Our team is back after the the festival of lights ! This week let me tell you why you may get the sometimes annoying "Unknown category" servers. In applications manager when you add a new application or database for monitoring, the server in which that application is present will be also automatically added for monitoring. This server will be added under the Unknown category.

If SNMP agent is running in that remote server, applications manager will try to find the operating system of that server by querying that snmp agent ( it will query with community string as 'public' ). If applications manager gets proper response from the snmp agent, it will be added in the corresponding OS category and data collection will be initiated or that server will remain in Unknown category.

Applications manager will only check the availability of the servers under unknown category, it will not collect perform statistics ( like cpu utilization, disk utilization etc ). The user should manually edit and update the monitors with proper details under Unknown category to initiate full data collection. Similarly for other automatically discovered applications, if user has not provided proper credentials, applications manager will only check availability and response time for that application.

- Arun

In applications manager when you add a new application or database for monitoring, the server in which that application is present will be also automatically added for monitoring. Once the server is added, applications manager will automatically try to discover the other applications ( Apache, IIS, Tomcat, JBoss, WebSphere, DB2, MSSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SNMP and JMX application ) which are running in their corresponding default ports.

These automatically discovered servers and applications will be also taken for licensing count. If you do not want the automatically discovered applications, you can either delete them or unmanage them ( unmanaged monitors will not be taken for licensing count ). But if you delete the automatically discovered server, all the applications under that server will be also deleted. So unmanaging the server is a recommended option.

- Arun

If you want to know the right values you can use while creating a threshold refer the below link,

http://blogs.manageengine.com/appmanager/2006/03/24/tip-configuring-thresholds/

while creating thresholds make sure to give proper conditions for Critical, Warning and Clear. Some times users create thresholds with erroneous conditions and the associated attributes will end up becoming unknown or may not generate proper alerts.

For example, lets assume for physical memory utilization ( in % ) i have associated a threshold according to which it will be in Critical alert > 90, Warning > 80 and Clear < 60. The problem with this threshold will occur when physical memory utilization value is between 80 and 60, since no proper state is defined it will be unknown state and you will not get proper alerting. Also for the following threshold according to which it will be in Critical alert > 90, Warning > 80 and Clear < 80 if the value physical memory utilization becomes 80, it will be in unknown state. The correct threshold in this scenario will be Critical alert > 90, Warning > 80 and Clear <= 80.

- Arun

The Root cause Analysis (RCA) messages for any attribute will be changed whenever there is a change in severity. It will not change during every polling.

For example, let us assume that you have associated a threshold ( Critical > 90, Warning > 80 and Clear <= 80 ) to Cpu Utilization of a server. If the current cpu utilization value is 92%, then RCA message for Health of the monitor will say

The RCA message for CPU Utilization attribute will say,

In the next poll if the cpu utilization value increases to 96%, the RCA message will not be updated now for Health and CPU Utilization attribute. This message will be updated only when the cpu utilization becomes less than 90 ( when it becomes either warning or clear ). The RCA message for Health of the monitor will change however if another attribute becomes critical. So if the Physical Memory Utilization (%) also becomes critical, the RCA message for Health of the monitor will say,

- Arun

To start with, there are four levels of severity for every attribute ( CPU, Disk space, JVM size etc are known as attributes ) except availability - Unknown, Critical, Warning and Clear. Availability has only two states - Up and Down.

By default any attribute will be in unknown state and once you associate a threshold it will become either critical / warning / clear depending upon the threshold. Also note that by default actions ( notifications like email, sms etc ) will be executed only when there is a change in level of severity ( ie., actions will be executed only when some attribute changes from clear to critical level. This action will not be executed again when that attribute remains in critical state ).

The Health attribute of a monitor or a monitor group will depend upon all the other attributes/monitor's severity levels present under it by default. Only when all the attributes/monitors are in clear state, health will be in clear state. If any attributes becomes critical or if the availability of the monitor goes down, the health will automatically become critical.

Pros and Cons of configuring alert in a Monitor Group level

Lets say that you have configured availability alert for a monitor group. So when any one monitor in this group goes down, you will get an alert and also configuring alert in group level is easy work.

The problem in this approach is that when the first monitor goes down, the availability of the group will also become down and you will get email notification. If another monitor also goes down after some 5 minutes ( Monitor 1 is still down and availability of group is also already down ) you will not get any email notifications as there is no change in severity of the availability of monitor group.

The best approach to this problem is to configure availability alert for each monitor individually.

Pros and Cons of configuring alert for Health of a monitor

When you configure alert for health of a monitor, you will be alerted if any attribute under that monitor becomes critical. But this approach also has the same problem as configuring alert for monitor group availability. You will be notified when first attribute becomes critical or warning however you will not be notified if another attribute also becomes critical in the next poll ( when the first attribute is still critical ).

The best approach to this problem is again to configure alerts for each required attribute individually.

- Arun

We plan to periodically post useful tips and tricks that will help you get the max out of Applications Manager.

Today's tip is on creating Support Information Files.

From time to time, our technical support team receives requests of help from our users. Some of these requests are about technical issues that users face in their environment and within Applications Manager. The technical support team works hard to try to resolve these issues as quickly as possible. However, their progress is sometimes hampered because they haven't received enough information to diagnose the problem immediately. More often than not, the support technician might ask for support information file for analysis because the support information file has all the log files necessary to isolate the problem.

Now there are 2 different ways to create support information files from within Applications Manager.

1. From the support tab in the web client:

Click the Support Information file link under Applications Manager Support.

2. Via command prompt:

Execute createSupportFile.bat/sh script file from '<ApplicationsManager_Home>/bin' folder.

This will create a support information file zip under '<ApplicationsManager_Home/support' folder.

You can include this file when you report a problem with support so that they can identify and resolve your issue more quickly.

Ever wanted to move quickly from the Free Edition to Professional Edition without losing out on your existing data and preferences.

Here's an easy way to do it.

• Navigate to the 'Support' tab in your web client.
• Locate the Product Information section.
• Click 'Evaluate'

That's it. You will be moved to the 30-day trial version of the Professional Edition immediately. What's more, all your data and preferences will not be disturbed. They will remain exactly the same. You can start using the evaluation copy right away.

Well, what do you think of this? Can't get any simpler, isn't it? :)