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Working with alarms, alerts, and gauges

Alarms, alerts, and gauges alert administrators to changes in server conditions that might require attention.

Alarms

An alarm represents a stateful condition of the server or a resource that might indicate a problem, such as low disk space or external server unavailability.

Alarms have severity, name, and message. Alarms will always have a Condition property, and can have a Specific Problem or Resource property. If surfaced through SNMP, a Probable Cause property and Alarm Type property are also listed. You can configure alarms to generate alerts when the alarm’s severity changes.

You can configure the Alarm Manager, which governs the actions performed when an alarm state is entered, through the dsconfig tool and the administrative console. A complete list of system alerts, alarms, and their severity is available in <server-root>/docs/admin-alerts-list.csv.

The server complies with the International Telecommunication Union CCITT Recommendation X.733 (1992) standard for generating and clearing alarms. If configured, entering or exiting an alarm state might result in one or more alerts.

An alarm state is exited when the condition no longer applies. An alarm_cleared alert type is generated by the system when an alarm’s severity changes from a non-normal severity to any other severity. An alarm_cleared alert will correlate to a previous alarm when the Condition and Resource properties are the same. The Condition corresponds to the Summary column in the admin-alerts-list.csv file.

Like the Alerts Backend, which stores information in cn=alerts, the Alarm Backend stores information within the cn=alarms backend. Unlike alerts, alarm thresholds have a state over time that can change in severity and be cleared when a monitored value returns to normal. You can view alarms with the status tool. As with other alert types, you can configure alert handlers can to manage the alerts generated by alarms.

Alerts

There are two alert types supported by the server: standard and alarm-specific.

The server constantly monitors for conditions that might need administrator attention, such as low disk space. For this condition, the standard alert is low-disk-space-warning, and the alarm-specific alert is alarm-warning.

You can configure the server to generate alarm-specific alerts as well as standard alerts. By default, standard alerts are generated for conditions internally monitored by the server. However, gauges can only generate alarm-alerts.

Gauges

A gauge defines a set of threshold values with a specified severity that, when crossed, cause the server to enter or exit an alarm state.

Numeric gauges monitor continuous values like CPU load or free disk space. Indicator gauges monitor enumerated set of values such as 'server unavailable' or ‘server unavailable’. Gauges generate alarms when the gauge’s severity changes because of changes in the monitored value.

The server installs a set of gauges that are specific to the product and that can be cloned or configured through the dsconfig tool. You can tailor existing gauges to fit each environment by adjusting the update interval and threshold values. Configuration of system gauges determines the criteria by which alarms are triggered.

Use the Stats Logger to view historical information about the value and severity of all system gauges. For more information, see Profiling server performance using the Stats Logger.

Viewing information in the Alarms Backend

About this task

Use ldapsearch to view alarms.

Steps

  • To display the listing for the CPU usage alarm, run the following command.

    $ bin/ldapsearch --port 1389 --bindDN "cn=Directory Manager" \
      --bindPassword secret --baseDN cn=alarms "(objectclass=ds-admin-alarm)"

    Result:

    dn: ds-alarm-id=CPU Usage (Percent)-Host System,cn=alarms
    dn: ds-alarm-id=CPU Usage (Percent)-Host System,cn=alarms
    objectClass: top
    objectClass: ds-admin-alarm
    ds-alarm-id: CPU Usage (Percent)-Host System
    ds-alarm-condition: CPU Usage (Percent)
    ds-alarm-specific-resource: Host System
    ds-alarm-severity: CRITICAL
    ds-alarm-previous-severity: CRITICAL
    ds-alarm-details: Gauge CPU Usage (Percent) for Host System
           has value 99, having had a value of 83.13 in the
           previous interval. The severity is critical, having
           assumed this severity Thu Sep 25 10:24:20 CDT 2014
           when the value crossed threshold 80
    ds-alarm-additional-text: If CPU use is high, check the server's current workload
           and other processes on this system and make any needed adjustments. Reducing
           the load on the system will lead to better response times
    ds-alarm-start-time: 20140925152420.004Z
    ds-alarm-critical-last-time: 20140925152420.004Z
    ds-alarm-critical-total-duration-millis: 0