Foglight for Databases 6.1.0 - User Guide

Working with Dashboards

This group of topics describes how to work with Foglight dashboards and provides an overview of the common elements that are found on most dashboards.

Foglight uses views to group, format, and display monitoring data.

Dashboards are top-level views that do not need to receive data from other views. Dashboards typically contain a number of other views that display monitoring data. You access dashboards using the navigation panel.

Foglight includes a number of monitoring views and dashboards. You can also create and edit your own custom views and dashboards.

For information about common elements that are found on most dashboards, as well as creating your own custom views and dashboards, see the following topics:

This section describes the Foglight screen elements that you can see regardless of which cartridges have been installed.

In addition to the display area and the two panels, a typical screen in Foglight includes other elements, which are indicated in the following graphic.

For more information, see the following topics:

The navigation panel contains all the dashboards that you can access based on your role. On the left side of the page, hover your mouse over the arrow to view the list of available dashboards. Expand a module and select a dashboard to view it in the display area. The navigation panel can be edited to show only the modules that interest you. You may search the navigation panel to show only dashboards matching the entered string.

When you move your mouse away, the navigation panel closes to give you a full view of the dashboard contents. If you want to keep the navigation panel open, click the arrow on the left of the display area. To close the panel, click the arrow again. See Close Arrows.

Foglight remembers the state of the navigation panel between logins, so if you make changes to the navigation panel when you log out, those changes will persist the next time you log in.

NOTE: If you do not see any dashboards in the navigation panel, the user you signed in as may not have been assigned to a group. For more information, see Getting Started FAQ.

Use the navigation panel’s Edit Mode to show only the dashboards that interest you. Changes made to the navigation panel will persist after logging out.

The search function in the navigation panel allows you to easily find modules and dashboards containing your search string.

As you begin typing, the items displayed in the navigation menu will be filtered to match your search. To cancel the search, click the in the search field.

Some actions require controls not present in the new Foglight interface. To use these functions, you must open the

Classic Foglight web console.

IMPORTANT: The Action Panel is not visible in the default Foglight UI configuration. To view the Action Panel, you must open the Classic Foglight interface. Refer to Opening the Foglight classic Web Console

The action panel lists the various actions that you can perform on the current dashboard. It also lists views and data that you can add to a dashboard or report that you are creating and provides access to the online help.

On the right side of the page, hover your mouse over the arrow to view the list of the available actions. When you move your mouse away, the action panel closes to give you a full view of the dashboard contents. If you want to keep the action panel open, click the arrow on the right of the display area. To close the panel, click the arrow again. See Close Arrows.

Foglight remembers the state of the action panel between logins, so if you collapsed the action panel when logging out, the panel is collapsed the next time you log in.

The following tabs are available in the action panel:

When you are working with a custom dashboard or report template, two more tabs appear:

The Close arrows are used to conserve space on the display area. Click the arrows to:

expand the display area and collapse the navigation panels.

Table 2. The header contains the icons described in this table.

Icon	Description
	The Foglight logo.
Search	Type a search string to see hits in all Monitored Objects. For more information, see Search.
username	Displays your user name. Clicking the icon or the arrow, two sub items will be displayed, Preferences and Sign out. • Click Sign out to log out Foglight. When you log out, Foglight reclaims all resources used in the current session. NOTE: This is the recommended way to exit Foglight, rather than just closing the browser.
Information icon	Displays the general information for Foglight, including the following sub items: • Help: Click the item to access to the online help and a search field for the help. • Quest Support: Click the item to access to the Support Bundles page. • Send Feedback: Click the item to access to the Contact Us information on Quest company website. • About: Click the item to display the version information, copyright information, as well as Legal Notices and Contact information.

The Search field, located in the header, is a global search tool which allows you to search for any monitored object

NOTE: If you have the cartridge developer role, you can also view Web Component Framework (WCF) search hits listed under the Definitions category.

You can run, create, and manage your reports from any dashboard. On the top right corner of the dashboard is a reports menu. Some dashboards have an associated report template displayed in the top of this menu. For more information on reports, see Reporting on Your Enterprise .

