IBM DataPower Operations Dashboard v1.0.16.0

A newer version of this product documentation is available.

You are viewing an older version. View latest at IBM DPOD Documentation.

Technology FAQ

Where does DPOD store its data?

DPOD stores all of its data in a Big Data store, providing blazing fast search, chart and report capabilities. It’s so fast, you’ll find that you don’t have to worry about how much data you store. A typical query on 1TB log data will return results in just under a second.

How long does DPOD store transaction and monitoring data for?

It depends on your available storage, as well as the number of appliances and services you wish to monitor. Once you allocate DPOD a specific amount of disk-space, it will optimize its usage according to the message types: business transactions will be saved the longest, for years if you have the space, and more volatile messages may be deleted after a few days. DPOD can easily handle terabytes of data, so just give it as much space as you can.

How long after the transaction occurs will I see it in DPOD?

DPOD will show you a near real-time view of transactions running through your DataPower machines. Transactions are normally viewable in DPOD's UI within seconds.

How does DataPower send monitoring data to DPOD?

DataPower sends information to DPOD via Syslog messages and SOAP messages (when enabling W-SM). DPOD also uses SOMA requests to collect sample data such as resource utilization and sensor information. You do not have to set anything up – DPOD will configure everything for you (See the topic about setting up your DataPower Gateways).

Can DPOD handle large production loads?

Yes. As long as you ensure your hardware meets the necessary requirements -DPOD will take care of the rest. We have not found a limit to DPOD’s processing capabilities yet.

How does DPOD scale?

DPOD was built to scale to infinity. Its core is made up of proven distributed cloud technologies.

DPOD can scale both horizontally - by improving existing hardware, and vertically -by adding more DPOD nodes to your network.

You can add DPOD nodes to your setup at any time, with a minimal configuration hassle.

Does DPOD require any changes to my existing code or infrastructure?

No. DPOD's data collection is mostly non-intrusive for a service level and asynchronous. It requires no significant changes to existing architecture or integration code.

The only service level intrusive feature is the optional Extended transaction feature that adds a new Transformation Action to the end of each rule of a Processing Policy. This Transformation Action injects a correlation id to the message and writes one syslog message.

There some to Objects of connected Gateways at Device /Domain level  such creating log targets, create Host Alias and enable statistics. 


Does DPOD have a significant impact on service performance?

No. Since DPOD uses existing DataPower capabilities, a performance hit of no more than 5% is expected under normal operations. However, enabling message payload recording will likely incur significant resource consumption. Therefore, message payload recording can only be enabled for a limited time period.

Does sending logs to DPOD incur significant network overhead?

Generally, no. If only syslog logs are collected, network overhead is usually negligible. However, if message payload recording has been enabled, network overheads grow, depending on payload size and throughput.

IBM DataPower Operations Dashboard (DPOD) v1.0.16.0