6.9.1 Notes on creating alarms

(1) Time for evaluating the alarm

If monitoring conditions of multiple records are set for an alarm and the monitoring intervals and offsets of the records are different, the alarm is only evaluated when their collection schedules match. You must review the collection interval setting if necessary.

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(2) Saving of records to be evaluated in the alarm

You do not have to save the records that you selected for the alarm conditions in the Store database.

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(3) Limitation on the number of alarms

You can define a maximum of 1,024 alarm tables per Agent product.

You can register up to 250 alarms in one alarm table. In addition, you can bind up to 50 alarm tables to one agent.

Binding a large number of alarms to PFM - Agent or PFM - RM in the Performance Management system, might delay the processing of PFM - Manager, PFM - Agent, or PFM - RM.

We recommend that you keep the number of bound alarms within the following limits:

• 250 alarms per agent.

• 20,000 alarms across the entire Performance Management system.

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(4) Changing the character set

If you use double-byte characters or Japanese single-byte Katakana characters when you create reports, do not change the character code used by PFM - Manager. If you change from one character code to another, you will no longer be able to use the alarms and reports you defined before the change.

• If you change the character set used by the operating system, uninstall PFM - Manager and then rebuild the environment.

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(5) When you set an alarm to monitor whether a value exists

If you have selected Monitor whether the value exists, the value specified in the conditional expression does not exist when the alarm is reported. For this reason, the variable %CVS specified in the Message or the Mail Subject is replaced with (N/A) if the function for measurement value output at alarm recovery is enabled, and an empty string if the feature is disabled.

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(6) How the number of alarm occurrences affects the PFM - Agent or PFM - RM connection

In Performance Management, the PFM - Manager receives the alarms issued by PFM - Agent or PFM - RM, and handles them sequentially, for example, by storing them in the Store database (Master Store). If alarms are issued very frequently, or by several instances of PFM - Agent or PFM - RM at once, there might be delays in alarm processing by PFM - Manager. In such a case, pending alarms accumulate in the memory of the PFM - Manager host, which can decrease the amount of available memory and adversely affect system performance.

We therefore recommend that you consider how frequently an alarm will be issued when you define alarms, making sure that the number of alarms issued does not exceed the number of alarms PFM - Manager can process in a given unit of time. We also recommend that you determine the number of PFM - Agent or PFM - RM instances to be connected to PFM - Manager, beforehand. For details on the relationship between the alarm damping and the number of PFM - Agent or PFM - RM instances to be connected to PFM - Manager, see the sections that describe the system configuration in an appendix of the JP1/Performance Management Planning and Configuration Guide.

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(7) How the number of alarm occurrences affects the system resources

If a large number of alarms for which an action is specified are issued at the same time, when the actions are executed, the system might become unstable due to a large consumption of system resources. If you want to reduce consumption of system resources due to actions, you can limit the number of command actions (remote actions and local actions) that are simultaneously executed in a single Action Handler service. To do so, change the setting value of the Action Handler Section section of the startup information file (jpccomm.ini).

For details about the jpccomm.ini file, see the part that explains the startup information file (jpccomm.ini) in the appendixes of the manual JP1/Performance Management Reference.

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(8) Product version for monitoring the operating status for each instances

The product version used to monitor the operating status for each instances is different from the version used for other operating status monitoring. For details about monitoring of operating status for each instance, see the JP1/Performance Management Planning and Configuration Guide.

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(9) Note on the execution module in the Windows WOW64 system directory (SysWow64)

If you want to specify an execution module in the Windows WOW64 system directory (SysWOW64) as an action definition for an alarm, specify the full path.

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