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Title
What does the "Abnormal number of processes" alarm mean? -
Description
The rule Number of Processes fired with an Abnormal number of processes alarm message. Does this mean the Host is struggling or is under heavy load? -
Cause
The rule doesn't have static thresholds, it rather relies on what the history of the number of processes has been for a specific Host calculated by Intelliprofile. If it detects an abnormally high number of processes, it fires an alarm. -
Resolution
This alarm is not necessarily indicative of excessive resources being used by the server, but rather an indication that something might have changed on the server that caused extra processes.
As an example, some servers use process forking to handle client requests, like Apache httpd, which may not have a direct impact on CPU or Memory, but keeping an eye on the number of processes may reveal an increase on the traffic or a DDoS or Slowloris attack.