Process Monitoring

Objective

The aim of the Process Monitoring tool is to ensure that an application is functioning properly by checking if the processes of an application are running.

Monitoring Studio provides an application-oriented mechanism to test the presence of such processes.

What is a process

In practice, a process is basically a binary code being executed by processors. Processes are launched by the operating system and have several properties: PID (unique identifier of a process); Name; User ID; Command line that was used to launch the process (arguments passed to the binary); Environment; CPU and memory usage; Other various OS-specific properties.

For further details on the concepts related to processes, please refer to About processes in the Reference section.

Method to monitor a process (summary)

On Windows, UNIX and Linux systems, Monitoring Studio allows you to check the presence of these processes by specifying one or more of the following criteria:

Once you have entered the criteria to detect the processes of your application, you can select which parameters should be monitored. When several processes match the entered criteria, the selected parameters will be valued in the PATROL Console (under the single process icon) by summing up the value of the parameters for each matching process.

Advanced privileges are sometimes required to collect process information. In that case, you will be prompt to enter process command credentials that will be used for running OS commands. See section Process Command Credentials for more information.

Result

All processes that match the entered criteria will be monitored and identified as one icon in the PATROL Console.

Creating and editing a process monitoring

To create a new process monitoring, right-click the Application/Container icon within the PATROL Console and select KM Commands > New > Process monitoring....

Step 1 – Select the action you wish to perform

Process Monitoring Wizard — Welcome Page

To edit an existing process monitoring, right-click the Process icon within the PATROL Console and select KM Commands > Edit.

Step 2– a: Pick the process to monitor from a list

The aim of this option is to let users select a process from a list with a simple click.

Monitoring Studio builds the list of processes currently running on the monitored server with all the details of each process: PID, process name, user name and command line.

Process Monitoring Wizard — Pick the process to monitor from a list

Click the process you wish to monitor and click the Next button. This will bring up the process criteria panel (see step 1-b) with all information already filled. You may remove or modify any information you do not wish to monitor from this panel and proceed with the wizard.

Processes with long command lines may take more than one line to display all the arguments. You can click on any of the process’ lines to select the process from the list.

If you proceed to the next panel and come back to this one, the process you chose will not be pre-selected from the list. This is due to some PSL limitation. You have to re-select the process before clicking on Next >. You may, of course, select any other process.

It may take a few seconds for the panel to be displayed. Monitoring Studio has to retrieve the list of currently running processes which may a moment depending on the server type and the number of processes running.

Step 2 - b: Criteria the monitored process must match with

If you choose to specify criteria that the monitored process must match with, the following dialog box is shown:

Process Monitoring Wizard — Enter criteria to identify and monitor processes

The name of the process must be exactly/must contain: Choose the appropriate option and enter the name of the process to monitor. Under Windows, do not forget the ".exe" extension at the end of the name.

The text entered in the fields is case-sensitive on UNIX and Linux, but not on Windows.

Here are a few examples:

Step 2 - c: PID files

If you choose to specify a PID file, the following dialog box is shown:

Process Monitoring Wizard — Provide a PID file path

Path to the file containing the Process PID: Enter the path for the file with the process PID. At each polling, Monitoring Studio reads this file, retrieves the PID number and checks whether this process PID exists or not. Normally, the process PID is dynamically allocated. The process PID number should be at the very beginning of the file’s content.

Step 3: Select parameters

Process Monitoring Wizard — Process PID: Parameter Selection

Here’s a table that describes the parameters available for process monitoring:

Step 4: Monitoring Studio settings

Process Monitoring Wizard — Settings Page

Object display name: Label displayed in the PATROL Console.

Object internal identifier (ID): PATROL internal identifier of this process monitoring.

What thresholds do you want to set for the newly created object? The drop-down list allows you to select the mode of setting alert thresholds:

If you select Use default thresholds and customize them; on clicking Finish, the Set Thresholds panel will appear, and certain parameters for the instance may appear with an asterisk symbol - indicating that they already have thresholds. You can then customize (any/all) the thresholds of the parameters as per your specific needs.

Thresholds can be set or modified at anytime by right-clicking on the instance > KM commands > Set Thresholds.

Process monitoring objects are instances of the SW_PROCESSES class.

See Also

Process viewer tool

SW_PROCESSES

Can I monitor the processor time usage made by a Windows service?

Is it possible to monitor the CPU/memory usage of a process tree?

Process Command Credential