Overview
The new release of SAP Focused Run, 4.0 FP01, is available to Customers since the CW23 2023 and it introduces some cool features.
This blog is specific to the Advanced Analytics & Intelligence Dashboards (AAI), for additional changes refer to the following page: "what's new in FRUN 4.0 FP01"
Make sure to apply the latest version of the collective note to get the latest features and bugfixes:
Composite Note for Advanced Dashboarding & Intelligence in Focused Run 4.0 FP01
New features in OCC Dashboard
Lots of new features have been developed for the OCC Dashboard in Analytics & Intelligence for FRUN 4.0 FP01. These functionalities span from new data providers to enhanced configuration and system selections.
"Events" Data Provider
The "Events" Data Provider is available to display different KPIs related to the events generated in the Focused Run System:
- % of Green
- % of Yellow
- % of Red
- % of Grey
- Total Count
- Rating
An event is the definition of a significant change of state of a Managed Object, based on the measured value or rating of one or more contributing Metrics. An event may have one or more contributing metrics or other events as its children. Events are continuously calculated by the Focused Run via dedicated jobs which evaluate all the metrics collected by the system against their thresholds.
There are two types of events, "Simple" (a.k.a. "Summarization Events") and "Propagation".
A simple event can be, for example "User Load", based on the evaluation of metrics like "Number of concurrent Users", "Number of Dialog Users" and so on.
Propagation events, like SYSTEM_AVAILABILITY, include all the events belonging to a specific category for a managed object and all the other ones in the hierarchy.
The vast majority of the events are calculated using a "worst case" rule for the contributing metrics. If one of the metrics is rated "Red" the whole Event will be considered "Red" even if all the other metrics values are within the defined thresholds.
The Data Provider can be therefore used to display the historical trend or current status of the Managed Objects in the monitored landscape for single or and/or multiple events.
Like metrics, each event is calculated with a specific frequency (ESF). Some are calculated every minute, other ones every hour or even 24 hours. The available KPIs are calculated considering the ESF and the resolution specified in the query.
When selecting a "high frequency" event like "ABAP System Availability" (calculated every minute) and configuring a query with a time period/resolution like "Last 24 Hour / Hourly", each of the returned 24 data points will be based on the 60 events calculated within that hour. Some of those events can be rated as green, some can be rated as yellow and other ones might be red. The available "Percentage" KPIs can be used to calculate the amount of green, yellow or red events for each hourly data point.
The "Rating" KPI returns a value between 0 and 3 and is calculated using the following criteria: if there is at least one red event within the slot, the value will be 3. If there are 0 red events and at least one yellow, the overall value for the slot will be 2. The rating will be 1 if all the events in the considered slot are green and 0 if all are grey.
”System Monitoring” - “Event Metrics Drilldown” option
With the System Monitoring data provider it is possible to select both Metrics and Events.
When selecting an Event, the displayed KPI is related to the "% of Green Events" with no possibility of selecting a different one, like %Red or %Yelow (the new "Events" data provider can be used for this).
In Focused Run 4.0 FP01, a new option is available when selecting an event: "Event Metrics Drilldown".
When this option is activated, multiple time series will be displayed, one for each metric contributing to the selected event. The option will act, in short, as a filter for the selection of multiple metrics, all the ones contributing to the selected event.
This can be useful, when used in conjunction with the Events data provider, to find out the metric responsible for a red rating in a specific time slot.
”Alert Search” data provider
This new data provider replicates the functionality provided by the Alert Search page in the "Alert Management" application.
It can be used to display the list of Open, Confirmed, Postponed or In Process Alerts in a DYNAMIC_TABLE renderer:
The data provider can be configured using filters on the following dimensions:
- Category
- Priority
- Status
- Alert Name (wildcard supported)
- Worst Rating
- Alert Classification
- Additional Alert Keys
- Latest Processor
It is also possible to configure a jump in from the specific alert to the standard Alert Details View.
This can be done from the Query Editor => Properties tab, selecting the option "Alert Details" from the "Interaction" area.
“Real User Monitoring – Request Overview” data provider
The new RUM data provider can be used to display the following metrics for requests:
- Response Time
- Nb Executions
- Nb Green Executions
- Nb Yellow Executions
- Nb Red Executions
- DB Time
- Wait Time
The configuration is based on the selection of technical systems and, optionally, RUM groups created from the standard application.
Each request type can be selected individually and filtered using RUM Groups or the available optional filters:
- Request Types (RFC(s), http(s), Dialog, WS, SAPUI5, Web Dynpro, WebGUI)
- Aggregation Method (AVG, SUM)
- Group
- Drilldown Dimension (Request Name, if user Mapping maintained: Country Code, City, Department, Company)
- Country Code, City, Department, Company (only if user Mapping maintained)
- Instance (Application Server Name)
- Number of weeks for historical comparison (Value between 1 and 9) to read also the historical values of the time ranges of the same weekday.
- Max Data Point
It should be noted that some filters cannot be combined. For example, Drilldown dimension and the Number of weeks for historical comparison cannot be selected at the same time.
