Application templates for processes and application service groups

An application template is a definition for application processes and ApplicationServiceGroup instances. As of the 9.3 release and later, an application template is used for both discovery and monitoring of processes and application service groups.

Application templates that are created by using the console persist in the ESM server repository. The templates created from the console are also saved to the BASEDIR/smarts/local/conf/applications/apps-userdefined.xml file whenever you use the console to create a new template, replace an existing template, or delete it.

Application templates that are created by using an editor are saved in an .xml file. Multiple application templates can be saved in one .xml file. For example, the template for VMware ESX server Version 5.5 and the template for VMware ESX server 5.0 are defined in the BASEDIR/smarts/conf/applications/apps-emc-vmware.xml file. If the file is modified, the sm_edit utility saves the modified version of the file to the BASEDIR/smarts/local/conf/applications directory.

Templates are associated with hosts. The same template can be associated with multiple hosts. A discovery filter is required, because it determines the order in which individual processes in a template are discovered and, ultimately, monitored.

Table 1. Types of application templates

Type of template	Description	Method of creation	Should a discovery filter be created?	Specify login credentials?
Template (user-defined)	New template created by an administrator using the console. It is saved in the ESM server repository and in the apps-userdefined.xml file.	Console	Yes, administrator needs to create the filter.	Yes, login credentials are needed for WMI discovery. Yes, SNMP community string only for SNMP discovery.
Prebuilt	Templates that provided by VMware in the following files: apps-emc-avamar.xml apps-emc-datadomain.xml apps-emc-isilon.xml apps-emc-smarts.xml apps-misc.xml	Edit the .xml file	Yes, administrator needs to create the filter.	Yes, login credentials are needed for WMI discovery. Yes, SNMP community string only for SNMP discovery.
AutoApply	A subset of prebuilt templates: apps-emc-atmos.xml Atmos-Service apps-emc-vmware.xml ESX-Service-5.5 ESX-Service VirtualCenter-Service-5.5-Linux VirtualCenter-Service-5.5-Windows VirtualCenter-Service	Edit the .xml file	No user action is required. The filter is automatically applied.	Yes, in other configuration task. See: “Editing Automatic Process Monitoring configuration for Virtual Centers” on page 61 “Editing Automatic Process Monitoring configuration for Hypervisor” on page 56

Workflow: Process monitoring and application discovery on page 221 describes the tasks that you need to perform to implement discovery and monitoring for processes and application groups.

Additional template tasks on page 229 provides instructions on how to delete templates, modify existing user-defined templates, enable automatic process monitoring, and so on.