ServerAgent Systems Monitor

• Centralized Management: All features and configuration parameters are now centrally managed via the enhanced Console Manager, eliminating the need to edit configuration files directly.

• ServerAgent Views: Agent instances may be grouped into one or more logical views to facilitate management. Configuration changes may be made against a single ServerAgent or an entire group.

• Parallel Metrics Collection: All collection categories are gathered in parallel on a per-device basis ensuring timely and immediate identification of warning and error conditions. As each category from each resource is autonomously collected, compounded latency due to slow response times or lengthy user scripts is avoided.

• Self-Diagnosis: The ServerAgent log files may be scheduled for email delivery for analysis and evaluation in the event of system error.

• Data Broadcasting: Collected data may be broadcast to a list of AlertSite listeners to ensure high availability of collected data.

• n-Tier Distributed Collection: ServerAgent instances may be configured to proxy between secondary, tertiary, or more ServerAgents. This feature provides maximum flexibility in how ServerAgent is deployed in an organization’s environment even when segments of their network do not have access to the Internet.

• Secure Communications: All data sent over the Internet is encrypted and encoded to ensure total data protection.

• Light Weight Processes: The ServerAgent processes require very few system resources.

• Browser Support: The ServerAgent software accepts browser connections on default port 2525 to enable customers to view cached data pending publication.

• Track system resource utilization
• Capture data for capacity planning

• Fully integrated into AlertSite’s notification system:

  • Instant notification via email, pager, SMS, and telephone
  • Flexible alerting and escalation policies
• When combined with AlertSite’s website and Web transaction monitoring, ServerAgent can help you quickly identify and resolve system problems

• Windows (2000 and above) – Cygwin (tested and verified)

• Unix:

  • Linux
  • BSD
  • Solaris and others (may require an up-to-date version of GCC/C++)

If your platform is not listed here, contact AlertSite for information and options for having it added.

There are 3 error status codes returned for problems detected by ServerAgent:

4.1.1 Purchase Credits for ServerAgent

4.1.2 Add ServerAgent Device

To add a new ServerAgent device in the AlertSite console, perform the following steps:

1. In the Configuration drop-down list in the controls menu, select ServerAgents.

2. In the Configuration: ServerAgents screen, click Add a New ServerAgent button. This produces:

   

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3. Complete the form:

   • Provide a site name in the Site Name field.

   • Select the site plan from the Site Plan drop-down list*.

   • Adjust the reporting interval in the Reporting Interval drop-down list to match the site plan.

   • Click Submit.

^* If you are a Usage-Based Monitoring customer, configure ServerAgent by selecting Usage Based Pricing from the Site Plan drop-down list (see below) and configure the Reporting Interval to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20, 30, 60, or 120 minutes.

Note:

Intervals below 5 minutes are not recommended if you are monitoring several items (processes, CPU elements, and so on), as it does put a load on the system.

This will generate the 32-character Device ID needed during the installation. Save this ID in a convenient place:

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Installation directory: C:\Program Files\AlertSite\ServerAgent.

If upgrading to a new version of ServerAgent, you must uninstall the existing version:

1. Stop ServerAgent:

   • Go to Start > Services from the taskbar.

   • Click AlertSite ServerAgent Manager and then click Stop to stop the service.

   • Click on AlertSite ServerAgent Monitor and then click Stop to stop the service.

   • Close Services window.

2. Go to Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall to uninstall a program.

3. Select ServerAgent and follow the prompts for Automatic method for removing the program.

Installation process:

1. From the Support drop-down in the controls menu of your AlertSite console, select Downloads and download the ServerAgent installation package, ServerAgentInstaller.exe, to your desktop by clicking on the ServerAgent v2.x for Windows link.

2. Run the downloaded installer. This will place the ServerAgent package in C:\Program Files\AlertSite\ServerAgent.

3. During installation, you will be prompted for the 32-characters Device ID generated in the previous section. Enter that value and click Next.

This completes the Microsoft Windows installation. In a few minutes, you should see information related to your server device displayed on the AlertSite console.

Installation directory: /usr/local/alertsite.

1. From the Support drop-down list in the controls menu, select Downloads and download the ServerAgent Installation package (server-agent-installer.sh) to your desktop by clicking on the ServerAgent v2.x for Linux/Unix link.

2. In a terminal window, login as root, change to the directory where you downloaded the installation package and execute the following command:

   # sh ./server-agent-installer.sh

3. During installation, you will be prompted for the 32-character Device ID generated in the previous section. Copy and paste the Device ID from the console to the Device ID prompt response and press Enter.

