9.8 Monitoring an OpenVMS Galaxy with DECamds The DECamds availability manager software provides a valuable real-time view of the Galaxy system. DECamds can monitor all Galaxy instances from a single workstation or PC anywhere on the local area network. DECamds utilizes a custom OpenVMS driver (RMDRIVER) that periodically gathers availability data from the system. This information is returned to the DECamds client application using a low-level Ethernet protocol. The client application provides numerous views and graphs of the system's availability characteristics. Additionally, when DECamds detects one of numerous known conditions, it notifies the user and offers a set of solutions (called fixes) that can be applied to resolve the condition. Every OpenVMS system comes with the DECamds Data Collector (RMDRIVER) installed. To enable the collector, you must execute its startup procedure inside SYSTARTUP_ VMS.COM or manually on each Galaxy instance you want to monitor. Use the following commands to start the data collector: $ @SYS$STARTUP:AMDS$STARTUP START or STOP Prior to starting the collector, you need to specify a group name for your Galaxy. Do so by editing the file SYS$COMMON:[AMDS]AMDS$LOGICALS.COM. This file includes a statement for declaring a group name. Choose any unique name, making sure this file on each Galaxy instance contains the same group name. When using DECamds, OpenVMS Engineering finds it useful to display the System Overview window, the Event Window and a CPU Summary window for each Galaxy instance. There are a number of additional views you can monitor depending on your specific interests. For more information about DECamds, refer to the DECamds Users Guide .