Composite Monitor
The SiteScope Composite Monitor is designed to
simplify the monitoring of complex network environments by checking the
status readings of a set of other SiteScope monitors and/or monitor
groups.
Each time the Composite Monitor runs, it returns a status based on
the number and percentage of items in the
specified monitors and/or groups currently reporting an error, warning, or
OK status. It writes the percentages reported in the monitoring log
file.
Usage Guidelines
One reason you should use this monitor is if you want to create complex
monitor alert logic. For example, if you wanted to trigger an alert
when:
- 5 or more monitors in a group of 8 are in error
- 3 or more groups have monitors with errors in them
- of two monitors, exactly 1 in error
then you could create a Composite Monitor that went into error on these
conditions, and then add alerts on the Composite Monitor to take the
desired actions.
If you need alert logic that is more complex than SiteScope's
standard alerts will allow, you may be able to use the Composite Monitor to create
a customized alert behavior.
About scheduling this monitor
The Composite Monitor is very lightweight, so schedule it to run at
least as often as the most frequent monitor that it is watching.
Completing the Composite Monitor Form
To display the Composite Monitor Form, either click the Edit link
for an existing Composite Monitor in a monitor table, or click the
Add a new Monitor to this Group link on a group's detail page
and click the Add Composite Monitor link.
Complete the items on the Composite Monitor form as follows. When the
required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.
- Items
-
Choose one or more (using control-click) monitors and/or groups
that the Composite Monitor will be comprised of.
- Update every:
-
Select how often the monitor should check the status readings
of the selected monitors and/or groups.
The default interval is to run or update the monitor once every 10 minutes.
Use the drop-down list to the right of the text box to specify another update
interval in increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. The update interval
must be 15 seconds or longer.
- Title
-
Enter a title text for this monitor. This text is displayed in the
group detail page, in report titles, and other places in the SiteScope
interface. If you do not enter a title text, SiteScope will
create a title based on the host, server, or URL being monitored.
Advanced Options
The Advanced Options section presents a number of ways to customize
monitor behavior and display. Use this section to customize error and warning
thresholds, disable the monitor, set monitor-to-monitor dependencies, customize
display options, and enter other monitor specific settings required for
special infrastructure environments. The options for this monitor type are
described below. Complete the entries as needed and click the Add
or Update button to save the settings.
- Disable
-
Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any
associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.
- Run Monitors:
-
Check this box if you want the Composite Monitor to control the
scheduling of the selected monitors, as opposed to just checking
their status readings. Any monitors that are to be run this way
should not also be run separately, so edit the individual
monitors, blank out the Update Every box for that
monitor, and save the changes. Those monitors will then only run
when scheduled by the Composite Monitor. This is useful if you want
to make sure that the monitors run one after another or run at
approximately the same time.
- Monitor Delay:
-
If Run Monitors is checked, this is the number of seconds to wait
between running each monitor. This setting is useful if you need to
wait for processing to occur on your systems before running the
next monitor.
- Check All Monitors in Group(s)
-
By default, a group is checked and counted as a single item when
checking status readings. If this box is checked, all of the
monitors in selected groups (and their subgroups) are checked and
counted.
- Verify Error
-
Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this
monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected,
the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.
Note: In order to change the run frequency of this
monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on
errors) option below.
Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run
of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled
run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important
performance data if the data from the verify run is different than
the initial error status.
Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances
may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that
multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same
time.
- Update Every (on error)
-
You use this option to set a new monitoring interval for
monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you
may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally,
but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note
that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of
alerts generated by this monitor.
- Schedule
-
By default, SiteScope monitors are enabled every day of the
week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on
certain days or on a fixed schedule. Click the Edit
schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule.
For more information about working with monitor schedules,
see the section on Schedule
Preferences for Monitoring.
- Monitor Description
-
Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor
Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR>
<HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style.
The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.
- Report Description
-
Enter an optional description for this monitor that will make it easier to
understand what the monitor does. For example, network traffic or
main server response time. This description will be displayed on
with each bar chart and graph in Management Reports and appended to
the tool-tip displayed when you pass the mouse cursor over the
status icon for this monitor on the monitor detail page.
- Depends On
-
To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of
another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select
the monitor on which this monitor is dependent. Select
None to remove any dependency.
- Depends Condition
-
If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the
status of another monitor, select the status condition that the
other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current
monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally
as long as the monitor on which it depends reports the
condition selected in this option.
- List Order
-
By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail
page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different
placement for this monitor.
- Error if:
-
Set the conditions under which the Composite Monitor should report
an error status. Use the drop-down list to select a criteria based
on the total number of items or a percentage (%) of items reporting
a given status. Next select the logic operator(s) for the error
criteria. Then enter the value to be used as the threshold or
trigger for this condition.
- Warning if
-
Set the conditions under which the Composite Monitor should report
a warning status. Use the steps outlined in the Error
if section above.
- Good if
-
Set the conditions under which the Composite Monitor should report
a good status. Use the steps outlined in the Error if
section above.
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