Monitoring Basics

Monitoring Basics

Hyperic HQ collects data from Web, application, and database environments (services, servers, and platforms), as well as from clients making requests of an Application. The data is stored in a centralized repository and correlated according to the resource hierarchy defined in Hyperic HQ.

Metrics

Metric data is the information Hyperic HQ collects for a given platform, server or service. The data Hyperic HQ collects depends on what type of server or service is being monitored. For instance, if you monitor a Linux platform with Hyperic HQ, you can see metric data about total, used, and free physical and swap memory, total, idle, and user CPU, and much more. For example, for an instance of Tomcat, you can see metrics like JVM total memory, active thread count and thread group count, uptime, process shared memory time, and more.

A metric can belong to one of the following categories:

• Availability

• Throughput

• Performance

• Utilization

Indicator Metrics

Each HQ plugin defines a set of metrics as indicators. These indicator metrics are displayed by default in the Indicators section of the resource. You can change the defined set of indicators for each resource type by going to the Monitoring Defaults page.

Metric Display Range

The metric display range specifies the time range Hyperic HQ considers for displaying the metric data. You can change the display range for metrics HQ collects for all resources. The settings you select are used in all Hyperic HQ Visibility pages.

On all monitoring pages, there is a Metric Display Range form. To specify the metric display range going backwards from the current time, select a number in the Last field and the time unit you want to use from the drop-down list, then press the button to have the changes take effect.

To select a date range, click Advanced Settings... If you select Within a Date Range, enter the From and To dates and times. To save your changes, click the Redraw button.

Baselines *

A metric baseline is a value that represents the norm for a particular metric. Hyperic HQ continuously and automatically calculates the baselines for dynamic metrics currently being collected for a resource. The baseline is the average value of a metric based on a time range that you specify (see Administration section). In addition, the high and low range values are also calculated for the metric. You can also simply specify the expected mean, high, and low range values. You can set and chart these values when you chart a metric for a resource.

Hyperic HQ will still automatically recalculate and replace user-specified baseline values depending on the Baseline Frequency setting to ensure that a baseline is always current to the data being collected.

The use of a baseline as an analysis method compares changes in actual data against a baseline value. This functionality allows you to perform trending analysis, manage SLAs, and monitor overall application health as a form of fault management.

Problem Metrics *

Hyperic HQ automatically tracks the occurrences of the metric value collected for any given metric falling outside (i.e. out-of-bounds, or OOB) of the high and low range set in the baselining process (either automatic or user-defined), and will report the given metric as a problem metric. In addition, when an alert occurs as a result of a metric value collected, the alerting event is also tracked as a problem metric occurrence for that metric.

When you view the monitor visibility Current Health page for any resource, the problem metrics list is displayed in the section of the page. Each problem metric shows its OOB and alerts counts, and can be charted in the section on the same page.

The problem metrics function is also the criteria for which resources are deemed to be problematic. Essentially, any resource that has problem metrics in the specified time range is considered to be a problem resource.

Events/Logs Tracking *

Each individual Hyperic HQ plugin defines its own set of events or logs that it can track (examples include user logins, Windows registry key changes, and error logs). You can configure a given resource to start tracking its events and/or logs by configuring it in the Configuration Properties. Once the functionality is enabled on the given resource, any tracked events, logs, control actions, or alerts will appear in the Events/Logs Tracking area of the Indicators section. Furthermore, you can define alerts that are triggered by any events or log statements.

Next Steps

• Get more details about monitoring HQ including how to monitor specific resources in the Monitoring Visibility document.
• Learn about metric data in Managing Metric Data.
• Working with Baselines shows you how to use baselines to manage your resources.
• Learn about HQ's charting functionality in Charting Metric Data.