System Monitoring Points

[Vicky_2]

I am trying to put together a list of important monitoring points for our HP Unix server, like system resource, kernals, parameters, log errors. Any suggestions or examples?

Thanks in advance

[Dayanand Naik]

Hi,

if u r running other application other than the normal OS then u have to keep an eye on the critical processes of that application.

for eg: HP OpenView runs plenty of processes which can be monitored by opcsv -status, ovstatus -c command. and of course ps -ef

Then check for EMS monitoring of h/w and other system devices. Check connectivity and that should be it.

Hope this helped.

Regards,
Dayanand Naik.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Vicky,

Scope is enormous.

A good answer is to have a software like Glance+/Measureware. If you have it installed, 50% of your question will be answered by the file /var/opt/perf/alarmdef. This will enable you to set alarms based on resource utilization, important kernel parameters etc.,.You can configure it in different ways to output to like getting e-mail, pager notification, to VPO (IT/0) etc.,

About OS log files - VPO has default templates that can be used to capture different types of error messages that get logged into files like syslog,sulog,shutdownlog,rc.log etc., But VPO is not for the sites that have fewer systems as it is supposed to be an "enterprize" solution.

Other H/W alarms - EMS will do a wonderful job. It can be configured to get Hardware messages like i-cache errors, disk subsystem errors, etc.,

Having all of them and investigating them further will become a versatile monitoring setup.

-Sri

[Santosh Nair_1]

It depends on the purpose of the monitor. If you're looking for performance information, definitely look at system resources, i.e. kernel parameters, memory usage, disk usage/io rates, networy utilization and cpu utilization.

If on the other hand you're looking to documnet your system for disaster recovery purposes, then the print_manifest utility, part of Ingite-UX, is a very good place to start. Also look at this forum thread:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,11866,0x4dec660142b2d5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

-Santosh

[harry d brown jr]

Vicky,

I agree with Sridhar, that it is an enormous task, and you should be able to start tackling it using products like Glance+/Measureware and PerfView. Yes, they will cost some money if you already don't own a license, but the cost is nothing compared to the benefits that they give you. And I agree with Dayanand that you can add OpenView to the mix. Vicky, also you can look into "BigBrother", at www.bb4.com.

Let us know how things progress. Best of luck!

harry

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