This section includes the following topics:
- About the Availability tab
- Understanding the Availability tab
- Examining Availability tab entities
- Identifying availability problems in the Availability tab
About the Availability tab
The Availability tab displays detailed information on the availability of your SAP system. Availability information displayed in this tab can be used to identify and analyze the cause of a performance problem and is the main source of input for future tuning decisions. This tab enables you to view different aspects of the availability in your SAP system. For example, you can:
- Observe the availability (in percentage) of Application servers, Locales and Organizations, over the selected time period.
- Compare availability information to the average response time of each chosen entity.
- Analyze various predefined graphs that let you check the availability of your SAP system, over a selected time period.
Understanding the Availability tab
The Association area displays data on availability counters measured by the agents for the following views: Organizations, Locales and Application servers.
The Availability tab displays information on a selected entity and the entities that are associated with it. For example, if the selected entity is Organizations, the entities displayed in the Association area could be a list of locales associated with the selected Organization. Drilling down further to a particular locale can display the various Application Servers associated with the selected locale in the Association area.
When you open the Availability tab from the Dashboard tab, the selected entity is by default Organizations, meaning that information is displayed on the organization level. If you open the Availability tab from another tab, the settings you previously selected (such as, selected entity, filters, and time frame) are taken into account and information displayed is related to the same data you previously examined. This is called in-context navigation and enables you to focus in on other aspects of the selected entity and further your analysis.
The selected entity is always reflected in the Tab heading, which serves as a point of orientation. Hovering over the Tab heading displays a ToolTip which shows the navigation path you used to display a particular view.
About the Main area in the Availability tab
The Main area shows comprehensive information on the selected entity. You can choose from several views in the Main area to examine the entity from different angles. You can, for example, focus exclusively on your system’s Availability data (default), or Connectivity data, over the selected time period.
About the Association area in the Availability tab
The Association area provides corresponding information on the entities associated with the selected entity. You can view information on one type of entity at a time, such as organizations only or locales only, by selecting an option from the Association Controls arrow. The selection you make is reflected in the Association area only; the Main area remains unchanged.
From the Association area, you can also drill down to another entity by clicking a table row. A drilldown affects the entire tab. When you drill down to another entity, the Tab heading reflects the new selection, the Main area displays information on the newly selected entity, and the Association area displays data on the entities associated with the selected entity.
For example, when you want to view information on a specific organization, choose Organizations from the Association controls. The Association area changes to display a list of organizations. Note that the Tab heading and the Main area remain unchanged.
In the Association area, click the row of the organization entity you want to view detailed information for. The Tab heading indicates the newly selected entity; the Main area displays information on the session you drilled down to, and the Association area shows information on the entities associated with this organization.
The following figure shows how to drill down to an Organization entity and view additional information. See About Precise for SAP tabs, How most tabs are structured, and About the Dashboard tab.
Examining Availability tab entities
The Availability Tab displays information on different entities. This section provides an overview of these entities, their meaning, and their views.
The following table describes the information displayed in the Association area.
Table 1 Additional information shown in the Association area
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Entity | Displays the entities associated with one of the following entities:
|
 | The SLA Breach icon indicates if the SAP system’s availability falls below the SLA breach defined for the system. |
| Application Server Availability | Displays the percentage of time (over the selected time period) that the application servers of the selected entity were available. |
| Connectivity | Displays the percentage of time (over the selected time period) that the locales defined for the system were available. |
| Availability | Displays the minimum average availability calculated from both the Application Server Availability and Connectivity values. |
| Response Time (Avg) | The average time an activity was executed for the specific entity displayed. |
| Transactions | Indicates the number of transactions run for the entity. |
| SLA Compliance | Indicates the SLA compliance of the entity. |
About the Main Area in the Availability tab
The information displayed in the Main area displays the entity's important counters and performance information.
Getting an overview of availability for an entity
The Overview displays an overview of the entity’s availability data. It displays the most important counters collected for the entity, as follows:
- Availability. Displays the minimum average availability calculated from both the Application Server Availability and Connectivity values.
- Application Server Availability. Displays the percentage of time (over the selected time period) that the application servers of the selected entity were available.
- Connectivity. Displays the percentage of time (over the selected time period) that the locales defined for the system were available.
Viewing the end-to-end availability of a selected entity
The Availability view displays the end-to-end availability of the selected entity as compared to the Availability SLA defined for the system (the black line), over the selected time period. The following counters are displayed:
- Availability SLA
- Availability Breach
- Availability OK
Viewing application server availability for an entity
The Application Server Availability view displays the selected entity's application servers availability as compared to the Availability SLA defined for the system (the black line in this example), over the selected time period. The following counters are displayed:
- Availability SLA
- Application Server Availability Breach
- Application Server Availability OK
Viewing locale availability for an entity
The Connectivity view displays the selected entity’s locale availability as compared to the Availability SLA defined for the system (the black line in this example), over the selected time period. The following counters are displayed:
- Availability SLA
- Connectivity Breach
- Connectivity OK
Identifying availability problems in the Availability tab
You can identify an availability problem by examining the availability of your application servers.
Checking the availability of an application server
Examining the availability of an application server can help identify availability problems that may be causing performance problems for users working in the system.
Using the Availability tab you can view the availability of each application server in the system, and identify time periods when they were not available (they were possibly down). Each application server has its own total availability and average response time for user transactions. This information can indicate whether poor response time was related to poor availability of an application server. Furthermore, since availability is computed from the application server availability and the locales availability, the specific cause of the availability problem can also be detected, indicating whether it was a network problem or actual application server problem.