Probes; Managing Probes; Establishing Thresholds - Red Hat NETWORK 3.7 Reference Manual

Chapter 7. Monitoring

7.4. Probes

Now that the Red Hat Network Monitoring Daemon has been installed and notification methods have
been created, you may begin installing probes on your Monitoring-entitled systems. If a system is
entitled to Monitoring, a Probes tab appears within its System Details page. It is here where you will
conduct most probe-related work.

7.4.1. Managing Probes

To add a probe to the system, it must be entitled to Monitoring (although Provisioning-entitled systems
may be monitored during the entitlement's technology preview). Further, you must have access to the
system itself, either as the system's individual administrator, through the System Group Administrator
role, or as the Organization Administrator. Then:
1. Log into the RHN website as either an Organization Administrator or the System Group Ad-
ministrator for the system.
2. Navigate to the System Details
3. On the System Probe Creation page, complete all required fields. First, select the Probe Com-
mand Group. This alters the list of available probes and other fields and requirements. Refer to
Appendix C Probes for the complete list of probes by command group. Remember that some
probes require the Red Hat Network Monitoring Daemon to be installed on the client system.
4. Select the desired Probe Command and the Monitoring Scout, typically RHN Monitoring
Satellite but possibly an RHN Proxy Server. Enter a brief but unique description for the
probe.
5. Select the Probe Notifications checkbox to receive notifications when the probe changes state.
Use the Probe Check Interval pulldown menu to determine how often notifications should be
sent. Selecting 1 minute (and the Probe Notification checkbox) means you will receive no-
tifications every minute the probe surpasses its CRITICAL or WARNING thresholds. Refer to
Section 7.3 Notifications to find out how to create notification methods and acknowledge their
messages.
6. Use the RHNMD User and RHNMD Port fields, if they appear, to force the probe to commu-
nicate via
sshd
Configuring SSH for details. Otherwise, accept the default values of nocpulse and 4545,
respectively.
7. If the Timeout field appears, review the default value and adjust to meet your needs. Most but
not all timeouts result in an UNKNOWN state. If the probe's metrics are time-based, ensure the
timeout is not less than the time alloted to thresholds. Otherwise, the metrics serve no purpose,
as the probe will time out before any thresholds are crossed.
8. Use the remaining fields to establish the probe's alert thresholds, if applicable. These CRIT-
ICAL and WARNING values determine at what point the probe has changed state. Refer to
Section 7.4.2 Establishing Thresholds for best practices regarding these thresholds.
9. When finished, click Create Probe. Remember, you must commit your Monitoring configura-
tion change on the Scout Config Push page for this to take effect.
To delete a probe, navigate to its Current State page (by clicking the name of the probe from the
System Details Probes tab), and click delete probe. Then confirm the deletion.

7.4.2. Establishing Thresholds

Many of the probes offered by RHN contain alert thresholds that, when crossed, indicate a change
in state for the probe. For instance, the Linux::CPU Usage probe allows you to set CRITICAL and
WARNING thresholds for the percent of CPU used. If the system being monitored reports 75 percent
Probes tab and click create new probe.
, rather than the Red Hat Network Monitoring Daemon. Refer to Section 7.2.3
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