   

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   If you are trying to install ServerAgent on a Linux server such as Suse or Redhat, you can get the following error: The ServerAgent software may not be compatible with your compiler and/or hardware. This indicates that the ServerAgent installer is looking for g++ libraries on the system, and they are not available. Please install the g++ libraries for the installation to complete.

4. The installation provides the /usr/local/alertsite/init.d/server-agent scrip used for starting and stopping the ServerAgent daemons (/usr/local/alertsite/bin/commgr and /usr/local/alertsite/bin/agentmgr). Move the server-agent script to the appropriate run command directory for your system, for example, /etc/init.d.

   # cp /usr/local/alertsite/init.d/server-agent /etc/init.d

5. Start the ServerAgent daemon for ServerAgent with the following command:

   # /etc/init.d/server-agent start

6. Verify that the daemons are running by executing the following command:

   # ps -ef | grep mgr

   You should see:

   # ps -ef | grep mgr
   root    5613    1  2 Oct22 ?    00:35:15 /usr/local/alertsite/bin/commgr
   root    5631    1  1 Oct22 ?    00:21:35 /usr/local/alertsite/bin/agentmgr

This completes the Linux/Unix/Cygwin installation. In a few minutes, you should see information related to your server device displayed on the AlertSite console.

If you have multiple ServerAgents, they can be grouped in views for more controlled monitoring. For example, you can group ServerAgents monitoring systems in IT in one view and ServerAgents monitoring machines in Accounting in another view. To create a view, select ServerAgent from the Configuration drop-down list in the controls menu, and click Add a View:

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The Add a View page displays a ServerAgent selection box with the names of ServerAgents configure in the account. To move ServerAgent into the selected view, highlight the name (press Ctrl and click to select multiple names), and click Add:

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The names will appear in the ServerAgents in View box. Click Submit to save the changes. The Configuration: ServerAgents screen will display the view name. Click + to the left of the name to display ServerAgent(s) listed in the view:

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There are two main sections of the Manage Servers page. The top portion is the Server Information section describing the device and contains monitoring selection criteria. The bottom section, Agent Configuration, is comprised of a set of tabs – CPU, Disk, Process, User Scripts, Connection, and Distributed Collection – where the data thresholds and process information are configured. The Manage Servers page, displayed by clicking on the ServerAgent name in Configuration: ServerAgents, appears as follows:

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After the Agent Configuration section has been populated, you may then select individual metrics in the CPU, Disk, Process, User Scripts, and Connection tabs for which to establish thresholds. The Thresholds Available column of the Configuration: ServerAgents screen will display No for ServerAgent devices with no thresholds configured, Yes if you have established any thresholds.

5.2.1 Server Information Section

5.2.2 Agent Configuration Section

The lower portion of the Manage Servers page provides a means of configuring specific settings for each collection agent, separated into tabs:

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The Enable check box found below the category tab name enables monitoring of the selected metrics by ServerAgent. Each collection agent also has a checkbox to enable specific settings and alert notification.

The following sections illustrate the settings for the each collection agent. See 9. Description of Errors below for more information.

5.2.2.1 CPU

The metrics collected by the CPU agent are determined by the operating system where ServerAgent is running. Therefore, the only settings that the user may affect are the Warning and Threshold values:

• Linux/Unix:

  

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• Windows:

  

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5.2.2.2 Disk

As with the CPU monitor, the metrics collected by the disk agent are determined by your system. Therefore, the only settings that the user may affect are those for Warning and Threshold values:

• Linux/Unix:

  

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• Windows:

  

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5.2.2.3 Process

You can monitor specific processes, for example, the syslog daemon or print spooler, and configure ServerAgent to notify you if the process has stopped running. The initial screen appears as follows:

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You can add more processes to the list by clicking + on the right side of the window under “Last Reported”. To determine the appropriate value to enter in the Name field for process monitoring, use the following methods:

• Windows:

  1. View the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete and selecting Task Manager.

  2. On the Process tab of the Task Manager, find the name of the application under the Image Name column. This is the explicit value to enter in the Name field of the Process configuration tab.

• Linux/Unix:

  Execute the ps command for your Linux/Unix distributive to determine the appropriate process name to enter in the Name field of the Process configuration tab. For example, to see a list of all command in a standard Linux system, execute the following command:

  $ ps -e -o comm

  Select the process names from the output listed.

For illustration, here is the process agent populated with two processes to monitor, syslogd and sshd:

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Note:

The Enable Process Monitor, Enabled, and Notify check boxes have all been checked. This enables monitoring of both processes and will alert all assigned notifiers if either of these processes is no longer detected (Threshold value < 1).

