SiteScope User's Guide


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.