SiteScope Terminology and Concepts

Here are a few SiteScope terms that are commonly used in this manual which will help you understand what SiteScope can do for you and how to get positive results from using the product.

Account Permissions: SiteScope monitors remote systems and services by emulating a client or user. Monitoring some types of services or resources on remote servers will require sharing certain account permissions between the SiteScope server and the remote servers you are trying to monitor. You will need to enter account permissions and user authentication information required by remote systems and services when configuring SiteScope monitors and remote connection.
Agentless: SiteScope is designed primarily as an agentless monitoring solution. This means that SiteScope performs monitoring through active monitoring across network protocols and connections without the need to deploy SiteScope agent software onto the servers and systems you want to monitor. While this greatly speeds deployment and administration, it does require that you instruct SiteScope on how to connect to the remote systems and servers you want to monitor.
Alert: An alert is a SiteScope action which is triggered by a change in status of a monitor. Alerts are set up separately from monitors and can be associated with one or more monitors or groups of monitors. Alert actions are based on the media chosen for the alert. Message alerts can be sent in a variety of media including e-mail, pager and SNMP trap. Alerts also can be created that automatically trigger a shell script or batch file execution.
Counter: A generic term for a measurable parameter available from a particular system (see also Metric). Application and system designers make counters available to facilitate performance monitoring and troubleshooting. What counters are available depends on the application and its design. Access to counters may require installation of application-specific clients. Many SiteScope monitors use counters to measure the performance and availability of applications.
Error Log: A key log file used for recording information and messages about SiteScope's operation. SiteScope uses this log file to record information if there is a failure with a particular monitor run or connectivity with a remote system. These messages are used to help diagnose problems.
Groups Directory: A key subdirectory within the SiteScope installation. This directory contains key configuration data for the monitors, alerts, and reports that you create in SiteScope.
Log File: SiteScope uses a number of log files for storing the results of monitor measurements as well as information about SiteScope's operation. Each time a monitor runs an entry is made in the daily monitor data log. These logs can grow quite rapidly depending on the number of monitors configured and how frequently the monitors run.
Metric: A general term describing a measurable value available from a particular system or service (see also Counters). The metrics that are available depend on the monitor type and configuration of the system. Example metrics are CPU usage, average response time, number of client requests, process queue size, and so forth. Generally, you use one SiteScope license point per metric that you measure with SiteScope monitors.
Monitor: A monitor is a instruction set that tells SiteScope what you want to check in your Web environment. You create a monitor instance by selecting a monitor type, providing the necessary configuration information, and then adding the monitor. You can create as many monitor instances of any type of monitor as you want based on the licensing agreement you have purchased. You also control how often a monitor runs and what constitutes a fault or error condition.
Monitor Group: A monitor group is a collection of one or more SiteScope monitors. The groups are displayed on the SiteScope Panel. An error or warning status is shown for the group if one or more of the monitors in the group is reporting an error or warning status. You can organize your monitors into groups and subgroups to ease administration, alerting, and reporting.
Monitor Run: One execution of the action defined for an individual monitor. The monitor action is determined by the type of monitor and the configuration settings you select for that monitor. A monitor run returns a measurement result or a status indicating that the intended measurement was not retrieved. The result is recorded to the SiteScope log files and the status of the monitor is updated in the SiteScope interface. How often a monitor is run is an important factor in the usefulness of monitoring and SiteScope performance.
Monitor Run Frequency: The time interval setting for an individual monitor that determines how often SiteScope will execute the monitor action. You set the monitor run frequency using the Update every setting in a monitor configuration. The default for most monitor types is 10 minutes. You should select a monitor run frequency that considers the importance of the system or measurement that is being monitored. Setting a run frequency that is too high can result in monitor skips and other problems if the system being monitored does not respond within the time between monitor runs.
Monitor Set: A feature for quickly adding one or more SiteScope monitors based on a set template. You use monitor sets to rapidly deploy sets of monitors that check systems in the infrastructure that share similar characteristics. You can create and customize your own monitor sets to meet the requirements of your organization.
Monitoring: SiteScope is a monitoring application for systems and services. Monitoring means to poll, test, or check systems and services in your Web environment automatically and at regular intervals to verify operation and availability. SiteScope records each monitor run, or test, and records the data for viewing with reports. If an error or fault is detected, SiteScope can take action using alerts to notify you of the fault and in some cases to try to remedy the fault automatically. SiteScope includes a large number of monitor types for both passive and active monitoring. A number of SiteScope monitor types provide active monitoring capability by simulating the actions of a client.
Points: Points are product license credits used to enable instances of the different monitor types available in SiteScope. The number of points you purchase will determine the total number of monitor instances and specific system performance metrics or counters that you can monitor. The number of points required will vary according to monitor type and the number of measurements being made per monitor instance.
Remote Connection: As an agentless monitoring solution, SiteScope uses a number of protocols and methods to check systems and services on machines or servers other than the machine where SiteScope is installed. This means you will need to know how to connect to the various systems you want to monitor with SiteScope. SiteScope can have a remote connection to servers running Windows or UNIX/Linux operating systems.
Remote Server: A machine or server other than the server where SiteScope is installed and running. You use remote connection profiles to configure SiteScope to connect to remote servers running Windows or UNIX/Linux operating systems.
Report: A report is a presentation of data from monitors. SiteScope Management Reports document uptime, availability, and system operation based on data returned by monitors. Other reports provide information for managing the monitoring environment. Reports are built from data in monitor data logs.
Schedule: A schedule is a customizable set of date and time values that are used to control the operation of SiteScope monitors and alerts to fit special schedule requirements and preferences of your operation and organization. By default, SiteScope monitors are configured to be operational 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
SiteScope Health: A set of specially pre-configured monitors that regularly check several key SiteScope logs and configuration files. The SiteScope Health feature is useful in detecting and diagnosing problems with monitors with configuration problems, the resource load on the SiteScope server, and possible errors in the key configuration files. The settings and alerting thresholds can be configured by the user.
SiteScope Restart: SiteScope is designed for reliability. Due to the complexity of Web environments and the versatility of the SiteScope application, SiteScope will automatically shut down and restart itself once per day to ensure system integrity and clear any troublesome processes. SiteScope may also restart itself if it detects that a monitor run is being skipped. The SiteScope Health feature and log files can be used to diagnose this problem
SNMP: Simple Network Management Protocol. A protocol used for network management and the monitoring SNMP-enabled devices. Requires that applicable agents and network ports be enabled. A number of SiteScope monitors use SNMP to retrieve system measurements.
SSH: Secure Shell. Also known as Secure Socket Shell. A UNIX-based command interface and protocol for accessing a remote computer securely using encryption. SSH connectivity requires applicable clients and servers be installed and running.
Status: Each time a monitor runs it reports a status of good, warning, or error based on criteria you can control. The status is displayed graphically as a status icon and as text. The text status is usually an indication of the specific measurement taken by the monitor. In some cases it may indicate that the monitor was unable to find the server or system due to connectivity and account access restrictions. The status icon for monitor groups is selected by the monitor with the highest status value within the group with error having the highest value. Thus a monitor group containing 20 monitors with only one monitor in error will display an error status for the group.
Threshold: In SiteScope, refers to the logical condition that determines if a monitor measurement is reported as an error, warning, or good status. You can set thresholds for each of the three conditions for each monitor.
URL Sequence: A sequence of Web pages which together constitute one or more requests and responses made by a client of a Web-based system. This might include logging into and retrieving customer account information or performing an online search.

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