The display area is where you view dashboards or reports and work with elements in your custom dashboards and reports. See Creating a Custom Dashboard and Building a Custom Report Template for more information.

TIP: Maximize the size of the display area by closing the navigation panel.

Foglight controls the current time range using a special control called a zonar. See Time Range for more information. The default time range is the last 4 hours.

You can freeze the data Foglight displays at a specific time range to diagnose problems that occurred during that interval. See Freezing a Time Range for more information.

The time range at the top of a dashboard indicates the current time range for all the views on the page. You can override the default current time range setting (the last 4 hours), by choosing another interval in the User Preferences page. For more information, see Setting Your User Preferences.

NOTE: If some of the views contained in a dashboard have independent time ranges, Foglight does not display the time range.

By default, the time range in a dashboard is displayed in real time. You can freeze the time range so that the data Foglight displays in the views reflects a certain interval. When the time range is frozen, the views do not display new data. Freezing the time range helps you diagnose problems that occurred during a specific interval. For further details, see Freezing a Time Range.

Changing the time range in a dashboard normally affects all the views in the dashboard. If an individual view in a dashboard has a different time range, that takes precedence over the time range for the dashboard.

Click the time range (shown below) to access the timeline and calendar options, which allow you to specify a new time range.

NOTE: The time range for a summary view is likely to be different from the time range for a detail view. Therefore, the time range that you select affects only the current view and drill-downs from it; it does not affect higher-level views.

Click the Timeline option in the time range to:

Hover the cursor over the zonar to cause a popup to appear that displays the dates and interval (number of hours or days) spanned by the time range.

Click the middle of the zonar to drag it to the left or the right. The start and end times of the range changes, but the total interval it spans stays the same.

Increase or decrease the interval by clicking and dragging one side of the zonar. As you drag, the popup displays the new time range.

As you drag the edges of the zonar, the timeline scale adjusts automatically, increasing or decreasing the units of time.

If you drag the right edge of the zonar when the time range is in real time (the word Now is shown in the time range display), the interval persists and not the specific date and time to which you set the zonar.

Use the calendar options to set a specific time range by specifying the time and date from which and to which you want the range to span.

NOTE: If you enter an invalid date or time, a red exclamation mark appears and you cannot apply your changes.

Granularity controls the size of the metric intervals. The default option is Raw, which displays the actual collected data points. The Auto option uses intervals that are sized according to the time range. For example, a one-hour range has five-minute intervals, while a one-week range has one-hour intervals. Ranges from 1 minute to 1 week are also available.

If you set too large an interval, there may not be enough points to plot on a chart. For example, if you only have one day of data, an interval of six months results in a single point. If an interval is too small, there may be too many data points to display if the chart is small.

The maximum and minimum values of a metric are actual numbers, while data points inside an interval are averaged. Agents may report their data at uneven intervals. Foglight sets the data to be plotted in evenly-spaced intervals using data collected from any number of agents.

To do this, the data points inside the interval are averaged. This has the effect of evening out the maximum and minimum values if an interval contains more than one real data point. The maximum and minimum values of a metric are based on real data and not an averaged value. These values are often plotted as markers on the chart. Therefore the averaged values on the plotted curve or bar may not match the real values of the markers.

By default, the time range on a dashboard is displayed in real time. You can tell this at-a-glance if the word Now is shown in the time range display.

You can disconnect from real time and “freeze” a dashboard at a specified time range. When this occurs, the views on the dashboard will not receive any new data.

Some views show a frozen time range by default. This type of time range is called a diagnostic time range. See Diagnostic Time Range for more information.

TIP: When you hover over the icon a popup indicates if the time range is real time or frozen:

In some places in the Foglight browser interface, a diagnostic time range is calculated when drilling down on an item of interest. This most often happens when looking at the details of an alarm. By default, Foglight shows a four hour window, where the alarm time range is placed three hours into the window (that is, three hours prior and one hour past the alarm). The diagnostic time range stays frozen until you unfreeze (toggle) the time range.

The diagnostic time range function works as follows:

NOTE: The diagnostic time range function is not available for all drill-downs.

