SirMon background monitor

The Background Monitor is a User Language application subsystem designed to execute as a "background" process, that is, without a terminal. Once started, the Background Monitor examines Model 204 performance on a regular basis and generates alerts if a statistic on the System Overview screen exceeds its threshold for more than a user-specifiable number of monitoring intervals.

the PF2 key from either the System Overview screen or the Threshold Specification screen causes the the Background Monitor screen to be displayed. The Background Monitor screen provides control over certain characteristics of the Background Monitor, and also allows users in the "ADMIN" SCLASS to start the Background Monitor. The Background Monitor may also be started from the Model 204 command line, as described at the end of this section.

Background Monitor screen

User-defined characteristics of the Background Monitor are:

Default monitoring interval (seconds)	Specifies the number of seconds between Background Monitor samples.
Send warnings after (number of intervals)	Allows the Background Monitor to ignore situations where a statistic only momentarily exceeds its threshold. This parameter suppresses the warning unless a problem is detected for a number of consecutive monitoring intervals. For example, if this parameter is set to 3, and the monitoring interval is set to 30 seconds, a warning is issued only if a problem persists for 90 seconds or more (3 consecutive samples separated by 30-seconds each). Note that all these settings are applied per statistic, so for instance, if DKRD-per-screen and DKPR-per-screen both exceed their threshold for two intervals, then DKRD-per-screen returns to a sub-threshold level and DKPR-per-screen does not, the counter for DKRD is reset to 0 and a warning is issued for DKPR-per-screen (again, using the example where this parameter is set to 3).
Minimum minutes between warning messages	Prevents a storm of messages from being generated in response to a single problem, which could be especially annoying while you are already working on the problem. The "time of last warning" is maintained for each monitored statistic. Once a warning is sent for a statistic, the number of minutes specified in this parameter must pass before another warning will be issued for that statistic.
Don't warn during first xxx online minutes	Prevents the Background Monitor from generating performance alerts during the early phases of online initialization when one would expect a lot of unusual activity.
Send warnings to the journal? (Y/N)	Directs the Background Monitor to log a US line on the `Model 204` journal in addition to any online user notifications.
Users to receive warning messages (separate by blanks)	Directs the Background Monitor to send an online warning to the listed user(s) when a threshold is exceeded for the requisite number of consecutive monitoring intervals. The special user `OPR` causes the warning message to be sent to the console operator for the `Model 204` online.

The PF12 key saves the Background Monitor characteristics. The PF5 key causes the Background Monitor to be started in an sdaemon thread (see the Sirius Mods Installation Guide for information about sdaemons). If the Background Monitor is already running in an sdaemon thread, the PF5 key bumps the previously running Background Monitor and starts a new occurrence.

SirMon provides a Model 204 command level interface for starting the Background Monitor. The following command could be inserted into the User 0 input stream or entered at a terminal to cause the SirMon Background Monitor to be started in an sdaemon thread: up the until the thread is BUMPed, since the background task does not perform any terminal I/O.

SirMon background monitor

See also

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