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Monitoring processes

Collection Zone provides process availability monitoring for hosts that support SNMP or SSH access. Process monitoring features include:

  • Process classes, defined by Python regular expressions. Classes may generate one or more process sets, each containing one or more process instances.

  • Process sets may include process instances running on multiple hosts. This captures related or redundant processes, enabling a more wholistic view of data center services.

  • Process set names, to replace the often-cryptic names of process instances with descriptive labels.

  • Process set locking, to maintain continuity of data collection if the members of a given process set are not running during modeling.

  • A testing dialog, to discover and refine the sets a class generates.

Use the INFRASTRUCTURE > PROCESSES page to create and manage process classes and process sets.

The tree view shows process class organizers (at the top) and the list of process classes in each organizer (the rest of the view). You may filter the list with the active search field, at the top of the list.

Process class options

The process class page includes the options described in the following sections.

Process Count Threshold

You may set minimum and maximum values for the number of process instances included in a process set. The threshold values apply to all of the process sets generated by a class. The minimum and maximum values are inclusive. That is, if the minimum is 3 and the maximum is 5, then 3, 4, and 5 are all valid process instance counts.

You may define a threshold as an exclusive range. If the minimum is 5 and the maximum is 3, then 4 is an invalid process instance count.

Process Memory Threshold (bytes)

You may set minimum and maximum values, in bytes, for the amount of memory that each process instance in a set may consume. The threshold values apply to all the process sets generated by a class. The minimum and maximum values are inclusive.

Monitoring Options

  • Enable Monitoring (zMonitor)

    To disable monitoring for all process sets generated by this class, set the local value to No.

  • Send Event on Restart (zAlertOnRestart)

    To send an event when a process in a monitored process set restarts, set the local value to Yes. If the PID of the monitored process changes between monitoring cycles, a restart event is generated.

  • Failure Event Severity (zFailSeverity)

    To specify a non-default event severity for the failure of process sets generated by this class, set a local value.

Process Set Locking

Process sets are generated at modeling time. Since modeling recurs regularly, a given modeling run may result in a missing process set, due to a transient absence of one or more process instances. To prevent this from happening, set the local value of the Lock Process Components? (zModelerLock) field to one of the following options.

  • Lock from Deletes

    Prevent deletion of process sets generated by this process class if modeling returns empty sets.

  • Lock from Updates

    Prevent updates to process sets generated by this process class if modeling returns new process sets.

The final option, Send an event when action is blocked? (zSendEventWhenBlockedFlag) , is used only when a process set is locked. If you lock the process sets of a class, you may set the local value of this field to Yes, and an event will be created when a process set would have been either deleted or updated during modeling.