There are several different types of alert indicators used to represent monitoring data in Foglight. The types are:

The severity and state icons tell you about the condition of an application, server, or process. What they represent changes according to their context. They often represent a rolled-up state of the data collected on the object. For example, the same state icon can indicate that a server is down or that a process is down.

Many summary views show icons that represent an aggregation of the detailed objects of similar types. You can have Foglight prioritize the data when determining the aggregation by creating a service level agreement to do this. For example, if three test servers are down, and one production server is active, then a summary view would show a critical icon, not a fatal icon.

Depending on where it is, you can hover over a severity or state icon or click it to get further information about the condition it represents.

Severity indicators can indicate:

Table 3. Severity indicators:

Severity Indicator	Indicates...	Description
	Normal	The component is operating within normal thresholds. A normal severity level indicates that there have been no critical, warning, or fatal events fired. Foglight does not record events that are successful; it can only determine that there are no events that had problems.
	Warning	Represents a possible performance problem, based on calculations on current server metrics against best-practices thresholds.
	Critical	Indicates that the current metric values point strongly towards performance-related problems with the specified component.
	Fatal	There is a very strong indication that the server is experiencing conditions which will degrade performance.

Availability indicators show the availability of a service.

Table 4. Availability indicators.

Icon	Description
	Available
	Not available

Different types of smaller views provide additional detail about an element in a view. Examples of these views are:

Tooltips and dwells disappear when you move the mouse, but a popup remains open until you close it by clicking outside it or clicking the close icon in the corner. You can also maximize some popups by clicking the maximize icon in the upper right corner.

When you are creating a custom dashboard or report, you can choose one of the options under Columns under the General tab in the action panel to divide the display area into one, two, or three columns.

Drop down lists are views that change the context of other views, such as those in the same container view. When you select an item from a drop down list, the view is refreshed with new data. For example, a view may contain a drop-down list of metrics, a chart, and a table. Selecting a different metric changes the context of the page, and the chart and table are updated accordingly.

A drop down displays a list of single options. A tree expands to display a hierarchy of options. Both can have the same effect on the context.

Depending on how the chart was designed, the customizer icon might appear when you hover the cursor over a chart or might always be visible. For example, on the Alarms dashboard, the customizer for the Alarm(s) table is always visible.

NOTE: Depending on the context, the customizer icon is also called the Edit or Options icon.

If the customizer icon is enabled you can:

The option to export data to PDF, Excel, CSV, XML, and Image formats are available for charts and tables.

For example, you can create new graphs using drag and drop metrics onto a dashboard, and then export the data to CSV output. Therefore, you can create multiple metrics, set a time range, export to CSV, and then open the data in Excel.

Foglight makes use of common views in most of the standard dashboards. Using common views in dashboards is an effective way to enable and create easy workflows. Examples of views used in many of the dashboards include the Alarm List and Host Summary.

The Alarm List view displays a summary of alarms. The Alarm list view allows you to examine alarms from different perspectives by choosing one of the following tabs:

Expand nodes in these tabs and click on details to drill down and further investigate aspects of the alarms in your system.

For additional information the Alarm List view, see the following topics:

An error instance is any object in your environment that is the source of an alarm.

Foglight lists each error instance’s health, number of alarms, and health history in the Error Instance(s) tab.

You can isolate issues related to systems more easily by showing alarms organized by the originating host.

Foglight lists each host’s health, number of alarms, and health history in the Related Host(s) tab.

You can understand which agents are causing alarms to fire by showing alarms organized by the agent that collected the data.

Foglight lists each agent’s health, number of alarms, and health history in the Related Agents(s) tab.

You can hide any of the columns in the Alarms List view.

