What is TIBCO Hawk?
TIBCO Hawk is a tool/product used to monitor and manage various applications and systems throughout the enterprise. We can monitor all the application parameters, and the behaviour of the application through this tool. It can also load activities for all nodes in the network, for both the local and wide-area network, and take action when pre-defined conditions occur. We can also handle/repair run-time failures or slowdowns within seconds of their discovery which will reduce unscheduled outages and slowdowns of critical business systems.
This tool uses TIBCO Messaging to communicate and inherits most of its benefits, including architecture flexibility, enterprise-wide scalability, and location transparent product components whose configurations are very simple.
Components of TIBCO Hawk
TIBCO Hawk gives an extensible agent-based system which allows the monitoring and control of system and application software components. It consists of following main components:
- Hawk Display
- Hawk Console API
- Hawk WebConsole
- Hawk Agents
- Hawk Micro-Agents(HMA)
- Hawk Application Management Interface(AMI)
- Hawk Plugins
- Hawk Adapters
- Hawk Event Service
- Hawk Message Transport
Hawk Display
Hawk Display is the UI where users can monitor network health and write various monitoring policies, called rules, which automate the monitoring activities. A Rulebase is collection of one or more independent rules.
Hawk Console API
Hawk Console APIs are interfaces through which users can interact with various agents to get the information. Based on this information, users can perform various tests and actions by invoking and subscribing this information.
Hawk WebConsole
The Hawk WebConsole application is also a Hawk Console-API based application, which also enables the users to monitor various Hawk Agents, Micro-agents and other Console-API based custom applications. In other words, it’s a central view of all the distributed components interacting within the Hawk System.
Hawk Agents
A Hawk agent is an independent process that exists in each computer which monitors systems and applications on that computer. It runs independently of the TIBCO Hawk Display and uses a set of rules, called “Rulebases”. These are the rules which will help Hawk agents in configuring system management, status reports, and automation tasks.
Hawk Micro-Agents(HMA)
Hawk Micro-Agents are nothing but interfaces to manage applications and to support various methods which can be invoked to get information related to that application. This can be done by either application instrumentation using Hawk AMI API, or through a Hawk plug-in, or through a Hawk adapter. The Hawk Micro-Agent or HMA is an independent partner process to the Hawk Agent which provides numerous methods to the Hawk agent to monitor the host operating system and applications. This HMA is an application which uses the Hawk AMI application programming interface (API) for instrumentation. Hawk Micro-Agent should also be installed on each computer just like Hawk Agent, which we wish to monitor.
Hawk Application Management Interface(AMI)
Hawk Application Management Interface (AMI) is nothing but an API set which allows developers to extend and enhance instrumentation of various infrastructure components in the network by plugging into the Hawk system and making their applications manageable through the Hawk Agent.
Hawk Plugins
Hawk plug-ins are Java components which will be present and run inside the process space of a Hawk Agent. These are used to connect to a third-party application using its specific protocols and expose them as Micro-Agents to Hawk. TIBCO Hawk EMS Plug-in and Hawk JVM Plug-in will come as part of Hawk installation.
Hawk Adapters
Hawk Adapter is similar to the Hawk Plug-in in that it will also expose a third-party application as a Micro-Agent, but it runs outside the process space of the Hawk Agent. It runs as an independent process which adapts the application specific management and monitoring protocols to the Hawk System by using the Hawk AMI API.
Hawk Event Service
Hawk Event Service is a Console API-based application which records all the activities of TIBCO Hawk Agents. It logs all TIBCO Hawk system events such as agent activation and expiration, alerts, clears, and Micro-Agents and Rulebase changes. It will also make an entry of these activities to data files which can be accessed by any external applications. We can also execute a user-supplied script to notify system administrators of an expired agent through event service. During agent communication failure, the Event Service can invoke a user-provided script and the alerts and notifications can be recorded in log files or a database.
Hawk Message Transport
Hawk provides a choice of message and event communication mechanisms for inter process communications between various Hawk components. There are several message transport mechanisms used to communicate between Hawk Agents and Console-API based console application such has Hawk WebConsole or Hawk Display:
- TIBCO Rendezvous- This is the default method of message transport for Hawk. We need to install it separately.
- TIBCO DataGrid – This will come as part of the standard Hawk installation
- TIBCO Enterprise Messaging Service – We need to install it separately
