Managing Metric Data
You can customize the way Hyperic HQ gathers and displays metric information. You can choose which metrics to display, what time intervals to use, over what length of time to display data, and more.
Metric Categories
A metric can belong to one of the following categories.
Availability
In Hyperic HQ, the definition of 'available' is 'ready to service requests'. An platform is available if the Hyperic HQ Server can reach it. Hyperic HQ issues a query or a request to other kinds of resources to determine their availability. If a resource that is part of an Application is unavailable, Hyperic HQ considers the Application to be unavailable. Availability status for a resource managed by Hyperic HQ is one of three things:
Availability Status Table
| Green |  |
100% availability |
| Red |  |
0% availability |
| Yellow |  |
Availability between 0% to 100% |
| Orange |  |
Resource is paused |
| Gray |  |
No availability was collected in the time frame |
When Hyperic HQ notifies you that an Application is unavailable, you can then quickly drill down into the resources that make up that Application in order to determine which resource (such as a web server, application server, or database) is causing the availability problem.
Throughput
You can measure throughput for each of resource under management. For Web servers and application servers, throughput is typically measured as bytes served, bytes received, number of requests, and number of responses over a period of time (minutes, hours, days) that you specify. For databases, throughput is typically measured as the number of requests processed or active connections over a specified period of time (minutes, hours, days).
Performance
Hyperic HQ provides end-to-end response time for components of your infrastructure that deal with end user perception. Hyperic HQ measures requests originating with the end user and then presents the information in a segmented format that separates out the response times of multiple tiers of the transaction including end user, Web server, and application server.
Hyperic HQ measures response time measurement passively by monitoring high resolution access logs rather than invasive filters which interfere with inbound requests. Since this measurement takes place outside of the process of the application being measured it results in accurate performance measurement with no impact on application performance - a critical requirement for applications in production. In addition, this information monitors real time transactions rather that synthetic or simulated transactions providing a high level of visibility into production issues as the actually arise.
Hyperic HQ shows response time data in seconds, and shows low, average, and peak values, as well as number of requests.
Utilization
Hyperic HQ can measure utilization rates for the platforms and servers that make up an Application. Examples of utilization include number of sessions created and destroyed, number of loaded or reloaded servlets, JVM total, used, and free memory, EJB creates, removes, loads, stores, and so on.
You can examine the capacity of an entire platform and measure individual utilization of the servers on those platforms. Using Hyperic HQ, you can pinpoint underutilized resources by establishing minimum utilization thresholds on a per platform basis. You can also determine where Application bottlenecks occur by examining utilization rates between disk, memory, CPU, and network, and then apply capacity appropriately.
Viewing Metrics
To view metrics for a resource, navigate to the monitor visibility pages of that resource. Click the 
tab of that resource. The displayed page lists all metrics currently being collected for the selected resource.
The metrics are displayed with their low, average, peak, last values, and collection interval, as well as alerts and out-of-bounds counts, for the specified metric display time range. You can chart or set baselines of one or more of the metrics from this list. Also, you can alter the metric collection behavior of the metrics from this display as well.
The metric data on this page can be automatically updated by selecting a Metrics Refresh interval: 1 min, 2 min, or 5 min. Alternatively, you can disable the automatic update by selecting OFF.
Next Steps
- Get more details about monitoring HQ including how to monitor specific resources in the Monitoring Visibility document.
- Working with Baselines shows you how to use baselines to manage your resources.
- Learn about HQ's charting functionality in Charting Metric Data.
- See how to define alerts using your metrics in Defining Alerts.