Performance Monitoring

Adding Hosts

In order to start monitoring you must first create a "Monitoring Session" by clicking on the "File > New Session" menu item or the equivalent tool bar button. This will prompt you for an initial list of hosts (more can be added later on by right-clicking on the session and selecting 'Add Host').

This window accepts a space-separated list of either host names or IP addresses. Each item in the list will be added to the monitoring session, and IxoraRMS will attempt to connect to each one individually. IxoraRMS accepts that machines can go in or out of a performance network, therefore it is not an error to be unable to connect to a host.

A host can have two possible 'online/offline' states, as follows

• HM:'online/offline' shows whether "Host Manager" is running on this machine.
• P:'online/offline' shows whether this machine responds to ICMP ping messages.

Adding Agents

Once at least one host is added to the monitoring session, agents can be activated by right-clicking the host and selecting the "Add Agent(s)" context menu item. This opens the "Agent Activator" dialog.

Select location as either "remote" or "local", as described in "Agents". For agents which require this, also select the particular version of the monitored application.

See the list of monitoring agents that are supported by the current version of IxoraRMS and the list of configurable parameters for each one.

Plotting

Graphic controls in IxoraRMS are displayed on boards, with each board supporting one type of data view. See "Data View Types" for more details on the available data view types.

To plot, select one or more counters, data views or dashboards, right click and select "Plot" from the context menu.

Depending on the type of item plotted, a different data view will be created. However in each case all resulting data views are always placed on their appropriate board.

• Numeric Counter: If the value of the counter being plotted is a number, it is displayed as a time series on an available chart data view board. If there is a selected chart board then the new data view is created on that board, providing there is space for an additional chart widget.
• Text Counter: If the counter has a text value then a properties data view is created.
• View: The widget created is specified by the view's definition.
• Dashboard: A set of controls are created as specified by the dashboard definition.

Note that certain types of counters are plotted on specialized view boards; for example the 'Log Records' counter of the "Log File Monitor" agent is always plotted on its dedicated 'Log Board'.

When plotting a single counter, you can add a function or style by selecting "Plot Counter with Code..." or "Plot Counter with Style..." from the context menu.

Plotting Counter with Code...

The image below shows the dialog box that opens when selecting this option. The value of the counter is stored in the counter variable.

Plotting Counter with Style...

The only style attributes available right now are min and max. See Resource style section in Concepts for more details.

The image below shows the dialog box that opens when selecting this option.

Organizing Views

Since v1.1 of the application, data views can be moved between boards and boards between screens.

To move a data view, right click to bring out the context menu and select the desired board from the options available from the "Move Control To..." menu item. Note that if no appropriate board exists, the "Move Control To..." menu item is not available.

To move a board, right click on the the board title bar and select the desired screen from the options available from the "Move View Board To..." menu item. Note that if no appropriate screens exists, the "Move View Board To..." menu item is not available.

Running the Monitoring Session

Clicking the "Run Session" button will instruct all agents to start collecting information, and will start populating screen controls. Data will arrive periodically with a frequency given by the current "Sampling Interval".

Changing the session-level sampling interval will immediately be applied to all agents which don't override this value.

If logging is enabled (see "Log and Replay") then all information received from the agents is saved in the chosen log file. Logging can be enabled and disabled while a monitoring session is running.

Clicking the "Stop Session" button will stop all data collection and logging. A session can be stopped and restarted any number of times.

A session can be saved into / loaded from a session file. The following items will be persisted:

• the list of hosts
• the list of agents and their configuration
• all enabled counters, views and dashboards
• screen elements, including controls, dashboards and data view screens.
• session related configuration, eg. sampling interval