Health Tab
Features, descriptions, and screenshot of the Sonexion System Manager monitoring tool (built upon Icinga monitoring SW)
The Sonexion System Manager monitoring solution is built on Icinga, open-source software that is proven for monitoring health and performance of large networks of Linux servers. The Icinga monitoring system checks user-specified hosts and services, and it provides notifications when things go wrong and when they recover.
Monitoring tool features include the following:
- Monitoring network services (including SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, and PING)
- Monitoring host resources (including CPU load and disk usage)
- Monitoring components (including array devices, BMC, batteries, PSUs, cooling fans, I/O modules, disk drives, and enclosure electronics)
- Parallelized service checks
- Ability to define network host hierarchy using "parent" hosts, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and hosts that are unreachable
- Contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved
- Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution
- Automatic log file rotation
- Supports redundant monitoring hosts
From the Health tab, the Icinga software monitoring solution is displayed. An example follows of the main screen where everything comes together. The default view is the Tactical Monitoring Overview. See detailed descriptions in Figure 1.
The following color descriptions aid in quick interpretation of the Health tab screen.
| COLOR | DESCRIPTION | |
|---|---|---|
| Green |  | State is OK, host is up, service is ok, not flapping, or not in scheduled downtime. |
| Amber |  | State is in a warning state. |
| Light Amber (2 shades) | 
| State is warning but acknowledged. |
| Red |  | State is in a critical state. |
| Light Red (2 shades) | 
| State in critical but acknowledged. Also can indicate that a host is down, a service is critical, host or service properties have been disabled, is flapping or in scheduled downtime, or various other possible issues related to host and service problems. |
| Purple (3 shades) | 
| State is in an unknown or unreachable state. |
| Blue |  | Indicates a pending action. |
Health Tab UI Elements
Header with Tactical Information
The left side of the header is the Tactical Monitoring Overview (TMO). It is designed to serve as a birds-eye view of all network monitoring activity. It allows the operator to quickly see network outages, host status, and service status. It distinguishes between problems that have been handled in some way (that is, has been acknowledged, had notifications disabled, and so forth) and problems that have not been handled (that is, need attention). This is useful when multiple hosts/services are being monitored and the operator needs to keep a single screen up to alert about problems.
TMO links include host and service counters for their respective states. For example, there are three counters to the left of the Hosts Down link; Unacknowledged Hosts Down, Acknowledged Hosts Down, and Handled Hosts Down.
TMO links and their related counters are also color coded. If all related counts are zero, the TMO link background color is gray. If any counts indicate a warning, the color is amber. If any counts are critical or down, the color is red.
- Hosts|Services (active/passive)
- Host|Services execution time (min/avg/max)
- Host|Services latency (min/avg/max)
Left Panel Menu
From the left menu, click any link to select a detailed status view that will then display in the Alert Summary window. The available views are grouped into functional areas. There are a General view, Status views, Problems views, System views, Reporting views, and a Configuration view.
General View
The General view provides the ability to search for a hostname, service name, storage enclosure, and so on. To display the detailed view, select an item from the search results.
Status Views
| View | Description |
|---|---|
| Tactical Overview | The tactical monitoring overview |
| Host Details | Host status details for all hosts |
| Service Detail | Service status details for all hosts |
| Hostgroup Overview | Status overview for all host groups |
| Servicegroup Overview | Status overview for all service groups |
Problems Views
| View | Description |
|---|---|
| Service Problems | Service status details for all hosts, where the status is not OK. This is the default display when the Health tab is first opened or when it is refreshed. |
| Unhandled Services | Service problems that have not yet been handled |
| Host Problems | Host status details for all hosts, where the status is not OK |
| Unhandled Hosts | Host problems that have not yet been handled |
| All Unhandled Problems | All identified system problems that have not yet been handled |
| Network Outages | Lists all current blocking outages |
System Views
System views allow the viewer to see relevant system information:
| View | Description |
|---|---|
| Comments | Hosts and services comments |
| Downtime | Scheduled hosts and services downtime |
| Process Info | Icinga process information, such as whether notifications are enabled |
| Performance Info | Programwide performance information, such as check statistics and other metrics |
| Scheduling Queue | The check scheduling queue |
Reporting Views
An operator may use the Reporting views to create reports related to system availability, alerts, notifications, and logs. After selecting a report, the system will guide the operator through the steps to create the report. Some reports require the operator to specify parameters to generate the report, some reports do not.
Available reports include:
| Report | Description |
|---|---|
| Availability | Four (4) available reports: Hosts, Services, Host groups, and Service groups |
| Alert History | A list of all host and service alerts by date and time. The operator can filter the results after the report displays. |
| Alert Summary | Five (5) available reports: 25 Most Recent Hard Alerts, 25 Most Recent Hard Host Alerts, 25 Most Recent Hard Service Alerts, Top Hard Host Alert Producers, 25 Top Hard Service Alert Producers |
| Notifications | A list of all system notifications by date and time. The operator can filter the results after the report displays. |
| Event Logs | A list of the event log by date ad time |
Once a report is created, it may be exported to a file in CSV, JSON, or XML format.
Configuration View
In the Configuration view, click View Configuration to view the current system configuration.