Sentra for Payments & System Platform Monitoring

Sentra (Service ENgineering, TRacking and Accounting) is a client-server software application for centralised management of multi-vendor, converged infrastructure and multi-platform payment, transaction and messaging systems. It provides extensive benefits that enable optimal availability, functionality and performance of messaging service provision.

Sentra achieves this by providing centralised alerting, escalation, intervention, tracking and reporting tools from a single console view. Furthermore, Sentra collects data from many sources (payment logs, system components, application events, log files) and interprets them in terms of how they affect overall service provision. Real-time views mean that service levels can be proactively maintained. Historical data mining and reporting capability enables efficient resource allocation and capacity planning.

The precise nature of the deployment of Sentra is variable from one customer to another, but most will utilise a combination of the following features :

• Choice of Win32 GUI and Web browser consoles.
  
   
• Centralised, rules-based system, payment platform, application and service level monitoring.
  
   
• Automated alerting to service threats (payment platform, system and application) and SLA violations through e-mail, SMS, SNMP trap, script files, batch files.
  
   
• Intelligent escalation of alerts to TIVOLI™, HP Operations Center™ (formerly OpenView™), HP ServiceDesk™, BMC Performance Manager™ (formerly Patrol™) and Reflex, e.g. payment switch / interchange reduced transaction traffic.
  
   
• Automated problem resolution, e.g. restarting of failed applications and processes.
  
   
• Platform and application availability monitoring, e.g. payment switches, transaction throughput.
  
   
• Monitoring of the availability and response of key internet services, such as HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP4.
  
   
• XML monitoring including UNIFI payment formats - http://www.iso20022.org
  
   
• HP NonStop monitoring of the Event Management Subsystem (EMS) with complete dynamic filtering of events from any configured collector(s).
  
   
• BASE24 and BASE24-eps™ (using ACI's EE-SE415 product) and BASE24™ POS, ATM and Interchange monitoring of both TLF and PTLF transaction log files. See also RTLX Reactor for HP NonStop EMS, payment and transaction monitoring of ATM and POS (TLF and PTLF) transaction log files and RTLX FAQs in right-hand margin.
  
   
• Simplified Service Level Agreement (SLA) management.
  
   
• Graphical, End-to-End message tracking.
  
   
• Monitoring of a wide variety of e-mail messaging systems and gateways such as MS Exchange 5.5/2000/2003, SendMail, Isode, Nexor, Critical Path, NetTel (Clearswift), Infonet, ISOCOR and OSI/MHS. Both X400 and SMTP e-mail protocols are supported.
  
   
• Full auditing of mailbox activity - Indentify when mail is read, forwarded, deleted and moved. Monitor when delegate users and unauthorised users access a mailbox.  Ideal for high security messaging environments.
  
   
• Queue Monitoring, Management and Control - Monitor the size and activity of a queue, delete messages and force non-delivery reports.
  
   
• Monitoring of middleware systems such as IBM WebSphere MQ (formerly known as MQ Series).
  
   
• Mailbox auditing on Exchange 2003, including read/moved/deleted status of a message.
  
   
• Mail traffic pattern assessment. 
  
   
• Capacity planning.
  
   
• Reporting on transaction, payment and messaging issues.
  
   
• Billing or usage analysis.
  
   
• Operator initiated tasks to perform manual problem resolution and to launch other diagnostic applications, all from a single, central console.
  
   
• SNMP IN for monitoring of network components e.g. Routers. 
   
   
   
• Security and Intrusion Monitoring.
   

Increased depth of monitoring and intelligent data handling means that relevant data is readily available in either real-time or historical formats. More informed decision-making is therefore possible, improving the ability to respond to problems and to plan effectively for the future. A full implementation of Sentra means that previously labour-intensive tasks can be automated and centralised. This improves resource utilization and reduces total cost of ownership (TCO).