An alarm chain is a series of consecutive non-normal alarm states for the same alarm event. For example, the CPU utilization on a specific machine keeps changing values that trigger a non-normal state. The following chain describes the alarm from 10:55 until 11:30 (when it becomes normal again)

10:55 AM – Normal

11:00 AM – Warning

11:05 AM – Critical

11:15 AM – Fatal

11:20 AM – Warning

11:25 AM – Critical

11:30 AM – Normal

Using the Alarm Details dialog box, you can choose either the Acknowledge or Acknowledge Until Normal option for a current alarm if you want the alarm to remain acknowledged until it reaches a normal state. For example, if you choose the Acknowledge until Normal option at 11:00 AM, the alarm stays acknowledged until 11:30 AM. In contrast, if you choose the Acknowledge option at 11:00 AM, the alarm (chain) would be “Unacknowledged” again at 11:05 AM when the severity has changed.

NOTE: Alarm chains can only be seen in the Alarm Details dialog box. See Viewing Alarm Details for more information about this dialog box.

From the Alarm Details dialog box, you can drill down to a view that shows historic occurrences of an alarm. For example, if you are looking at the CPU utilization alarm for host1, you can go to a view that shows historic occurrences of that alarm (CPU utilization) on the same object (host1).

Alarm notes provide you with a handy way to record information about an alarm for all other users to view. For example, if you are managing alarms during an installation of Foglight and if an urgent alarm comes up, you can add a note to the alarm that you are checking if the back-up process may be causing the problem. The note, along with a username stamp and a timestamp, are attached to the alarm.

There are two ways to add notes from the Alarm Details dialog box, by using either the:

Alarm notes consist of free-form, non-localizable text, a user name, and a timestamp.

Only the creator of the note can edit the note.

Only the creator of the note can delete the note.

Click or hover the mouse over the name of a physical host to view a host summary popup or dwell.

A diagnostic time range is displayed at the top of the summary. This time range indicates the period during which the alarm was fired. It is usually in the past and is sometimes different from the time range that appears on a dashboard. For example, the following alarm occurred on Monday May 11th during a particular time range, while the date displayed on the dashboard is Tuesday May 12th.

Click on items in the popup to drill down to more information about the host, its alarms, and its performance.

Drilling down from the popup retains the time range during which the alarm occurred. To go back to the monitoring time range you last used, “unfreeze” the range by following the procedures in Freezing a Time Range.

Switch to console mode if you want to maximize the space available in the Foglight browser interface. For example, when you want to focus on one dashboard in a small or non-standard display.

TIP: Create a custom dashboard to focus on a single view. Add just that view to the dashboard and then maximize it (Options > Maximize in the top-right corner of the view). See Creating a Custom Dashboard for more information.

In addition to using the dashboards that are supplied with Foglight or created by dashboard developers in your organization, you can create custom dashboards for your specific needs. These dashboards can contain any combination of tables and charts that you find useful.

As with creating a custom report, the custom dashboards that you create are located under My Dashboards in the navigation panel.

TIP: Visit http://eDocs.quest.com to watch our learning videos. See How to create custom Foglight dashboards.

NOTE: This option is disabled if no dashboard is currently selected. To choose the dashboard to be used as your starting point, select the name of that dashboard in the navigation panel.

TIP: You can create a custom dashboard or report using parameterized input values. By using Parameterized Input Values you can quickly redefine what data is displayed in your custom dashboard or report at any given time. See Using Parameterized Input Values.

When you finish creating your custom dashboard, you do not need to save it. It is automatically available under My Dashboards in the navigation panel.

You can construct a custom dashboard based on all Foglight data by selecting any data available. Foglight provides you with a blank display area to which you can add any elements you want.

IMPORTANT: Creating dashboards requires the Action Panel. The Action Panel is not visible in the default Foglight UI configuration. To view the Action Panel, you must open the Classic Foglight interface. Refer to Opening the Foglight classic Web Console

NOTE: You do not need to save your dashboard when you finish making changes. It is automatically available under My Dashboards in the navigation panel.

You can construct a custom dashboard based on a service by selecting any service in Foglight. Foglight provides you with a blank display area to which you can add any elements you want.

TIP: If you later decide to add more views or data elements to your custom dashboard using the drag and drop functionality, see Using Parameterized Input Values.

You can create a custom dashboard based on an existing dashboard by selecting any dashboard in Foglight as your starting point. Foglight provides you with a blank display area to which you can add any elements you want.

