Windows monitor

The Windows Monitor opens a connection to a specified Microsoft Windows-enabled computer system and tests the performance of its subsystems to determine the system's overall health.

The Windows Monitor verifies the following Performance Counter values against a Windows system:

• Disk Read Bytes per Second
• Disk Write Bytes per Second
• Pages per Second
• Page File Percentage Used
• Process Queue Length
• Context Switches
• Number of Processes

You can enable or disable some of the performance counters as required.

If a monitor is not required and you want to prevent Network Scan from creating it, remove it from the SmartMonitor settings when you run the Full network discovery.

Create a Windows monitor

1. Log in to ipMonitor as an administrator.
2. Click Devices in the toolbar.
3. Locate and click the targeted device you want to monitor.

4. In the toolbar, click Add > Add New Monitor.

5. In the Select Monitor menu, click Windows.

6. Under Identification, complete the fields and selections.

   

   1. Enter a name in the Monitor Name field using up to 64 characters.

      This name will appear in the Monitors List, Monitor Status, Logs pages, and your reports.

      You can change this name later, if necessary. ipMonitor does not use this field to internally identify this monitor.

   2. Select Enabled to enable the monitor.

      When enabled, the monitor tests the specified resource using the settings you enter under Test Parameters. You can disable the monitor later if required.

   3. (Optional) Select Store Monitor Statistics for Recent Activity and Historical Reports to enable this functionality.

7. Under Test Parameters, complete the options.

   

   1. Enter the server name or primary IP address of the targeted server.

      Click Browse to locate the system in your network.

   2. Enter the SQL server database instance name you want to monitor. Leave this field blank to select the default instance.

   3. (Optional) Click Select and assign a credential. When the monitor runs the executable file, it will use the credential account and password combination to authenticate to the machine, directory, or file.

8. Under Analysis of Test Results, select the counters you want to enable.

   

   See the Windows performance counter descriptions below.

   Counter	Description
   Disk Read Bytes per Second	The number of bytes read on the disk, per second. This value is useful to determine Input/Output (IO) bottlenecks.
   Disk Write Bytes per Second	The number of bytes written to the disk, per second. This value is useful to determine Input/Output (IO) bottlenecks.
   Pages per Second	The number of times pages are read from disk (per second) to resolve hard page faults. A hard page fault occurs when a process tries to reference a virtual memory section that is not working or that is no longer located at that address. As a result, the data must be retrieved from disk.
   Page File Percentage Used	The percentage of all page files currently in use by the Exchange server process. Page files are shared by all processes running on the system. If the Exchange server process uses a large percentage of the page file space, other processes may not be able to use the memory on the system.
   Process Queue Length	The number of threads currently waiting to be processed by the CPU. This value should not exceed two processes per processor listed on the system. A consistently high value is a sign of CPU congestion.
   Context Switches	The rate of switches among threads. This occurs when the operating system or the application is forced to change the executing thread on one processor to another thread executed on another processor. This value should remain as small as possible. On multiple CPU systems, context switches are frequent. A value lower than 10 000 switches is generally acceptable.
   Number of Processes	The total number of processes running on the system.

9. Click Verify to test the monitor. This ensures that it can connect to the targeted server and retrieve each counter value.

   Counters outside the threshold display in red.

10. Under Timing, configure the fields for the monitor testing states.

    

    1. In the Maximum Test Duration field, enter the maximum test duration rate (in seconds) that the monitor times out before the test is considered a failure.

    2. In the remaining fields, enter the number of second between each test while the monitor is in an OK state (Up), a failed state while alerts are processed (Down), and a failed state and the maximum number of alerts have been processed (Lost).

       In the Lost state, no additional failure alerts are processed. However, a recovery notification is sent if the monitor recovers.

11. Enter the amount of time delay for each monitor testing state.

    For example, you may choose to intensify testing when a monitor enters a Warn state and reduce testing when the monitor enters a Lost state.

12. Under Notification Control, complete the fields to determine how many test failures must occur before an alert is sent.

    

    1. Enter the number of test failures that occur for each alert before ipMonitor generates an alert for the monitor. The default option is 3.

    2. Enter the maximum number of alerts to send before the monitor enters a Lost state.

       The monitor must be assigned to a notification alert to generate an action.

13. Under Recovery Parameters, complete the fields to indicate the corrective action used to automatically restore a resource using the External Process Recovery, Reboot Server Recovery, or Restart Service Recovery action.

    

    1. Enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), NetBIOS, or IP Address of the machine hosting the service that needs a restart or the machine that needs a restart.

       You can also click Browse to locate and select the machine.

    2. Select the set of credentials used by the recovery alert.

       You can select a specific credential to execute recovery alerts that require access to restricted resources, such as Reboot Server, Restart Service, or External Process.

    3. Select the list of services to restart on the target machine specified in the FQDN/NetBIOS/IP Address field.

       This field is only required for the Restart Service alert. If a service has dependencies, select all dependent services.

14. Click OK.