Reporting :

Sentra  allows  the  production  of  reports  and  management  information  in  two  ways.  Message traffic analysis can be performed as an extension of the built-in general query tool. Substantially increased reporting flexibility is also provided by the capability to launch Microsoft Reporting Services within Sentra.

Message Traffic Analysis

Message traffic reports can be generated using the graphical and textual reporting facilities of the general query tool. This can be used for monitoring and analysing message traffic and trends. An example could be analysing messages routed across different mail servers within a specified period of time. The (General) Sentra Query function provides graphical and textual reporting facilities, which can be used to generate reports based upon data contained in the database. The following are general features applicable to all queries :

• Queries can be generated between a start and end time.
   
• Trend queries possible, e.g. totals displayed hourly, daily, weekly, to be specified via a time window.
   
• Results displayed in numerous 2D and 3D graph formats.
   
• Reports  can  be  saved  as  csv  (comma  separated  field)  files  and  can  be  easily exported to an Excel (or similar) spreadsheet.
   
• Sentra allows you to E-mail the results of a query, both textual and graphical, to one or more recipients.

Reporting Capability

Sentra  comes  with  a  number  of  predefined  management  reports  based  on  both  the industry-standard Microsoft Reporting Services package. These reports allow the Sentra data to be displayed as meaningful management information. SLA analysis, capacity planning chargeback and billing are just some of the many uses that can be made of this.

User-defined reports can be written and then launched from the Sentra GUI. This enables users to write reports based on virtually any data captured by the Sentra server. Furthermore, automatic scheduling along with publishing capabilities allow the reporting process to be automated, e.g. monthly SLA reports can be published on an intranet web site or e-mailed to a business manager without any need for user intervention. Example reports include :

• Messaging Service Availability
   
• Mail Server Availability
   
• Mail Server Traffic Analysis
   
• Mail Server Queue Analysis
   
• Non-Delivery Reports
   
• System Availability
   
• Web Availability
   
• Alert Detail Per Server
   
• Alerts Per Subsytem
   
• Directory Replication
   
• Disk Space Per Server
   

Self-Refreshing Charts

These  are  graphs  which  are  automatically  updated  periodically,  to  provide  near  real-time information in the form of bar graphs and/or trends of any data captured by Sentra, e.g. CPU usage, daily messaging system throughput, transaction approval/denial rates and volumes. The graphs can be configured to support drilldown, e.g. so that a user can highlight a bar in a bar graph and zoom into a more detailed breakdown message system traffic or CPU usage by process.

Summary of Reporting Component

• Provides  single  point  of  data  and  reporting  capability  across  entire  messaging system.
   
• SLA measurement, messaging statistics, capacity planning data reporting.
   
• Automatic scheduling of reports.
   
• Web publishing.
   
• Configurable Real-time dashboard displays, available from a web console.
   

Timely  and  accurate  report  production  facilitates  appropriate  use  of  resources  along  with effective capacity planning. This leads to significant efficiency savings as system resource can be more efficiently employed.

Sentra Business Activity Monitor (BAM)

Capturing and consolidating the essence of business processes is crucial, especially when these may be distributed across a range of applications as is typical of SOA-based solutions. 

The Sentra BAM allows users to condense complex processes into a single comprehensive operational dashboard. 

The BAM allows business users to define and extract crucial data which is then used to visualise the end-to-end payment process and alert users of exception conditions such as processing bottlenecks and problem payments.

Key features include :

• Monitoring facilities from both the business and technical viewpoint
  
   
• Early detection and resolution of processing bottlenecks
  
   
• Configuration and generation of alerts for user-defined exception conditions
  
   
• Automated alert escalation and delivery via multiple channels (e.g. SMS, SNMP, e-mail)
  
   
• Ability to monitor multiple data sources (e.g. IBM WebSphere MQ Series queues, Oracle views, JMX queues) via dedicated agents
  
   
• Support for drill down to specific problem area to support resolution
  
   
• Easy extension to provide enterprise-wide monitoring
  
   
• Integration with other system management packages such as Tivoli™ and HP Operations Center™
   

"Insider Technologies have partnered with Logica to provide a fully integrated business activity monitoring (BAM) solution for the Logica All Payments Solution (LAPS) product. This was developed by tailoring the Sentra product to provide seamless integration with LAPS."

