Alerts are generated when the rules specified by the user are violated. These rules are set for the threshold conditions by the user. An alert is used to highlight an event that needs to be examined. Setting alerts is the only way to ensure that top performance levels are being maintained for all the systems. Alarms alert the user to problems in real-time and to enable the user to immediately locate and remedy those problems.
The key point to note here is that the Monitor Server takes sampling of monitoring data at periodic intervals. Hence, the state of the machine when the sampling was taken determines whether a rule is violated. For example, if the CPU Usage reached 100% between two samplings, but remains below 100% at the time of sampling, then no alert will be raised.
A rule is a condition for an attribute specifying an acceptable range within which its value should lie and / or the time when this condition should hold. When a rule is violated, an alert is generated.
When a Monitor fails to provide data to the Monitor, it goes into polling. This simply means that the Monitor Server keeps requesting data from the monitor and no data is being returned. This may indicate that the device associated with the monitor is switched off or not working correctly or is unreachable due to network problems.
The monitor is what facilitates communication between the device being monitored and the AppPerfect Monitor. Its main task is to fetch data from the device at specified intervals of time and then pass on the data to the AppPerfect Monitor. This data is validated against the rules that have been created for that agent, displayed in the UI and is written to the database.
Monitor Tree refers to the tree that you can see on the left hand side of the UI. It contains the monitor names as root nodes and the attribute names as sub-nodes. Clicking an attribute for a monitor will display the charts associated with that attribute or string values for attributes whose values are not tabular. You can also see transient attributes (currently Processes) as a table.
The attribute tree shows up while adding or editing a monitor. You also find it here: Settings -> Add/Edit Attributes. It shows a list of all the monitors you are monitoring and the attributes associated with each of the monitors that are being monitored. You can select or de-select these attributes from this tree.
Dynamic Attributes are those that cannot be decided before hand for a monitor. These are the attributes that will depend on the specific instance of the usage of the device.
Attributes that can be defined in advance, before the monitoring of a monitor is actually started, are pre-defined attributes. These attributes are standard for the monitor and do not depend on outside factors.
Transient attribute is one which is changing, reflecting the changes in the system. Between two intervals of time, you will find that a transient attribute is mostly not the same. Processes under Server Monitor is a transient attribute. You can observe the transient nature of this attribute by comparing the processes between any two time intervals from the Local Server monitor -> Processes.
Groups are defined to provide similar features to more than one users. You can define a group to monitor certain monitors and add to that group all the users that you want should monitor those monitors. Groups centralize the management of users.
Notification refers to the feature of sending messages that the AppPerfect Monitor server sends to the user(s) set up to receive them whenever a rule is violated. Notification is an optional feature for all the rules. It has to be explicitly set up for users or groups and proper details regarding email addresses and cell number provided for these users. Notifications are currently available as Email, SMS, Custom, Log, Database and SNMP Trap.