TIP: If you later decide to add more views or data elements to your custom dashboard using the drag and drop functionality, see Using Parameterized Input Values.

You can create a report based on a custom dashboard and schedule that report to generate at a specific time. For example, you have access to a custom dashboard which is monitoring the memory usage for a Host machine that has been experiencing memory leak problems the past several weeks; you want to send a report to several interested parties to inform them about the progress of performance for this particular host. To do this, you can quickly create and schedule a report based on this custom dashboard.

TIP: Watch the tutorial on how to use parameterized input values. From the toolbar in your report, click Show Tutorial.

You can add data to your custom dashboard and change the way it is displayed.

For more information, see the following topics:

The Add View wizard is provided for the same function as creating a custom report.

You can use the Add Text option, found on the General tab of the Action panel, to add text to your fixed position layout custom dashboard. The Add Text option allows you to set a font style for your text, specify a background image for the portlet view, and to configure an action for the portlet view. For example, you can configure the action to display a popup view when the user clicks on the text.

In conjunction with the fixed position layout custom dashboard, you can set the background to a geographical map or diagram and then precisely position views on top of it to represent the monitored state of objects at specific locations.

Use the Edit View Properties dialog box to upload a background image, such as map of a support or sales region or a diagram of your server rack.

TIP: Quickly add a map as your background image by selecting one of the map images that are included with Foglight from Dashboard Development > Support > Maps > Base Theme.

If you chose the Fixed Size layout option in the Setting a Dashboard Layout dialog box, use the Edit page layout dialog box to position your view exactly where you want it.

You can also resize the view to fit the space you have available on the screen or change the view’s display options.

NOTE: When you group views, Foglight nests them as static views. This means that they do not change when the views from which they were copied change and Foglight does not update the data they display.

NOTE: You cannot edit the properties of grouped views.

TIP: Clear the Show Title check box when grouping views so that the new grouped view does not display multiple titles.

You can configure your settings for your custom views. For example, you can edit metric views by changing the display type, selecting metric labels, configuring chart settings, and choosing the action that occurs when you select or dwell over a metric.

NOTE: The options that are available on the Config Portlet view depend on the type of view you are editing. The options listed in step 3 are only an example.

The Display type tab contains options where you can select the visual layout according to a chart type, gauge type, or list type. For more information on the display types available and their settings, see Options tab.

Use the check boxes in the Metrics tab to select the metrics that you want to appear in your view.

The following tables lists the options available depending on the display type:

Table 5. Charts Table:

Icon	Name	Setting	Description	Option/Limits
	Plot (draws each series as a line graph)   Area (draws each series as connected points of data, filled below the points)   Stacking Area (draws each series as a stacked cluster)   Bar (draws each series as a bar in a cluster)	Line Width	Specifies the thickness of lines in all charts or this chart.	• Automatic • Small • Medium • Large   *available for Plot chart only
		Metric Value	Controls the type of value that is displayed for one metric or all metrics in a chart.	• None • Average: The chart displays the average value for the metric per interval. • Minimum: The chart displays the actual lowest value for the metric per interval. • Maximum: The chart displays the actual highest value for the metric per interval. • Minimum/Maximum: The chart displays the maximum and minimum value for the metric per interval. • Sum
		Show one chart per metric	Indicate if you only want to display one chart per metric.	Check box
		Only show axis of selected metric (different charts will line up)	Select this option to show only the axis for the selected metric. For an example, see Grouping Metrics with Many Parent Hosts.	Check box
		Show thresholds for selected metric	If a metric has a threshold, it is displayed.	You can choose to show thresholds only for the selected metric.
		Show data at both start and end of intervals	Applies only to plot and area charts.	Check box
		Bounds	Sets the chart axis so that it does not go out of chart boundaries.	Selected by default.
		Show Overall	Displays the overall value for the set time range as a dashed line.	• Average displays the overall average. • Min displays the overall minimum. • Max displays the overall maximum.
		Show Min/Max As	Displays the minimum and maximum per interval.	• Envelope (a filled-in area between the minimum and maximum) • Marks • Lines
		Show Baseline Min/Max As	Displays the baseline minimum and maximum.	• Envelope (a filled-in area between the minimum and maximum) • Marks • Lines
		Show Standard Deviation As	Similar to the Min/Max setting; lets you highlight a range per interval.	• Envelope (a filled-in area between the minimum and maximum) • Marks • Lines
		Standard deviation multiplier	Determine the high and low values by setting the deviation from the average.	The default value is 1, but the unit of deviation depends on the metric.
	High/Low chart	Show Average Line	Emphasizes the highest and lowest values.	Settings for the other type of chart types are not available.