The figure below shows an example monitor screen covering a Logica LAPS enterprise deployment. 

Sentra for SI's SWIFT and TELEX Automated Routing product - STAR

Based on the proven and successful Sentra architecture, this module lets you probe and analyse the real-time flow of business and performance data generated by the Software Integrator's STAR application.

The demonstration (see Demo tab) shows STAR service diagrams, charts, management reports and alerts executing against four separate SI data feeds.

• XML format data generated by the STAR Text Checker module. This file contains information about queues and their depths and is organised by country and Message Type (MT).   
   
• HP NonStop EMS event log file data generated by the STAR application.   
   
• Payment flow information.  
   
• Sanctions filtering data.  
   

Software Integrators designs and develops integrated message and payment solutions for banks and other financial institutions, with major clients in Europe, the USA and South Africa.

Software Integrators primary platform is the HP NonStop server and two of their key products are COPE (Complete On-line Payments Environment) and STAR (SWIFT and TELEX Automated Routing).

www.software-integrators.co.uk

For more information about Sentra for STAR monitoring, click here.

PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliance is provided by the native facilities of the Microsoft SQL Server product (Master key, Certificates, Symmetric key, EncryptByKey, DecryptByKey using AES_256, Triple DES etc.) which is the database manager for the Sentra and RTLX environments as well as encryption (including column level encryption), masking and/or blanking of field values by Sentra, e.g. PAN numbers.

Data can be encrypted and compressed if required, as it is relayed from the HP NonStop platform.

The real-time POS visuals and data presented to the user are based on the authorisation level of that user as set-up in Sentra. Further modifications can be automatically applied to data stored in the SQL database such as X’ing out (or blanking out) card numbers, e.g. XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-2207.

Sentra includes a multi-tier security model for users whereby groups are configured to access one or more functions within the product and then users are allocated to one or more Sentra groups. So for example, a user might only gain access to the MI reports group or the POS querying group or both. If they are allocated to a group, they may still be restricted from using certain functions such as restricted query access on the POS querying screen.

Though users may gain a secured level of access to the Sentra product, they of course will not be able to access the MS SQL database directly.

In order for ITL to install Sentra at one of the UK’s largest banks, strict security directives needed to be adhered to and a separate document relating to security considerations is part of the Sentra product evaluation delivery.

Sentra for HP NonStop Tandem Monitoring

The Sentra product can deploy a comprehensive EMS lean extraction client to the HP NonStop platform(s) for the relay of dynamically filtered event messages to a nominated Windows server. 

This relay of events can be used to monitor HP NonStop Guardian, Open System Services (OSS) and application EMS events, e.g. Pathway, WebSphere MQ, Aleri Atlas, COPE and STAR, XPNET and BASE24™.

Relayed EMS events are stored in a Microsoft SQL database and can be used to drive graphical, web-based hypervisors and near real-time dashboard charts, e.g. failed event totals received for XPNET stations, processes, lines, links.

Simple or compound rules can be constructed to spot vulnerable or failing subsystems on the HP NonStop platform or compromised areas of a live application, e.g. VISA interchange process down.

The software allows for 2 levels of event filtering. Two EMS collectors can be attached and a single event filter object (a second filter table also exists for tighter control of incoming events). A timestamp can be configured for re-start purposes in the event of failure. This can also be used to go back in time.

A comprehensive EMS event query screen exists in the Sentra Web client. This can be used to query on all mandatory EMS event tokens (wildcards are also allowed) currently held in the Sentra database. Commonly used queries can be saved for later access and results can be output to a CSV file for importing into a spreadsheet.

