Documentation > Administration > Monitoring & Alerts

Monitoring & Alerts

Comprehensive monitoring setup including alerting, performance metrics, and system health tracking for proactive infrastructure management.

Overview

SysManage provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities that enable proactive infrastructure management through real-time metrics collection, intelligent alerting, and customizable dashboards. The monitoring system is designed to scale with your infrastructure while maintaining performance and reliability.

Monitoring Capabilities

  • Real-time Metrics: Continuous collection of system performance data
  • Intelligent Alerting: Smart threshold-based and anomaly detection alerts
  • Custom Dashboards: Configurable views for different teams and use cases
  • Historical Analysis: Long-term trend analysis and capacity planning
  • Multi-channel Notifications: Email, Slack, webhooks, and more
  • Escalation Management: Automated escalation based on severity and response time

Metrics Collection

System Performance Metrics

SysManage automatically collects comprehensive system metrics:

CPU Metrics

  • Utilization: Overall CPU usage percentage
  • Load Average: 1, 5, and 15-minute load averages
  • Per-Core Usage: Individual CPU core utilization
  • Process Breakdown: Top CPU-consuming processes
  • Context Switches: System context switch rates
  • Interrupts: Hardware and software interrupt rates

Memory Metrics

  • Total/Used/Free: Memory utilization breakdown
  • Swap Usage: Swap space utilization and activity
  • Buffer/Cache: System buffer and cache usage
  • Memory Pressure: Memory pressure indicators
  • Process Memory: Per-process memory consumption
  • Memory Leaks: Detection of potential memory leaks

Storage Metrics

  • Disk Usage: File system capacity and utilization
  • I/O Performance: Read/write throughput and latency
  • IOPS: Input/output operations per second
  • Queue Depth: Storage queue metrics
  • Disk Health: SMART data and disk health indicators
  • Mount Points: All mounted file systems status

Network Metrics

  • Interface Statistics: Traffic, errors, and drops per interface
  • Bandwidth Utilization: Network throughput and capacity
  • Connection Statistics: Active connections and states
  • Protocol Statistics: TCP, UDP, and other protocol metrics
  • DNS Performance: DNS resolution times and failures
  • Network Latency: Network round-trip times

Application and Service Metrics

Service Monitoring

  • Service Status: Running, stopped, failed service states
  • Process Monitoring: Critical process health and performance
  • Port Monitoring: Service availability on specific ports
  • Log Analysis: Application log patterns and errors
  • Resource Usage: Per-service resource consumption
  • Response Times: Application response time metrics

Database Monitoring

  • Connection Pools: Database connection utilization
  • Query Performance: Slow query detection and analysis
  • Lock Statistics: Database lock contention metrics
  • Replication Status: Database replication health
  • Storage Growth: Database size and growth trends

Web Server Monitoring

  • Request Rates: HTTP request volume and patterns
  • Response Codes: HTTP status code distribution
  • Response Times: Request processing latency
  • Connection Metrics: Active connections and limits
  • SSL Certificate: Certificate expiration monitoring

Custom Metrics

Extend monitoring with custom application metrics:

Custom Script Monitoring

  • Script Execution: Run custom monitoring scripts
  • Exit Code Monitoring: Alert on script failures
  • Output Parsing: Extract metrics from script output
  • Scheduled Execution: Define custom execution schedules
  • Timeout Handling: Handle long-running or stuck scripts

API Integration

  • REST API Calls: Monitor external API availability
  • Response Validation: Validate API response content
  • Authentication: Support for various authentication methods
  • Rate Limiting: Respect API rate limits
  • Custom Headers: Include custom headers in requests

Alerting System

Alert Configuration

Alert Types

  • Threshold Alerts: Trigger when metrics exceed defined thresholds
  • Anomaly Detection: Machine learning-based anomaly detection
  • Service Alerts: Alert on service availability and health
  • Log Pattern Alerts: Trigger on specific log patterns
  • Composite Alerts: Multi-condition alerts with logical operators
  • Predictive Alerts: Early warning based on trend analysis

Threshold Configuration

Configure alert thresholds for optimal balance between noise and coverage:

CPU Utilization Example
  • Warning: CPU > 70% for 5 minutes
  • Critical: CPU > 90% for 2 minutes
  • Recovery: CPU < 60% for 3 minutes
Memory Usage Example
  • Warning: Memory > 80% for 10 minutes
  • Critical: Memory > 95% for 1 minute
  • Recovery: Memory < 75% for 5 minutes
Disk Space Example
  • Warning: Disk > 85% usage
  • Critical: Disk > 95% usage
  • Recovery: Disk < 80% usage

Notification Channels

Supported Channels

  • Email: SMTP-based email notifications
  • Slack: Team collaboration via Slack channels
  • Microsoft Teams: Integration with Teams channels
  • Discord: Community and team notifications
  • Webhooks: Custom HTTP POST notifications
  • SMS: Text message alerts via third-party services
  • PagerDuty: Professional incident management
  • OpsGenie: Enterprise alerting and escalation

Channel Configuration

Email Configuration
SMTP Settings:
Server: mail.example.com
Port: 587
Security: STARTTLS
Authentication: username/password
Slack Integration
Webhook URL: https://hooks.slack.com/services/...
Channel: #infrastructure-alerts
Username: SysManage
Icon: :warning:
Webhook Configuration
URL: https://api.example.com/alerts
Method: POST
Headers:
  Content-Type: application/json
  Authorization: Bearer <token>

Escalation Management

Escalation Policies

Define escalation paths for different alert severities:

Level 1 Escalation (0-15 minutes)
  • Primary on-call engineer
  • Slack channel notification
  • Email to team distribution list
Level 2 Escalation (15-30 minutes)
  • Secondary on-call engineer
  • Team lead notification
  • SMS to primary on-call
Level 3 Escalation (30+ minutes)
  • Manager notification
  • Emergency contact activation
  • Multiple communication channels