 

Table 6. Gauge Charts

Icon	Name	Setting	Description	Option/Limits
	Metric Indicator	Indicator Size	Useful for highlighting a fluctuating value in your real-time application in a visually meaningful way	• Normal • Wider
	Spinner	N/A	Represents data using a rotating wheel.	No options.
	Horizontal Bar	Bar Thickness	Horizontal bar, Vertical bar, and cylinder give you flexibility to present data in terms of a graduated scale	• Thinner • Normal • Thicker
	Vertical Bar	N/A		No options.
	Cylinder	N/A		No options.
	Flow Gauge	Sparkline options	Communication between host server components are represented by animated data flow that indicate the direction of the communication.	Show Sparkline: (check box)   Sparkline displays: • Average • Minimum • Maximum • Extreme Flow Direction: • Left • Right Prominence • Less • Normal • More

Table 7. Lists Chart

Icon	Name	Setting	Description	Option/Limits
	Metric List	Show Sparkline	Displays a sparkline for each metric.	Check box
	Table List	Show Column For...	Display the columns you select.	Check boxes for: • Min (selected by default) • Average (selected by default) • Max (selected by default) • Sum   • Baseline Min • Baseline Max   • Standard Deviation

You can set the actions that occur when a user interacts with your view, such as its popup, dwell, and drill-down behavior. For example, you can configure an action so that a popup appears when a metric is selected.

You can make changes such as sharing a view, editing its properties, or maximizing it by clicking the Options icon () in the title bar. See Working with Views.

Using parameterized input values for your custom dashboard or report allows you to redefine an input value during scheduling or at run-time. With parameterized input values, you can customize a dashboard or report at any given time.

For example, you have a custom dashboard which is designed to monitor memory, storage disk, and network utilization, as well as space used, for a particular host. If you want to use the same custom dashboard to monitor another host, you can so quickly by resetting the parameterized input value defined in the Action panel, General tab, and Page Input value.

TIP: When using parameterized input values for a custom dashboard or a report, it is recommended that you select a node that is higher in the tree to be a parameterized input value, instead of using a specific metric lower in the node tree. By doing so, more parameterized input values are available to select from to customize your dashboard or report.

TIP: Visit http://eDocs.quest.com to watch our learning videos. See Customizing Foglight Reports with Parameterized Inputs.

You can delete any custom dashboard that you have created. You may also be able to delete dashboards created by other users, although this is not recommended. You cannot delete any default dashboards or dashboards created by dashboard developers in your organization.

Add predefined charts to your custom dashboards and customize charts to access and analyze data provided by Foglight.

Charts display data graphically. Certain graphing behaviors that they possess result in data being interpreted rather than recorded. Start/end behavior, data granularity, treatment of data holes, line thickness, minimum/maximum versus average, and data envelopes all influence how data is interpreted and displayed in a chart.

TIP: If you want data that cannot be misinterpreted, use a table. However, make sure you output min/max, average, count and standard deviation.

You can create a metric chart using:

You can also add one or more metrics to an existing chart.

The y-axis shows the units for the metric. If there is more than one metric in the chart, the y-axis shows the units for the first metric that was charted, unless you have cleared the Only show axis of selected metric (different charts will line up) check box in the Options tab of the Add Metric View wizard (see Options tab for details).

By using the Customizer function you have the option to export metric data for charts to PDF, CSV, Excel, XML, or Image format. See Exporting Data from Charts and Tables.

For more information about working with charts, see the following topics:

For any custom dashboard visualization views that you create dynamically (drag and drop), there are built-in, default drilldowns available, so you can navigate to another view. You can use the metrics analyzer to view the data in different ways, by experimenting with metrics included in the same parent object.

