CA SystemEDGE User Guide › Process and Service Monitoring › Windows Service Monitoring

Windows Service Monitoring

On UNIX systems, services or daemons are processes, which you can monitor just like any other process. On Windows systems, however, services are special kinds of processes that start and stop using a graphical interface (for example, through the Services Control Panel). Windows services run within processes, but the mapping between them is not always one to one. For example, multiple Windows services may run within a single process. Consequently, you can monitor Windows services in two ways:

• Monitor Windows services by monitoring their underlying processes. It is sometimes difficult to figure out the underlying process within which a service is running.
• Instruct the SystemEDGE agent to monitor the Windows service, instead of the underlying process, by setting a flag or by using the configuration keyword watch ntservice. For more information, see Process Monitor Table Flags.

Note: Because Windows does not track process attributes for Windows services, the SystemEDGE agent can monitor only the procAlive attribute for Windows services. To monitor other attributes (for example, procRSS) for a particular Windows service, you must monitor the underlying process that implements that Windows service.