CA SystemEDGE User Guide › Concepts › Monitoring Architecture

Monitoring Architecture

The SystemEDGE agent monitoring functionality extends beyond basic SNMP metric collection to intelligent monitoring and exception reporting. You can control what the agent monitors and when the agent returns a trap to the management system.

The agent maintains its monitoring data in monitor tables in the Systems Management Empire MIB. Creating a monitor entry in one of the monitor tables instructs the agent to read the table and act on the entry. Accordingly, the agent polls the system at intervals, and when the return value of a monitored object matches specific criteria (a threshold, a process state, or a regular expression, for example), the agent sends a trap to all systems defined as trap destinations.

The Systems Management Empire MIB contains the following monitoring tables:

Self Monitor table (monitorTable)

Contains MIB objects to monitor and compare to user-specified thresholds to control severity and resultant object status.

Process Monitor table (processMonTable)

Contains processes to monitor for status (that is, whether they are running) and resource utilization.

Process Group Monitor table (processGroupMonTable)

Contains groups of processes to monitor for status (that is, whether a change occurred).

Log Monitor table (logMonitorTable)

Contains log files and directories to monitor for specified regular expression strings.

NT Event Monitor table (ntEventMonTable)

Contains event logs in which to search for specific events.

History Control table (empireHistoryCtrlTable)

Contains the sample interval and number of samples for MIB objects that the agent monitors and stores in the History table for future retrieval by the management system.

Each table contains MIB attributes whose values you specify when you create an entry. The tables are indexed so that each entry contains unique attribute values. The agent reads the tables, and the entry attributes give the agent instructions about what system attributes to monitor and when to report exceptions.

All monitor table entries are maintained in the local sysedge.cf and sysedge.mon files. The sysedge.mon file is used for compatibility reasons only. Directives let you enter entries directly in the sysedge.cf file, or you can configure entries in a management product that integrates with the agent. When you use the agent with CA Virtual Assurance, you can create monitor entries and deploy a file with those entries to agents on one or more managed systems.