Microsoft SQL Reporting Services are securely integrated into the Sentra Web client to enable timely management reports to be constructed for EMS event ranges whether by event number, SSID or any other mandatory token. These EMS reports can be manually or automatically relayed to configured email addresses.

Customer specific tailored EMS tokens can be integrated following a short software development.

For more information about Sentra for HP NonStop EMS monitoring, click here. For more information about using Sentra for general HP NonStop health monitoring (Servernet, Integrity, Itanium, Blade), click here.

Sentra MQ provides a collaborative, team-based approach to infrastructure management: middleware specialists, database administrators and applications developers can each be provided with tailored views of their respective areas of interest, and can work together to resolve issues and maximize business process performance. Complete life-cycle management that speeds up development and deployment of your integration and implementation.

• IBM MQ WebSphere (MQ Series) monitoring and management for version 6 and version 7 and also HP NonStop WebSphere MQ version 5 and 5.3 (5.3.1.4). 
   
• View real-time information on your WebSphere MQ Workflow processes with Sentra Hypervisor. 
   
• Granular control - Provides the ability to drill down into the application and messaging layers to determine cause and problem resolution issues.
   
• Gives you the information you need to optimize process performance. Evaluate productivity of key business processes trends against your benchmarks.
   
• Sentra Dashboard enables you to see real-time performance and availability information from your desired vantage points - from the top level to the underlying causes.
   
• The highly configurable nature of Sentra enables you to respond rapidly to changing business requirements and market conditions. A management and monitoring strategy for new business services can be developed rapidly.
   
• Create custom views and dashboards based on user roles, such as Line-of-Business Managers, Integration Specialists and Technology Administrators, to deliver the information they require.
   
• Certified integration with enterprise management tools such as Tivoli and HP OpenView; easily integrate into other systems management frameworks.
   
• Historical reporting and analysis tools help you identify short-term trends to avoid problems and also perform long-term capacity planning.
   
• Set customized alerts based on business conditions; real-time notification via dashboard, email, pager or mobile phone.
   
• Easy to install and deploy for both development and production environments.
   
• Gives the most extensive support for transaction-centric applications by monitoring transactions that are both message-based and non-message based. 
   

For more information about Sentra for WebSphere MQ monitoring, click here.

Sentra for XML message monitoring

An optimised and comprehensive Sentra XML agent can be configured to parse any XML data feed into a hierarchical structure of SQL tables and fields. This makes the information much easier to process and report on, whilst maintaining the relationships between the XML elements.

SQL tables are automatically created based on the XSD data structure and the required field elements for monitoring. This approach enables more efficient, rationalised data storage.

The Sentra XML agent can be configured by specifying an XSD schema for import or (where a schema is not available) by loading examples of the XML structure to be captured. Once loaded, an XML topology structure view is displayed where individual field elements can be configured for near real-time charts and/or used as input to the Sentra rules engine.

The agent can collect XML data from files, WebSphere MQ queues or from TCP/IP socket-based messages sent directly to it.

XML agents can be configured to monitor any ISO20022-compatible payment or transaction.

A series of these XML agents can be deployed to key monitoring points (waypoints) within a payment processing infrastructure to monitor transaction volumes and trends, payment volumes and trends and end-to-end processing times.

Rules can be configured to monitor service level compliance and abnormal processing volumes.

To monitor BASE24-eps transaction metrics, configure an XML feed using the ACI Real-Time Feed Interface (more specifically the Online Extract Interface - product code EE-SE415) that enables XML feeds against the EPS Journal Log files.

For more information about Sentra for XML monitoring, click here.

Sentra for SafeSign (SSAS)

The Sentra for SafeSign module will allow users to create a centralised database of performance data from one or more e-Security SafeSign Authentication Server or cryptographic environments and analyse the information in real time.