NOTE: By default, advanced metrics are not displayed. To see all metrics belonging to a parent object, in the navigation panel, under Metrics Selector, select the Show All check box.

When you have many metrics from different parent hosts on a single chart, the parent label appears in the legend, as shown below.

You can choose to display only the y-axis of the selected metric. This is useful when the metrics you are charting have different units or a wide range of values. See Editing a View for information about changing this option.

If the Customizer (sometimes referred to as Edit) icon is enabled for charts, you have the option to dynamically change the chart to a different chart type (for example, bar, plot, area, stacking area). For example, switch the chart type to Area to emphasize the magnitude of change over time and illustrate the metric parts in relation to the whole graph.

NOTE: Applying changes to a customizer in a view is only a temporary change. Once you exit the view, the default settings for the chart are applied.

To export the chart to CSV, PDF, Excel, or XML format, see Exporting Data from Charts and Tables.

For plot or bar charts, you can zoom into an area to view data at different levels of detail by using CTRL + drag. You can also drag on an axis to specify the region you would like to zoom into (a zoom region).

Viewing, Acknowledging, and Clearing Alarms

Alarms are triggered when problems arise in your monitored environment. Foglight fires alarms when a rule determines that certain pre-defined conditions are met.

Use the Alarms dashboard to view the state of alarms across your monitored environment and take immediate action on them. The Alarms dashboard shows alarm counts by time, allowing you to identify excessive alarm counts or outage events.

NOTE: This chapter discusses managing alarms from the Alarms dashboard, however alarm lists appear in many places throughout Foglight —for example, at the bottom of the My Services dashboard or in the popup that appears when you click an alarm in the Domains dashboard. You can view details about, acknowledge, or clear alarms in these alarm lists by following essentially the same steps described in this chapter.

Input “Alarms” in the Search textbox on the Foglight Home page to access the Alarms dashboard.

TIP: You can also access this dashboard from the navigation panel: select Homes > Alarms.

The Alarms dashboard shows the information of system alarms and changes, and facilitates the investigation of top issues in your environment. The Alarms dashboard includes the following elements:

The Alarm Analysis view is to provide a snapshot of alarms and to help you investigate top issues in your environment, so you can more proactively manage your alerts, thresholds, and monitored system. The alarm count in this view includes SLA alarms.

The maximum number of alarms for the selected time range is set to 5000 by default. To change this value, type the number in the Max Number of Evaluated Alarms field, and then click Apply. The Max Number of Evaluated Alarms is scaled from 0 to 100,000 and is managed by the Alarm_Analysis_Max_Object variable. To change the value of this variable, search for and edit Alarm_Analysis_Max_Object from Dashboards > Administration > Rules & Notifications > Manage Registry Variables.

NOTE: It is not recommended that the value of Alarm_Analysis_Max_Object is set to be larger than 100,000; otherwise the loading of the Alarm Analysis view will be unsatisfactorily slow.

The Alarms Analysis (Preview) view contains the following elements:

At the bottom of the Alarms dashboard, the view lists up to 5000 alarms for the current or historical time range. It does not list SLA alarms. You can filter the list, sort it by column, or acknowledge and clear alarms.

The alarms list also shows cleared alarms and indicates whether an alarm has been acknowledged or cleared. Cleared alarms appear dimmed and can be filtered out using the Alarm Filter dialog box. To access the Alarm Filter dialog box, click Alarm Filter in the top-left corner of the list.

To see more detailed information about an alarm, hover over or click a column to display a dwell or a popup. You can select an alarm and investigate, acknowledge, or clear it.

The alarm list view allows you to select different perspectives on alarms. This chapter discusses using the Alarm(s) tab. For information about using the other tabs, see Alarm List.

Viewing Alarms

This topic discusses viewing alarms in more detail.

You can filter the list according to different criteria by clicking in the top-left corner of the list and changing the settings in the Alarm Filter dialog box.