5.2.2.4 User Scripts

The ServerAgent software considers the presence of user scripts staged by the user to perform monitoring functions beyond the categories offered by ServerAgent. Details of the user script functionality and supported configuration options may be found under the section Monitoring User-Defined Scripts found later in this document.

5.2.2.5 Connection

The Connection monitor enables a user to monitor specific network services running on a designated host. The syntax for adding a new connection to monitor is host:port, for example:

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Values returned by the network monitor are 0 or 1 for failed to connect and connect success, respectively.

5.2.2.6 Distributed Collection

The ServerAgent software may be instructed to proxy for other ServerAgents that do not have visibility to the public Internet. The Distributed Collection tab provides a means of specifying which ServerAgents will be subordinate to this ServerAgent. In the example below, ServerAgent T-blue will be the proxy server for T-aqua, T-green, T-lavender, and T-scarlet:

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Click on the ServerAgent name in the Available ServerAgents box to select ServerAgent to act as proxy for the current ServerAgent and click Add. The selected ServerAgent will appear in the Proxied ServerAgents box. Select multiple ServerAgents by pressing Ctrl and clicking.

Note:

This is valid only for accounts with two or more ServerAgents configured.

ServerAgent can monitor processes, CPU, and basic disk utilization natively. Many customers, however, want to integrate resource- or environment-specific monitoring with ServerAgent. This can be done by adding user-defined monitoring scripts to ServerAgent.

Almost any executable script, .cmd file or program that outputs a single integral value to standard out can be integrated into ServerAgent.

5.3.1 How It Works

5.3.2 Install Scripts

5.3.3 Sample Scripts

5.3.4 Limit User Scripts

Under normal conditions, ServerAgent on your machine will run your user scripts approximately once per minute. Data is sent to AlertSite based on your ServerAgent plan, usually at 5- or 15-minute intervals, or as often as once a minute for Usage Based Monitoring accounts. However, if an error threshold is raised on your machine, the error condition is transmitted immediately to AlertSite so you can be notified. After an error has been reported, no more data is sent to AlertSite until the next monitoring interval.

There could be reasons why you want to limit how often a particular script runs on your machine, including:

• It is very CPU intensive and you would like to use it less often.

• It monitors data that does not change very often, such as making sure a daily transaction occurred.

• You want to make sure every transaction is captured by the AlertSite system for reporting purposes. In this case, you would want to run the script only on your particular monitoring interval to make sure all the data is transmitted to AlertSite.

For all the above cases, you can add a limit to the ServerAgent configuration by adding an Interval Limit, format :<N>, where N is the run interval, to the name of the user script.

For example, consider that you have a 5-minute ServerAgent collection interval and want to limit the shell script http_stat.sh to run only on the actual 5-minute interval. You also have a Perl script, db_check.pl, that you want to run once per hour (that is, every 12th interval).

To do this, add the script names with the appended interval limit in the Name field, then select the Compare type, Warning Value and Threshold Value, check Enabled and Notify as required, then submit the changes by clicking Submit in the upper right of the page. To illustrate:

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Note:

Once the information has been saved, it will be necessary to delete and re-add the script in order to add or modify the :<N> value. Any other configured scripts without :<N> will be run on the standard once-a-minute schedule.

Under Linux/Unix, a simple ps (process status) command will reveal if the daemons are running as seen in the following example:

– or –

Under Windows, go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools and double-click on Services. It may be necessary to expand the Name column to view the full text of the service names. In the list, find AlertSite ServerAgent Manager v2.x and AlertSite ServerAgent Monitor v2.x and ensure their status is shown as Started.

If ServerAgent cannot connect to its assigned monitoring server, error messages will be displayed in the log files that look like this:

Check if the server running ServerAgent has outbound connectivity to the appropriate AlertSite monitoring location. To verify that there is appropriate connectivity:

A connection should be established, and upon hitting Enter, the connection closed by foreign host” should be displayed.

Also, the communication manager will accept browser connection to its default listener port (2525). Point your browser to where ServerAgent is running, for example, http://localhost:2525 and you will be able to view the data pending publication as displayed in the example below:

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ServerAgent can be configured to add debugging information to your log files for network problems. Review the earlier section in this document regarding configuring a ServerAgent.

Logging Level – Assigns the level of verbosity with which ServerAgent will log messages.

Any time ServerAgent cannot talk to AlertSite, it will perform a ping and a traceroute for the particular monitoring server and include that information in the log file. Please note that this requires the following commands to be included in the program path of ServerAgent:

• Windows:

  ping and tracert

• Linux/Unix:

  ping and traceroute