Disk Space Monitor

The SiteScope Disk Space Monitor provides an easy way for you to track how much disk space is currently in use on your server. A full disk can cause a host of problems including system crashes and corrupt files.

Usage Guidelines

What to monitor

Running out of disk space can cause a host of problems both large and small, and it is something that can happen slowly over time or very rapidly. Having SiteScope verify that your disk space is within acceptable limits can save you from a crashed system and corrupted files.

About scheduling this monitor

The disk space monitor does not require many resources, so you can check it as often as every 15 seconds, but every 10 minutes should be sufficient. You can specify both warning and error thresholds so that SiteScope can notify you of a potential problem in time for you to do something about it. You may even want to have SiteScope execute a script (using a Script Alert) that deletes all files in certain directories, such as /tmp, when disk space becomes constrained.

Completing the Disk Space Monitor Form

To display the Disk Space Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing Disk Space 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 Disk Space Monitor link.

Complete the items on the Disk Space Monitor Form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Update Monitor button.

Server

Choose the server that you want to monitor. The default is to monitor disks on the server on which SiteScope is installed. Click the choose server link to monitors disks on another server.

Disk

Select the disk drive that you want to monitor from the list.

Note: Disk performance counters are disabled by default in standard Windows 2000 installations. In order for you to monitor disk drives using the SiteScope Disk Monitor on servers running Windows 2000, you must enable these disk counters. Use the diskperf -y command line on each Windows 2000 machine you want to monitor disk space and then reboot each server. You should then be able to select the disk drives for those servers in the SiteScope Disk Monitor form.

Update every

Select how often the monitor should check this drive. 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.

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 Error threshold for this monitor. By default SiteScope reports an error condition if your disk becomes more than 98% full. If you want to change the error threshold, choose percent full and = from the drop-down lists and then type the new threshold in the text box. The value you enter must be a whole number.

For example, if you want SiteScope to report an error condition if your disk becomes 96% full, you need to choose percent full and = from the drop-down lists and then enter "96" in the comparison value text box.

Warning if

Set the warning threshold for this monitor. By default SiteScope reports a warning condition if your disk becomes more than 95% full, but less than the error threshold. If you want to change the warning threshold, choose percent full >= from the drop-down list and type the new threshold in the text entry box. You must enter a whole number.

For example, if you want to change the warning threshold to 90%, choose percent full >= from the drop-down list and then enter 90 in the text box.

Good if

If you want, you can set conditions that must be met in order for SiteScope to return an OK status. If you do not set this, SiteScope will assume that the monitor should return an OK status unless either the Error or Warning thresholds are reached.

The symbols in the comparison value list are the same as those for Error if.