedures app navigate to the Catalog page and click on the + sign to create a new Guided Procedure.

In the pop-up provide a name and description for the guided procedure and click on Create.

Back in the catalog page, click on the newly created guided procedure name to open it in edit mode.

The guided procedure will now open in a new tab in the browser. Click on the edit button to start editing the guided procedure.

Now you need to add a automatic step to the guided procedure that will execute the security validation policy. For this, in the Step Details section, enter a step name and description.

Navigate to Step Content block. In the Automatic Activities tab and click on New.

In the pop-up, select the option “Select a Plugin” and select the plugin Configuration & Security Analytics:

After selecting the plugin, expand the attribute section and provide the CSA policy name and click on OK.

Back in the main screen save and activate the Guided procedure.

Now you can use this guided procedure to schedule an automatic execution to send an email report. You can do it in a similar fashion to sending email for System Health check report as explained here.

For more details on what all you can do with guided procedures, refer to the SAP Focused Run Expert Portal.

Transport tracking using SAP Focused Run configuration validation

For an SAP Application Management team in any IT landscape , doing a timewise tracking of transport movement across SAP System Landscapes is a very important monitoring requirement.

In this blog I’ll explain how you can do transport tracking, using Configuration Validation Trend Analysis application. With this you can track how many transports got imported verses how many got failed.

SAP provides a standard configuration validation policy called SAP_FAILED_TRANSPOTS that collects last 7 days data from config store ABAP_TRANSPORTS of SAP ABAP managed systems. SAP uses this policy result for the system monitoring metric for failed transport.

To be able to see a day wise trend for transports you will have to first copy this standard policy to a custom policy and change the time period of compliance rule in the policy from last seven days to last 1 day.

For this first you navigate to Policy Management app in Advanced Configuration Monitoring area in SAP Focused Run Launchpad.

In the Policy Management App select the policy SAP_FAILED_TRANSPORTS and copy.

Provide a custom policy name and description and copy.

Now you will be back in the main screen, click on the custom policy name you just created.

In the policy editor screen click on Edit button to start editing your policy.

In the compliance rule change the hour value in CURRENT_UTCTIMESTAMP,-3600*168 from 168 to 24 CURRENT_UTCTIMESTAMP,-3600*24

Save the policy by clicking on Save button.

Now generate the policy by clicking on Generate button.

Now you can validate if the policy is working fine by clicking on the Validate button.

If no error is there, in a new window you will see the validation results as shown below.

Now your custom policy is ready, but before you can use this policy for Trend Analysis you need to activate periodic data collection for this policy. For this navigate back to the main screen of Policy Management app.

In the main screen select the custom policy and click on Configure.

In the next pop-up window click on Edit button to continue.

You can now set the Validation run interval to Hourly or Daily and then save and exit.

After you schedule the validation wait for at least one week to see the data in the trend analysis app. Data will be available only from the time you activated the validation run schedule.

Now you can run Trend Analysis on this custom policy to do transport tracking. For this navigate to the Configuration & Security Analytics Trend Analysis App in the Advanced Configuration Monitoring area of Focused Run launchpad.

In the home screen app you will see the trend overview of the policies which are scheduled for validation run and for which data is available.

To do transport tracking on the custom policy you created and scheduled for validation, first select the managed system for which you want to do tracking in the scope selection.

After selecting scope, select the policy and in the the Key Figure dropdown select All items to see Number of transports imported to the managed system. If you select key figure Non Compliant it will show you the numbers for failed imports.

If you scroll down, you can also find details of each transport that were imported in the managed system in the specific time frame shown in the graph.

<< This blog was originally posted on SAP Focused Run Guru by Frank Umans and Manas Tripathy (SIMAC). Repost done with permission. >>