Installing and Testing AES: Introduction

In this chapter, we will touch on the scope of this guide and some quick description of AES (Autonomic Event Services).

You can contact Pega for the AES Application Bundle as well as the list of hotfixes (as mentioned below).

This guide demonstrates how to install and ensure that your AES is working. The information is based on the following URL:

https://community.pega.com/knowledgebase/installing-pega-autonomic-event-services-73

Why Create This “Installing and Testing AES” Pega How-to Guide?

Firstly, if you follow the instruction closely, it will not work.

Secondly, if you have noticed, ALL Pega help files and many articles are without the necessary images. Even if there are, many are often zoomed in so much that you would not be able to appreciate the context of the step without launching Pega Designer Studio.

Interestingly, I had suggested for screenshots in the help files, etc. However, the general thinking is that having screenshots would tend to create more work and make the instructions outdate faster.

Although I don’t agree with the viewpoint, there is nothing I can do. Therefore, I decided to go ahead and create it according to the way I want it to be, thus, the birth of this book: “Debunkum Beaver Pega How-to Guide: Installing and Testing AES”!

For this guide, I had gone through the process of installing and testing AES, and presented all the relevant screenshots to you. At the same time, highlighting specific issues along with the instructions.

This will make it easier for anyone who is interested to install and test AES, accomplish the task in a much faster and efficient way!

About This Pega How-to Guide: Installing and Testing AES

This Pega How-to Guide: Installing and Testing AES contains information on installing and testing AES.

The first question I have about AES is: It seems that Pega is moving to cloud, and Pega also have PDC (Predictive Diagnostic Cloud), why would customer be installing AES?

Well, there are many customers still doing that. I recently did one for a customer, and their reason for doing this is simple: Who would want to send their diagnostics information over the cloud to Pega?

Bear in mind that from most customers’ perspective, diagnostics information is sensitive.

If you have ever done application hardening before, you would come across a clause that states:

“NO ERROR MESSAGES and NO DIAGNOSTICS INFORMATION should appear on the screen”!

If you take a look at the OWASP™ Foundation, you will also see the point being reiterated:

 

 Figure 2: OWASP™ Foundation Application Vulnerability Checklist

Therefore, if error messages and diagnostics information are not allowed to be shown on the screen, how could you expect customer to send that information over the cloud to a 3^rd party site that is managed by another entity?

Anyway, that is beyond the scope of this book. I just want Pega to really think about this question and focus back on AES!

Of course, if expert monitoring and analysis could be bundled into the PDC, then it could potentially add some values to use PDC. That is: if you leverage on PDC, periodic advice and consultancy on your application tuning is included as part of the package.

Well, that is just my 2-cents worth. I shall focus back on the scope of this book instead.

Autonomic Event Services (AES) in a Nutshell

Pega Autonomic Event Services (AES) is an application that monitors the performance status of Pega Platform systems, installed on a stand-alone Pega Platform server.

In a nutshell, the core features of AES that I like are:

·       Aggregation of error messages, their frequencies as well as prioritisation of their severity

·       Scorecards for critical functions of Pega

·       Notifications and emails for subscribed reports/scorecard

Without AES, there is basically no elegant ways of monitoring the performance of Pega platform, the next recourse would be to periodically look at log files or use log file monitoring tools, painful, right?

This document is based on the following:

• AES version 7.3
• Pega version 7.4 for AES server and the monitored system

Some of the information of this book is taken from:

https://community.pega.com/knowledgebase/pega-autonomic-event-services-hotfixes

Sadly, if you look at the above URLs and other related ones, you will see many of those having such top banner:

 

Figure 3: Content No Longer Being Maintained

Again, I sincerely hope Pega is in the process of revamping the information, NOT sunsetting AES for PDC.

[Check the book availability here]