Functional Overview - e IBM Tivoli Composite - IBM

The DataLoad Module
Chapter 1: The Netcool/Proviso Product Suite
This section provides an overview of the DataLoad module, and explains in general terms how to configure it to
collect network data.
Netcool/Proviso DataLoad collects network data from the following two sources:
• An SNMP collector that collects data using SNMP polling.
• A Bulk Collector that imports data files from different sources such as flat files from device providers or files
generated by other SNMP collectors.
Configuration Tasks
The following sections outline various configuration tasks that should be performed on the DataLoad module.
DataLoad and SNMP
The SNMP collector provides raw data files to the Data Channel for processing by the Complex Metric Engine
(CME) before being inserted into the database.
To configure DataLoad on SNMP, you would perform the following tasks:
1. Create and run an inventory.
An inventory does the following:
— Discovers and import resources in your network
— Synchronizes new data for your profile with existing data
— Runs automatic grouping
2. Define the data collection request to collect and store data for network resources using SNMP formulas.
For more information on configuring DataLoad on SNMP, see the Netcool/Proviso DataMart Configuration Guide.
DataLoad and the Bulk Collector
The Bulk Collector provides non-SNMP based metric collection, such as the following:
• Device files (for example, CBX500, Unisphere, Cisco, and Redback)
• Management station files (for example, Alcatel 5620 and HP OpenView)
• Flow information files (for example, Cisco NetFlow and Juniper Network CFlow)
• Customer relationship management (CRM) information files (for example, Remedy)
The Bulk Collector creates both data files and resource files. The data files go through processing by the CME
and then get inserted into the Netcool/Proviso database.
The resource files are sent to the DataMart and are processed by the inventory server.
The process works like this:
• Data files are transferred to the Data Channel by the File Transfer Engine (FTE).
Resource files are “pushed” to DataMart by an internal FTP process and are sent to a directory on the
DataMart machine. An inventory server then polls the directory for new files and performs an inventory if
new files are detected.
Netcool/Proviso Functional Overview, Version 4.3.1 3