The “Number of weeks for historical comparison” (optional) filter returns an additional “history” time series for each metric. This additional series will display the metric average in the past n weeks considering the same day of the week.
“Job and Automation Monitoring” data provider
A new data provider has been delivered for the "Job and Automation Monitoring" use case. The old one (Job Monitoring - ABAP Only) will be deprecated in the next release as it is using the old Job Monitoring framework.
The new data provider includes the following metrics:
- Total executions
- Number of failed executions
- Number of successful executions
- Total runtime of executions
- Average runtime of executions
“Configuration & Security Analysis” additional “Date” dimension in table format
A new "Date" dimension is available for the Table View of the CSA Data Provider. The date describes the day when the compliancy was calculated
“Generic FRUN URL” Jump-in option
A new “FRUN URL” Jump-in option is available for the Query Editor in the Interaction section of the Properties Tab.
The accepted input is the ”path+query” components of a Focused Run URL.
For example:
http(s)://<frunhost>:<frunport>/sap/bc/ui5_ui5/sap/wea/index.html?sap-client=200&sap-language=EN&page=42020AEECEDD1EEDBEDF5E1B2DD42D7E
Other URLs, like “www.sap.com”, are not accepted.
This feature can be used to jump-in from the OCC Dashboard to another OCC, Tactical or Operations dashboard pages or even any other Focused Run application
OpenTelemetry Prometheus Metrics Exporter
An OpenTelemetry Prometheus metric exporter is available for SAP Focused Run starting with release 4.0 FP01.
This "pull metric exporter" can be used to report metrics by responding to Prometheus scraper requests.
Focused Run metrics can be therefore stored in the Prometheus Storage and used by external applications (like Grafana) to display metrics from several use cases (System Monitoring, Health Monitoring, Real User Monitoring, etc.).
All "time series" data providers are supported.
This approach can be used to:
- Reduce the workload on the Focused Run System (periodic scrape requests from a single Prometheus instance vs multiple concurrent requests from several users/applications)
- Store historical data
- Improve the performances of Grafana Dashboards
Metrics are exposed using the simple text-based exposition format.
Only the “Gauge” type of metric is currently supported.
Metric data are retrieved from SAP Focused Run via a dedicated HTTP API end-point:
Data Providers filters can be used in the Prometheus jobs configuration to retrieve the desired metrics.
The following call demonstrates an access to the "System Monitoring" data provider for the current two hours with 5 minutes resolution with a filter on Metric Name, Global System ID (GUID).
https://{{HOST}}:{{PORT}}/sap/frun/fi/dp/metrics?period=C2H&resolution=5min&provider=DP_SYSMON&filte...GUID,METRIC_NAMES&GUID=fa163e24-f817-1ed6-96c2-9fe1f3d76a18&METRIC_NAMES=DIALOG_RESPONSE_TIME&name=system_monitoring&method=last
It is recommended to enable the metrics aggregation for the metrics used with Prometheus and ALM Grafana Plugin.
Tactical Dashboard: hidden categories
Categories hidden in the "Category Threshold" section...
are now removed from the Table View.
Previously, all the hidden categories were displayed as grey like this:
Operation Dashboard: “Additional Alert Key” column in the List View
A new field is available in Operation Dashboard List View: "Additional Alert Keys".
Other Changes
"Scope Views" in REST Interface
A REST interface is available for Focused Run since release 3.0 FP01. This can be used to provide external access to the ALM Grafana Plugin or generic third party analytic tools for most of the SAP Focused Run metrics, specifically all the ones included in the data providers configurable with the OCC Dashboard.
When sending requests using the REST interface, users are required to pass an explicit list of technical systems/GUIDs for the data providers for which this scope selection makes sense (e.g. Configuration and Security Analysis).
This can make the configuration of queries in Grafana a bit cumbersome as it necessary to always select one or multiple systems for data providers having the Extended SID as one of the filters.
A new filter is available in this release to improve the configuration: "Scope Views".
This is based on the views that can be saved in the standard use cases like Configuration and Security Analysis.
Views can be created to save the selection of a group of systems based on different LMDB Attributes like System Type, Customer Network, IT Admin Role and so on.
Once the view is saved as public...
...it will be available as a new value for the filter "Saved Views".
Conclusions
We have presented a list of new features for the Advanced Analytics Dashboard in SAP Focused Run 4.0 FP01:
- OCC Dashboard
- ”Events” data provider
- ”Alert Search” data provider
- “Real User Monitoring – Request Overview” data provider
- “Job and Automation Monitoring” data provider
- “Configuration & Security Analysis” additional “Date” dimension in table format
- ”System Monitoring” - “Event Metrics Drilldown” option
- “Generic FRUN URL” Jump-in option
- OpenTelemetry Prometheus Metrics Exporter
- Tactica Dashboard
- Hidden categories are not displayed anymore in table format
- Operation Dashboard
- New “Additional Alert Key” column in the List View
- Other changes
- "Scope Views" in REST Interface
You can get more information on SAP Focused Run, Dashboards and Configuration following this links:
Any feedback is always welcome! Let me know what you think and feel free to leave a comment in the dedicated section.
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