KACE Systems Management Appliance 13.0 Common Documents - KACE Service Desk Administrator Guide

Working with monitoring profiles

Working with monitoring profiles

Monitoring profiles describe the criteria for creating an alert, by identifying text to search for in the device's log and associating that text with a defined alert level.

The appliance provides a set of default profiles for log monitoring of devices with supported operating systems, and also for SNMP trap devices. Beyond that, you can modify existing monitoring profiles, create your own profiles, and upload profiles created by other users. In addition, you have access to standard Log Enablement Packages (LEPs) to enable application and threshold monitoring.

The available monitoring profiles are listed on the Monitoring Profiles page

TIP: To display only the log monitoring profiles, in the top-right corner, click View By > Type > Log. To display the monitoring profiles for SNMP trap devices, click View By > Type > SNMP Trap.

As an example, the default profile for creating alerts for Mac OS X devices indicates that /var/log/system.log is the log that the monitoring function scans, looking for text that would trigger an alert. The following table describes the default search text in the Include Text field and the associated alert levels.

You can add other alerts customized to your operational needs.

The default profiles cover the following supported operating systems:

For devices with Linux operating systems, there are several different log paths for MySQL and Apache logs, depending on the version of the OS. See Profile log paths for MySQL and Apache.

For Agentless devices that are monitored using the SNMP trap mechanism, you need to provide trap message formats and expressions to capture the specific trap elements. See Configure SNMP trap messages and alerting criteria.

In the Log Enablement Packages list page, Quest publishes a base set of Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor (PerfMon) templates and non-Windows open-source Perl scripts, so that users can extend their monitoring capability and identify system and application performance issues. These templates and scripts are available so that users do not have to create them from scratch. Monitoring on the appliance works without these additional templates and scripts, but the profiles that are created from the templates and scripts are helpful if you want to do performance threshold monitoring.

In addition, for convenience, there is a default profile that can be used if you download optional Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor (PerfMon) templates to managed Windows Server 2003 devices. See Set up a Windows Server 2003 device with an ITNinja monitoring Log Enablement Package (LEP).

Edit a profile

Edit a profile

You can change, add, or remove alert criteria and log paths for any existing profile.

If you want to use an existing profile as a starting point for creating a profile, see Create a new profile using a default profile as a template.

To identify events that you want raised as alerts, use strings or regular expressions in Include Text to specify the appropriate message content. For instance, if you enter the string, Physical memory, an alert is raised for every message with that exact string.

To cover multiple possibilities, you can use a regular expression. For example, if you want alerts for any drive mount point that has drive errors, in the form, “Drive /dev/[any drive mount point] has drive errors”, you can use Drive /dev/[a-z]{1,} has drive errors in Include Text. Alerts are raised for any messages that contain "Drive /dev/" followed by any word of any length containing the characters a-z, followed by "has drive errors".

You can exclude specific events from being raised as alerts if you find them unnecessary or distracting. To filter the alerts you do not want to receive, you use Exclude Text to indicate the content that identifies an unwanted alert. You can use Exclude Text to filter whole categories of alerts, or use Exclude Text in conjunction with Include Text to refine a subset of an alert category. See Examples of Include Text and Exclude Text for monitoring profiles.

NOTE: If you are editing one of the default profiles, you cannot make any change to the Add Automatically To field.

1.	On the line with the include search text (or filter for SNMP traps) you want to change, click the Edit button: .

1.	On the line with the text (or filter for SNMP traps) you want to change in order to exclude certain alerts, click the Edit button: .

1.	On the line with the alert level you want to change, click the Edit button: .

1.	On the Criteria category header, click the Add button: .

NOTE: You can return a default profile to factory settings for its operating system by using the Reset to Factory Settings button at the bottom of the page.

Configure SNMP trap messages and alerting criteria

Configure SNMP trap messages and alerting criteria

You can configure SNMP trap messages and the alerting criteria using the Profiles page.

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a protocol for monitoring managed devices on a network. This protocol is supported by Dell Open Manage and many third-party products. When you enable this feature on the appliance, and the related devices are also enabled for monitoring, the appliance can receive SNMP traps from the monitored Agentless devices using SNMP connections, such as printers, projectors, and routers.

SNMP traps are messages initiated by network devices and sent to the trap receiver on the appliance. For example, a router can send a message when its power supply fails. Or, a printer initiates a message when it runs out of paper. The appliance receives these traps and generates alerts when certain pre-defined thresholds are reached.

You can configure SNMP trap messages and the alerting criteria using the Profile Detail page.

You can include or exclude certain events from being detected, as needed.

NOTE: If you are editing one of the default profiles, you cannot make any change to the Add Automatically To field.

◦	To add an alert level, under Criteria, click to add a new alert level.

◦	To edit an existing alert level, in the row containing the alart level, click .

NOTE: You can return a default profile to factory settings for its operating system by using the Reset to Factory Settings button at the bottom of the page.

Create a new profile using a default profile as a template

Create a new profile using a default profile as a template

You can copy a default or existing monitoring profile and edit the copy to create a new profile.

You are not limited to one profile for each device. You can create additional profiles that generate different alerts and bind the profiles to devices that already have one or more profiles associated with them.

NOTE: If you are editing one of the default profiles, you cannot make any change to the Add Automatically To field.

The path can be the basic one for the operating system, as shown in the table.

Operating system	Log path
CentOS	/var/log/messages
Debian	/var/log/syslog
Fedora	/var/log/messages
FreeBSD	/var/log/messages
Mac OS X	/var/log/system.log
openSUSE	/var/log/messages
Oracle Enterprise Linux	/var/log/messages
Red Hat Enterprise Linux	/var/log/messages
Solaris	/var/adm/messages
SUSE Enterprise Linux	/var/log/messages
Ubuntu	/var/log/syslog
Windows	application for Windows Application   NOTE: You must use the Full Name of the event log, as it appears in the properties for that log. To ensure you have the correct Full Name, open the Event Viewer. Expand Windows Logs, right-click the event log and select Properties. Use the version of the Full Name that appears in the field in the Log Properties dialog. Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational for Windows Task Scheduler Operational

Alternatively, you can enter a path that defines a log that contains data beyond the basic event logs. For instance, if you had an application on SUSE that sends its data to a specific log such as /var/log/<myapplog>, you can use that path in a new profile, and define the search text and alert level as described in this procedure.

For devices with Linux operating systems, there are a number of different log paths for MySQL and Apache logs, depending on the version of the OS. See Profile log paths for MySQL and Apache.

NOTE: Only one log path can be defined in a profile. You must create multiple profiles for multiple logs.

1.	On the line with the include search text you want to change, click the Edit button: .

1.	On the line with the text you want to change in order to exclude certain alerts, click the Edit button: .

1.	On the line with the alert level you want to change, click the Edit button: .

1.	On the Criteria category header, click the Add button: .

4.	Optional: Reorder the new alert criteria using the Drag button: .

The profile is available to be assigned to a device on that device's Monitoring Detail page.