Using standard SQL reporting tools, such as Microsoft SQL Reporting Services™, an analysis of the performance data will provide a set of Service Management facilities and Management Information views. These will be displayed as a collection of web views that represent the environments being monitored and show real-time performance information, service level alerts with graphs representing the behaviour of nominated metrics, and management reports to monitor the Business objectives of the SafeSign Authentication Server service.

The Sentra for SafeSign module can :

• Read the contents of any e-Security SSAS log
   
• Read log file and table information directly from the SSAS SQL Database
   
• Read JMX performance counters and attributes from the Daemon process
   
• Read hardware performance data, subsystem performance data such as SQL performance metrics, and event log information
   
• Poll the cryptographic, HSM devices at a user defined interval and retrieve performance data relating to device memory status and certificate storage 
   
• Display web view analysis of the environments being monitored and show real-time performance information.
  

The Benefits of Implementing the Sentra for SafeSign module :  

• Single Point of Contact for Monitoring & Alerting 
   
• Restricted Access to Sentra Functions
   
• Simple Access to Disparate Data
   
• Real Time Alerting to Potential Issues
   
• Automated Issue Resolution
   
• No Access to Sensitive Information
   
• Minimal processing overhead on the SafeSign Authentication Server e-security environment

For more information about Sentra for Cryptographic Environment monitoring, click here.

For Sentra and RTLX / TIVOLI integration, 2 solutions exist currently :

Windows log file approach:

With this, TIVOLI can be configured to monitor a Windows log file. This log file is set-up and written to by Sentra in a defined record format anytime a configured Sentra rule is broken.

The log file resides on a Windows platform (typically the same Windows server as Sentra). The defined format for each record written to the log file has already been imported into Tivoli (by Tivoli administrators using Tivoli BAROC files) prior to start-up. This is done so that Tivoli is aware of the Sentra log file message/record format before it starts to monitor the log file.

Sentra can be configured to monitor either the Unix syslog or Windows event log for all events. Any event can then be used to invoke a Sentra rule which will alert to Tivoli in this manner.

Command line tool (HP Service Desk):

If a command line tool exists on-site for writing events to TIVOLI, Sentra can make use of this command line executable or Macro to escalate events by stringing the appropriate parameters to it and then executing it. ITL used this approach to alert to HP Service Desk currently. This approach is also used by ITL’s Reflex product to alert to BMC Performance Manager.

In both cases above, Sentra sits on a Windows server and deploys agents to monitored platforms (Unix, Linux, HP NonStop, Windows) to monitor the Syslog or event log. All escalation is then carried out by Sentra on the Windows server.

A complete list of monitoring agents provided by Sentra can be found at this link.

Click here for Sentra sample screenshots.

Minimum Windows Hardware Requirements

For optimum performance, it is recommended that the minimum specification of your hardware and software is as follows :

• Windows Server 2000 / 2003 / 2008 with the latest service packs
  
   
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 / 2008 with the latest service packs
  
   
• Either; Tomcat, IBM WebSphere,  JBoss (formerly BEA WebLogic) web application servers (ask ITL about MS Internet Information Services- IIS) - also requires Java SE version 6+ (1.6)
  
   
• Browsers; Internet Explorer (IE) ver. 7+, Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox
  
   
• Intel Mid to High-End, Multi Core processor 
  
   
• 16+ GB RAM recommended
  
   
• SCSI interface (SCSI2 Ultra-Wide recommended)
  
   
• 10 GB Single Drive for operating system and SQL Server software
  
   
• *40 GB Single Drive for the SQL server database (RAID 0+1 recommended)
  
   
• 20 GB Single Drive for the SQL server log file (RAID 0+1 recommended)
  
   
• Graphics resolution 1024 x 768 recommended
  
   
• 17" or larger colour monitor is also recommended 

The above specification is for guidance only. The specification of your Windows server will be dependent on your individual needs. Please contact the Insider Technologies Helpdesk for assistance in establishing the specification of your server.

