Monitoring Performance Using Policies

You can define policies that let you monitor performance by identifying the area to monitor and thresholds that indicate an important change in your data. A policy is the rule to evaluate a data point in an object against a user-specified value. Policy defines the actions to be executed on the successful evaluation of the rule.

To identify areas to monitor and thresholds that indicate an important change in your data, use the Policy Status Light module that is available from the CA Chorus Module Library. Use topology in the Investigator to view interactions.

Example: Policy to Monitor the Top Three Space Users

This example creates a policy for monitoring the biggest space users.

Log in to CA Chorus.
Add the Policy Status Light module to your dashboard.
Click the link to configure the module.
The Policies Object Picker opens.
Select Chorus Personal Policies under the node named Policies from the left pane.
Click Create New Policy in the Actions pane to activate the Details pane.
Fill in required details in the tabs to list down available data.
Select the policies that are created for memory usage at 85 percent and 95 percent.
The Cart icon () displays the count of policies that you have selected across different tree nodes and disciplines.

You can select individual or all the objects listed in the Object Picker window.

Best Practice on Select All Usage:

Use Select All when building a policy rather than selecting individual objects. That way, if similar, new objects are created, they will be covered by the policy without any additional configuration. Note the following points to avoid high CPU usage:

If there are groups of objects that you want to include or exclude, specify them through filters.
If the count of objects included is in the tens of thousands or more, it can cause high CPU usage. If you are building policy for an object type that has thousands of instances, use appropriate filters to include only the objects needed for your policy.
In the Rules tab, select the memory usage parameter, set 85 as the threshold value.

In the Actions tab, select Change Traffic Light Color Yellow as the action, 10 and 01:00:00 as the values for Count of Events and Duration respectively, and 02:00:00 as the Suppression Duration.

When the memory usage reaches 85 percent 10 times in one hour, policy status light changes to yellow. Because the suppression duration is set as two hours, no action happens during the two hours after the previous occurrence of the action. The next action happens after two hours.

The Actions tab lets you draft messages (alert messages, email, and WTO) to be sent when the threshold is crossed. Insert the following variables to customize your message:

$ACTION_AUTHOR_ID: Inserts the user id of the author of the action.
$TIMESTAMP: Inserts the timestamp of the event that has crossed the threshold.
$POLICY_DESCRIPTION: Inserts a description of the policy.
$OBJECT_DESCRIPTION: Inserts a description of the object.
$OBJECT_PRIMARY_KEY: Inserts the primary key of the object.

Use semicolons (;) to separate the email addresses.

Note: Avoid a navigation action after selecting objects. It restricts you from moving to the next step. A message directs you to click OK and reselect objects to continue.