Alert Suppression

  • Maintenance Windows: Suppress alerts during planned maintenance
  • Dependency Mapping: Suppress child alerts when parent systems fail
  • Frequency Limiting: Limit notification frequency for noisy alerts
  • Business Hours: Different escalation during business vs. off hours

Dashboard Configuration

Dashboard Types

Executive Dashboards

  • High-level KPIs: Overall system health and availability
  • Business Metrics: Service uptime and performance
  • Trend Analysis: Month-over-month performance trends
  • Cost Optimization: Resource utilization and efficiency

Operations Dashboards

  • Real-time Status: Current system status and alerts
  • Performance Metrics: Detailed performance indicators
  • Capacity Planning: Resource utilization and forecasting
  • Incident Tracking: Active incidents and resolution status

Application Dashboards

  • Application Performance: Response times and throughput
  • Error Tracking: Application errors and failure rates
  • User Experience: End-user performance metrics
  • Dependency Mapping: Service dependencies and health

Infrastructure Dashboards

  • System Health: CPU, memory, disk, and network status
  • Hardware Monitoring: Physical hardware health and performance
  • Network Overview: Network topology and performance
  • Security Monitoring: Security events and compliance status

Dashboard Customization

Widget Types

  • Time Series Graphs: Line charts showing metrics over time
  • Gauge Widgets: Current value displays with thresholds
  • Status Indicators: Health status and availability displays
  • Top Lists: Ranked lists of hosts or metrics
  • Heat Maps: Visual representation of metric distributions
  • Alert Summaries: Current and recent alert status

Layout Options

  • Grid Layout: Flexible grid-based widget arrangement
  • Responsive Design: Adapts to different screen sizes
  • Custom Sizing: Adjustable widget dimensions
  • Multi-page Dashboards: Organize widgets across multiple pages
  • Auto-refresh: Configurable refresh intervals

Access Control

  • Role-based Access: Different dashboards for different roles
  • Team Dashboards: Team-specific metric views
  • Public Dashboards: Read-only dashboards for stakeholders
  • Edit Permissions: Control who can modify dashboards

Health Check Configuration

System Health Checks

Core System Checks

  • Agent Connectivity: Verify all agents are connected and responsive
  • Database Health: Check database connectivity and performance
  • Queue Status: Monitor message queue health and processing
  • Certificate Validity: Check SSL/TLS certificate expiration
  • Disk Space: Verify adequate disk space on server
  • Memory Usage: Monitor server memory utilization

Service Health Checks

  • Web Server: HTTP response and performance checks
  • API Endpoints: Verify API functionality and response times
  • Background Services: Check background job processing
  • External Dependencies: Monitor external service availability
  • Load Balancer: Verify load balancer health and distribution

Custom Health Checks

Script-based Checks

#!/bin/bash
# Custom health check example
check_application_health() {
    response=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" http://localhost:8080/health)
    if [ "$response" -eq 200 ]; then
        echo "Application healthy"
        exit 0
    else
        echo "Application unhealthy - HTTP $response"
        exit 1
    fi
}

Database Connectivity Check

#!/bin/bash
# Database health check
check_database() {
    if pg_isready -h localhost -p 5432 -U sysmanage; then
        echo "Database accessible"
        exit 0
    else
        echo "Database not accessible"
        exit 1
    fi
}

API Health Check

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import requests
import sys

def check_api_health():
    try:
        response = requests.get('http://localhost:8443/api/health', timeout=10)
        if response.status_code == 200:
            print("API healthy")
            sys.exit(0)
        else:
            print(f"API unhealthy - Status: {response.status_code}")
            sys.exit(1)
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"API check failed: {e}")
        sys.exit(1)

Monitoring Performance Optimization

Data Retention Policies

Retention Strategies

  • High-resolution data: 24 hours of 1-minute intervals
  • Medium-resolution data: 7 days of 5-minute intervals
  • Low-resolution data: 90 days of 1-hour intervals
  • Archive data: 1 year of daily summaries
  • Long-term trends: Multi-year monthly summaries

Storage Optimization

  • Data Compression: Compress historical data
  • Archival: Move old data to cold storage
  • Purging: Automatically delete expired data
  • Indexing: Optimize database indexes for queries

Collection Optimization

Collection Intervals

  • Critical Metrics: 30-second intervals
  • Standard Metrics: 1-minute intervals
  • Resource Intensive: 5-minute intervals
  • Static Data: Hourly or daily collection

Agent Performance

  • Batch Collection: Collect multiple metrics efficiently
  • Compression: Compress data before transmission
  • Buffering: Buffer data during network outages
  • Priority Queues: Prioritize critical metrics

Monitoring Best Practices

Alert Design Best Practices

  • Actionable Alerts: Only alert on conditions requiring action
  • Appropriate Thresholds: Set thresholds based on historical data
  • Context Information: Include relevant context in alerts
  • Clear Recovery: Define clear recovery conditions
  • Avoid Alert Fatigue: Minimize false positives
  • Business Impact: Correlate alerts with business impact

Dashboard Design Best Practices

  • Audience-specific: Design dashboards for specific audiences
  • Information Hierarchy: Most critical information first
  • Visual Clarity: Use clear, readable visualizations
  • Performance Focus: Optimize dashboard loading times
  • Regular Review: Regularly review and update dashboards

Operational Best Practices

  • Regular Maintenance: Schedule regular monitoring system maintenance
  • Capacity Planning: Monitor and plan for system growth
  • Documentation: Document alert procedures and escalation paths
  • Training: Train team members on monitoring tools and procedures
  • Continuous Improvement: Regularly review and improve monitoring setup

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