For example, you can filter the list of alarms to show only Current or Historical alarms. Select Current to shows all outstanding alarms. This is essentially the current outstanding set of alarms that need to be addressed. Use Current if you want to see what is immediately noteworthy. In contrast to Current, Historical shows all alarms that fired during a certain interval, regardless of whether they are active or cleared. Use Historical if you want to see what is happening in your monitored environment during a specific time range.

In the Alarm Filter dialog box, you can also set a number of other parameters to help you filter the list, and you can set the maximum number of results to display in the table.

To view details about an alarm, click its severity icon in the Alarm(s) list. Information about that alarm is displayed in the Alarm Details dialog box. Depending on how a rule is set up, the Alarms Details view varies. If the rule is set up with no associations to its Rule ID, the following view is displayed:

This dialog box shows the alarm’s service level impact and its full history. The history includes all consecutive alarms fired by the same rule on the same object (instance) regardless of the dashboard’s time range.

In addition, this dialog box displays a diagnostics and a recommended action message to assist you in resolving the problem. Click one of the provided links to display a drilldown page that will assist you in diagnosing the problem. For example, if an alarm is fired because the credentials were not established when trying to connect to a host machine, drilldown links to credential details are provided. Click the Diagnostics link to display the Credentials Query dialog box. From there, you can configure the credential query that triggered the alarm. Click the Recommended Action link to display the Manage Credential dashboard. From there you can map each credential to one or more resources, choosing the parameters and patterning criteria that best suit your needs.

The Alarm Details dialog box also illustrates how the alarm has changed in the current alarm chain. See Alarm Chaining.

You can also drill down from this dialog box to investigate the severity of the alarm in more detail. For example, click the icon in the Service Level Impact table for information about the service whose Service Level Agreement is affected by the alarm. Performing impact analysis on an alarm helps you to determine the priority of the problem that caused the alarm to fire.

If an alarm has an association set up and is triggered by a rule, the following dialog box appears:

This dialog box shows the summary, history, and source information to assist you in diagnosing the cause of an alarm. From here you can identify the objects (instances) affected, and review the suggested causes and potential solutions. The Diagnose button appears if the rule diagnosis property is set in the rule and the user has the appropriate role to access the Diagnose view. Click the Diagnose button to review the resource configuration for the alarm. The History/Notes tab displays the recent history and associated notes for that alarm. The Source tab displays details about the agent that collected the data and the associated rule. Users with the Administrator role can edit the associated rule. For more information about creating and editing rules, see the Administration and Configuration Guide.

In the Alarms table, the Instance field lists the object in your monitored environment that is the source of the alarm. Click the listing for an alarm source to display its health summary. The health summary shows the number of alarms by severity and the health of the alarm source and lists the agents and host associated with the alarm source.

In addition, it provides a list of related views that show quick drilldowns to help identify the root cause. This list is based on the views that match the type of the alarm source. If no related views are available, then the default views (for example, Configuration > Data browser) are provided.

Using alarm notes is a handy way to record information about an alarm for other users to view. For example, if an urgent alarm comes up that you want to investigate, you can add a note to the alarm that you are checking if a certain process is causing the problem. The note is attached to the alarm along with your user name and a timestamp.

You can view, filter, add, and edit alarm notes from the Alarm Details dialog box. Use the History tab to attach notes to a particular alarm in the history table. Use the All Notes tab to attach a note to the most recent alarm in the alarm history. For more information, Alarm Notes.

Acknowledging an Alarm

The Ack’ed column displays No for any alarms that have not been acknowledged. Once an alarm has been acknowledged, this setting cannot be changed.

If you have the Advanced Operator role, you can acknowledge alarms. To acknowledge multiple alarms at once, follow the instructions in To acknowledge one or more alarms: . To cause alarms to remain acknowledged until the monitored object returns to a normal state, follow the instructions in To acknowledge an alarm until the alarm source returns to a normal state: .

TIP: Choose Acknowledge Until Normal if, for example, a series of alarms is due to a known situation. Anyone looking at the Alarms dashboard will know that this known problem has been acknowledged.

NOTE: This option is available for an outstanding (not-yet-cleared) alarm only.