Glossary

Glossary

Context pages

Context pages provide specific, focused performance or status data from a narrow context, such as a single router or server. These pages are available as drill-down links or tabs from Summary dashboards.

dashboards

Dashboards are dynamic report-building pages within the CA Performance Center user interface. They appear as menu items that are accessible from the Dashboards tab. Each dashboard is a collection of views that present data from registered data sources on a single web page. The layout, views, time interval, and group context of each dashboard can be customized.

data sources

Data sources are the supported products that provide performance and configuration data to CA Performance Center. Data source products that monitor, collect, and aggregate data can often function independently. However, once they are registered to an instance of CA Performance Center, they are known as data sources.

drill down

To drill down means to navigate from one data view or dashboard in CA Performance Center to another, more detailed data view or context page. The new page displays data from the same timeframe, for the same managed item or set of items.

event

An event is a message that is triggered by an instantaneous occurrence in your networking infrastructure, usually indicating that something significant has occurred. Events are reported for several reasons. They are reported when data exceeds a threshold or when configuration changes are detected.

group

A group is a filter definition that functions as a container for managed items. Groups let you logically organize managed items in a tree structure, with each group containing subgroups or managed items. The structure is propagated to the data sources, where it enables drilldown from top-level groups into data from an increasingly narrow but related context.

menus

Menus are segments of the Dashboards tab that are used to organize dashboards by their content. By default, Administrators and Designers can customize menus and assign them to user account roles.

My Dashboards menu

The My Dashboards menu is a dashboard container that can be personalized for each operator who has a user account in CA Performance Center. Any dashboard that you customize—by moving items to different positions in the layout, for example—appears in your My Dashboards menu. Such modifications are not available to other users.

reports

Reports are static output from an on-demand selection or an exported dashboard page. Reports that you export from a dashboard create a static data set from the data and information in the associated dashboard. On-demand reports capture a data set from a single managed item or group in the Inventory. You can print reports, send them by email, or export them in CSV or PDF format. For each format, the report captures a selected data set.

site groups

Site groups are custom groups that are based on physical locations, such as a city, region, office, or campus. Typically, site groups contain items and subgroups of items that are grouped by location. Adding site groups to other custom groups in your tree structure allows you to build geographically and logically organized reports. Site groups enable business-hour filtering of dashboard views.

statistical data

The statistical analysis data set includes minimum, maximum, mean (average), standard deviation, and other metrics that are recalculated hourly to include the most recently collected data. This data helps to characterize past performance for selected monitored parameters, and helps to assess present performance and estimate future performance. For example, comparing current CPU utilization to a known baseline average level helps to determine whether current utilization is within a typical range. A monitored parameter that exceeds a baseline can indicate additional load on the server from a new application process, an increase in the number of users or sessions, or an increase in the amount of data being processed.

Baseline averages and other statistical data are updated hourly, averaging up to 30 “same-hour” hourly roll-up samples for each one of the preceding 30 days.

Summary pages

Summary pages provide high-level information, such as averages from groups of managed items. Summary dashboards often provide a drilldown path to more detailed, related pages from a selected context.

threshold event

A threshold event is one of several event types managed by CA Infrastructure Management. When your devices violate a threshold value, CA Infrastructure Management creates one of these events, which can trigger a corresponding alarm.

view

Views, or data views, present statistical data, usually in a graph or table format. Each view represents a discrete set of collected data. Depending on your user account role rights, you can add and edit individual views or remove them from a dashboard page. In some cases, you can export the data to a file in CSV format.