Key terms and definitions

This section highlights some important terms and concepts to help you immediately begin working with OpenEdge resource monitoring plans and rules. For more detailed information about this terminology, see OpenEdge Management: Resource Monitoring.

Resource — A specific component of your configuration, such as a server instance.

Resource monitoring — Criteria set up to monitor a resource's performance. As necessary, you can adjust the criteria according to your specific performance expectations.

Monitor — As specifically addressed in this guide, the combination of an OpenEdge resource, schedules, and rules. You can monitor any of these OpenEdge server-related resources:

A schedule defines a block of time in OpenEdge Management (for example, weekdays), and a rule (for example, the ReregisteredBroker rule) determines how a resource's performance is judged. For example, the AgentMemoryUsageHigh rule determines when the memory usage of a WebSpeed agent process exceeds the specified threshold.

Rules — The resource monitoring component that OpenEdge Management checks to verify whether or not a resource complies with its performance criteria. Rule values, or settings, can be established by using either default or user-supplied values. Also, WebSpeed and AppServer brokers can optionally use calculated, resource-specific baseline rule values as determined by the Configuration Advisor.

Rules are broken when a resource is not in compliance with the rule-based criteria that you set up. OpenEdge Management generates alerts in the management console to alert you to this fact.

Rule Set — A combination of rules.

Defaults and default values — Values that are predefined in OpenEdge Management in one location but can apply in another location. Resource monitoring plans contain several default values. Some of the more general, common defaults pertaining to resource monitors include default schedule, default alerts, and actions. These defaults help expedite the setup tasks associated with configuring a monitoring plan. There are also default values associated with a given resource type. These types of default values include polling intervals and rule sets. See Defaultpolling and trend values for details.

Schedule — Defines the block of time when a set of monitoring rules is active for a resource. When you add a monitoring plan to a resource, you specify the schedule to indicate when the monitoring plan will be active. OpenEdge Management supports using, modifying, and copying predefined schedules to help you define them quickly. However, you can also create new schedules to suit your operating needs.

Alerts — Notifications that some specified activity has occurred regarding an actively monitored resource. Alerts can occur to indicate a real or potential problem exists, such as a rule violation, or they can indicate that a typical or interesting activity regarding a resource has occurred.

Actions — Activities that are triggered in response to alerts. For example, you might specify that you receive an e-mail when a WebSpeed agent is trimmed.

Resource monitoring plan — A plan that defines a block of time during which a specific resource is to be monitored and identifies the rules that are to be checked during the specified time frame. All resources you create in OpenEdge Management must have one or more monitoring plans before OpenEdge Management can monitor the resource. Monitoring plans provide you with access to data that is immediately usable in indicating performance failures, giving you an opportunity to improve performance and report on trends gathered over a period of time you specified.

Baseline value — As used in this guide, a number that serves as the base for calculating a set of possible threshold settings based on your system's past activity for a specific rule. The Configuration Advisor determines a baseline value as part of its data analysis process to calculate recommended rule threshold settings for specific WebSpeed and AppServer rules. See Calculating Rule Threshold Settings Using the Configuration Advisor.