Control Overview

Available in HQ Open Source unless marked by * for HQ Enterprise only

Hyperic HQ allows you to control resources singly or in groups, on demand or automatically (by schedule or in response to an alert), all together helping you stabilize your environment and maintain resource availability. HQ refers to each instance of such control as a "control action," which can be automatically or manually performed. Users can perform these control actions from a single, central location — the HQ Portal — avoiding the need to log into each machine or use multiple interfaces. Control actions are available only for servers and services.

• Supported control actions
• Performing control actions in HQ
• Viewing control actions: status and history

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Supported Control Actions

The available control actions depend on the resource type. In general:

• Servers support starting, stopping, and restarting.
• Services support starting, stopping, and reloading.

Consult the list of managed products for an enumeration of the specific actions a resource type supports. A product's plugin determines the control actions available for the product.

Learn more about defining control actions in plugins.

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Performing Control Actions in HQ

You can control a resource either via the UI or via the HQ Shell. The rest of this page describes the UI. In the UI, the primary Control interface is on the tab for a resource. This tab and all associated control-action UI elements are available only for resources that support control actions.

Control Actions can be performed in several ways:

• Manually via Quick Control (aka, "on demand")
• Automatically by schedule
• Automatically by being assigned to an alert that is triggered

Quick Control Actions

With Quick Control, you can perform a control action manually and one time on a resource.

To perform a quick control action on a resource:

1. Navigate to the main "Control" screen for the resource.
   One way to get there is from the "Browse Resources" screen: click next to the resource. That icon exists only for resources that support control actions.
2. Follow the instructions for performing an on-demand action.
   The action is executed on the remote machine immediately and HQ provides a status page with the control-action results.

Scheduled Control Actions*

Scheduled control actions are useful for recurring actions, such as rebooting a web server each evening.

To schedule a control action:

1. Navigate to the main "Control" screen for the resource.
   One way to get there is from the "Browse Resources" screen: click next to the resource. That icon exists only for resources that support control actions.
2. In the "Control Action Schedule" section, click .
3. Follow the instructions for scheduling a control action.

Control Actions via Alerts*

A control action can be assigned to an alert definition (a maximum of one control action per alert definition) so that when the alert is triggered, HQ performs the action. This is useful for performing corrective action, such as when a website becomes unavailable.

To assign a control action to an alert definition:

1. When editing an alert definition, click in the "Control Action" section.
2. On the "Add Control Action" screen, follow the instructions for adding a control action to an alert.

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Viewing Control Actions: Status and History

HQ displays control actions in several places in the UI:

• For a list of recently performed control actions throughout HQ and a list of upcoming scheduled control actions, look at the Dashboard's Control Action portlet.
• For a list of control actions already performed on a specific resource, look at the "Control History" screen.
• For a control action performed as part of a triggered alert, look at the "Alert Detail" screen.

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