SQL Server Versions Supported by Sentra (also install Microsoft SQL Reporting Services)

The Sentra database is compatible with the following variants of SQL Server :

• 2005 / 2008 Standard Edition
  
   
• 2005 / 2008 Enterprise Edition
  
   
• 2005 / 2008 Developer Edition*
  
   
• 2005 / 2008 Express – the default installation on the CD uses SQL Express with Advanced services, so that SQL Reporting Services is available
  
   

* Some SQL editions include a concurrent workload governor. Performance degrades when more than five queries are executed concurrently. Sentra will work with these versions of SQL Server but performance may be unacceptably slow and its installation is not recommended for high volume usage.

SQL Express editions support databases with a limited maximum size (4Gb for SQL Express 2005). Users who anticipate large database storage requirements should consider installing the Enterprise edition of Microsoft SQL Server, or contact Insider Technologies for advice.

The Sentra product is now "Works With Windows 2008" accredited.

The "Works With Windows Server 2008 R2" MS program is intended to help developers and customers ensure that applications meet the baseline technical bar for compatibility with Windows Server 2008.

The application was tested on Windows 2008 R2 and found to function correctly after extensive testing.

Conduct tests on both x64 Windows Server 2008 and x64 Vista Ultimate or Enterprise edition operating systems

To ensure compatibility, a server application as well as all its client components must meet Works with Windows Server 2008 requirements. 

To maintain consistency in testing and validation, all Works with Windows Server 2008 testing is conducted on:

        - x64 Windows Server 2008

        - x64 Windows Vista Ultimate or Enterprise edition 

Support 64-Bit version of Windows running on multiple processors

Applications must support x64 versions of Windows Server 2008 and all testing must be conducted on a 64bit version of Windows Server 2008.

To maintain compatibility with 64-bit versions of Windows, it is necessary that:

• Applications install and run properly on at least a dual-core system.
   
• Applications and their installers must not contain any 16-bit code or rely on any 16-bit component, since 16-bit code will not run on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
   
• All drivers and executables must be signed to install on a 64-bit Windows OS.
   
• If an application is dependent on kernel-mode drivers for operation, 64-bit versions of these drivers must be available.  The application setup must detect and install the proper drivers and components for the 64-bit Windows OS.
   
• If an application is natively 32-bit, it may rely on WOW64 instead of running natively on 64-bit. 32-bit applications must also provide 64-bit versions of kernel mode drivers.
   

Follow best practices in Security and Reliability

• The application must not disable Windows Error Reporting service at any time.
   
• IPv6 network layer IP protocol must not be disabled by the application. 
   

Firewall 

• The application cannot disable the Microsoft Firewall and must work properly with Microsoft’s or any third party certified firewall. 
   

User Account Control          

• The application must work properly with User Account Control (UAC)  enabled.  The application must not disable UAC or require UAC to be disabled.
   

Maintain compatibility with Antivirus software

• Applications must install and operate correctly when a certified antivirus application is running.
   
• The antivirus engine must not be disrupted by the application.
   

Do not cause services to unexpectedly become unavailable

• The issue of services remaining available is critical. The goal of this requirement is to ensure that applications do not cause failures in other applications by making services unavailable. 
   
• Applications must maintain stability in general, and violating that is a failure of this requirement and primary functionality 
   
• To pass this requirement, applications must notify the administrator at any time any service needs to be shut down. 
   
• Services shutting down unexpectedly or shutting down without allowing the administrator to control the timing of the shutdown is a failure.
   

All drivers must be WHQL signed

• Poorly written kernel-mode drivers can crash a system.
   
• Applications that include kernel-mode drivers, such as backup, copy protection, and antivirus products, must be thoroughly tested to minimize this risk.
   
• All application drivers must have a Microsoft signature.
   
• All application drivers must pass Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) testing.
   
• Driver signing is a pivotal to receiving the Works with Windows Server 2008 designation.  No application will pass if drivers are unsigned or if WHQL Submission ID is missing from the submission package.