Disabled Controls
Problem
I have a number of disabled controls on a Spotlight page. Every disabled control has one of these icons associated with it:
Solution
To solve the problem, view the Overhead Management page in the Component Properties editor for one of the disabled controls. You should find that the refresh setting for that component has been set to Do not refresh this control. Component Properties - Overhead Page
Background to The Problem
When Spotlight collects data from a system under investigation, it places a load on that system's resources.
Usually, the Spotlight load does not have a significant effect on the performance of the system, but when it does you can use Spotlight's overhead management tools to reduce or eliminate the load. Two factors influence overhead management:
- The categories of data collected.
- The refresh rate assigned to each category.
The categories of data collected are defined by the current Spotlight application, and are set by criteria that may include:
- The kind of data being collected.
- The load that collecting the data will put on the system.
- Where the data in the category is to be displayed.
- The importance of the data.
- How often the data is needed.
By default, every category is assigned one of the following refresh rates:
- Always refresh at the foreground rate.
- Refresh at the default rate.
- Refresh only while data is displayed on the screen.
- Do not refresh data in this category.
When you change the refresh rate for the data in a Spotlight control (a component, table or chart), you also change the refresh rate for ALL data in the same category. When you disable the refresh rate for the data in a control, you disable the refresh rate for ALL data in the same category.
A control whose data collection is disabled displays one of the indicated icons:
| Icon | Description |
|---|---|
| |
Data for this control is not available. (Alarms associated with the control are disabled.) |
 |
Data for this control is not available. (There are no alarms associated with this control.) |
Delay in Reporting Alarms
Problem
The current displayed value of a Spotlight metric should be raising an alarm, but that alarm has not yet been reported.
Solution
There are two parts to this problem:
-
Refresh rates
Spotlight refreshes the metric data it collects at a rate specified in Spotlight Options. In most cases (but not all) this is the foreground rate when the control is visible, or the background rate when the control is not visible. These refresh rates (which you can set) are usually set to different values, with foreground data being collected more often. Set the rate at which data is collected
-
Metric smoothing
Spotlight uses metric smoothing (averaging) to prevent the generation of spurious alarms. It does this by averaging the data that it collects over a specified period of time. Alarm smoothing Metrics Dialog
The combination of these two features means that an alarm is raised faster for metrics in the page you are viewing than it is for those in a page that is hidden.
Alarm Help Is Displayed Instead of The Drilldown
Spotlight can be configured to show the help or jump directly to the related drilldown on clicking a home-page control.
To show the drilldown
- Click View | Options.
- Select Alarms and notifications | Balloon help.
- Select Always jump directly to the related drilldown.
Build the Support Bundle
In emailing a request for assistance to Quest (support@quest.com) be sure to include a support bundle.
To create the support bundle
- Click Help | Support Bundle.
- Select the Spotlight application(s) whose information you want to collect.
-
Click Collect.
A file is created containing a snapshot of your Spotlight installation. The file is called SpotlightSupport.zip The location of this file is C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Quest Software\Spotlight\Default\Support