CPU % load on Windows XP 🔗 link

We have approximately 20 virtual XP workstations on a VMWare ESX 3.02 server where the bbwin clients on the XP workstations are reporting back to hobbit CPU loads of between 1% and up to 15% or a little more. This seems appropriate for the tiny amount of work they are performing.

However, when the CPU load for one of these virtual XP workstations reaches 7% CPU load (as reported on the CPU page), Hobbit sets the color to Yellow.

When the CPU load gets to just around 10%-11% CPU load Hobbit sets the color to red.

The hobbit-clients.cfg man page explains the default load as follows:

Defaults: warnlevel=5.0, paniclevel=10.0

Which I understand to be *NIX load levels, not %loads as indicated by Windows systems.

But in the Reports --> Config Reports page, under the CPU for each host I see:

UNIX - Yellow: Load average > 1.5, Red: Load average > 3.0
Windows - Yellow: CPU utilisation > 80%, Red: CPU utilisation > 95%

So based on that information, I am assuming that the defaults for CPU load on Windows clients is 80% = yellow and 95% = red.


Have I done misunderstood?

Do I need to add an explicit HOST entry in hobbit-clients.cfg for Windows machines like so:

HOST=%^win.*
	LOAD 80 95


Thanks for any help - especially help that points me to a document that I missed in my searching. :)


--
Bill Arlofski
Reverse Polarity, LLC
http://www.revpol.com/

 
Hi Bill

Apologies for mailing direct, but there is a lag on our outgoing mail to
mailing lists. I didn't think you wanted to wait 7 hours for a reply.
(I included the list so we can all see the solution)

Have a look at the hobbit man page, hobbit-client.cfg section.

If all your Windows server host names start with win then you can use 
HOST=%^win.*
	LOAD 80 95

But it is most likely they do not.

From the man page 

PAGE=targetstring Rule matching an alert by the name of the page in BB.
"targetstring" is the path of the page as defined in the bb-hosts file.
EXPAGE=targetstring Rule excluding a host if the pagename matches.
CLASS=classname Rule match by the client class-name. You specify the
class-name for a host when starting the client through the
"--class=NAME" option to the runclient.sh script. If no class is
specified, the host by default goes into a class named by the operating
system.
EXCLASS=classname Exclude all hosts belonging to "classname" from this
rule. 

These are probably the ones that will interest you most.

What we have done, is under our default definitions we have 
#DEFAULT
HOST=* EXHOST=firewall,sec01 EXCLASS=win32 EXPAGE=%win/*
(This includes all hosts, except the firewall & security server, all
win32 servers, and all hosts listed in /win/*

All of our Windows servers are listed under sub-pages of the win page.
These pages and sub-pages, are as defined in bb-hosts.

Example from bb-hosts
---snip---
page win Windows Servers
subpage win_prod_dc Domain Controllers
3.4.5.4   DC05        #
subpage win_prod_fps File/Print
3.4.5.5   FPS01       #
subpage win_prod_mls Exchange
3.4.5.6   MAIL01		#
3.4.5.7   MAIL02	#
subpage win_prod Production
3.4.5.8   PROD01        #
3.4.5.9   PROD02        #
---snip---
Since all of these will be listed on web pages that match the regex
%win/*
They will be excluded from the default definition.

You can now create a section in 

hobbit-client.cfg
# Windows Defaults
PAGE=%win/*
        LOAD 50 80
        DISK 85 90

Hope that helps.

Regards
    Vernon

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Arlofski [mailto:user-0b8af203a56e@xymon.invalid] 
Sent: Tuesday, 1 July 2008 5:33 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: [hobbit] CPU % load on Windows XP


We have approximately 20 virtual XP workstations on a VMWare ESX 3.02
server where the bbwin clients on the XP workstations are reporting back
to hobbit CPU loads of between 1% and up to 15% or a little more. This
seems appropriate for the tiny amount of work they are performing.

However, when the CPU load for one of these virtual XP workstations
reaches 7% CPU load (as reported on the CPU page), Hobbit sets the color
to Yellow.

When the CPU load gets to just around 10%-11% CPU load Hobbit sets the
color to red.

The hobbit-clients.cfg man page explains the default load as follows:

Defaults: warnlevel=5.0, paniclevel=10.0

Which I understand to be *NIX load levels, not %loads as indicated by
Windows systems.

But in the Reports --> Config Reports page, under the CPU for each host
I see:

UNIX - Yellow: Load average > 1.5, Red: Load average > 3.0 Windows -
Yellow: CPU utilisation > 80%, Red: CPU utilisation > 95%

So based on that information, I am assuming that the defaults for CPU
load on Windows clients is 80% = yellow and 95% = red.


Have I done misunderstood?

Do I need to add an explicit HOST entry in hobbit-clients.cfg for
Windows 
machines like so:

HOST=%^win.*
	LOAD 80 95


Thanks for any help - especially help that points me to a document that
I 
missed in my searching. :)


--
Bill Arlofski
Reverse Polarity, LLC
http://www.revpol.com/

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Everett, Vernon wrote:

No worries. I appreciate getting such a detailed response. :)

I received and quickly read your email on the 30th, but I have not had time
until now to reply.

Yes, I understand that.

But it is most likely they do not.

Yes, this is of course true. :)

OK. I see where you are going with this (and have read through what you have
written below). I will be able to quite easily perform a similar setup. I just
thought that there was a built-in default for windows CPU load of 80% and 95%
that would only need to be tinkered with in the hobbit-client.cfg page in
special cases.

Since it appears there is not, I will probably create pages or sub_pages with
a prefix of my choosing that "makes sense" something like: vmxp_ScanStations
and use that in a PAGE definition like so:

PAGE=%vmxp/*

          LOAD 50 80
          DISK 85 90

AH!  This one sentence might describe the crux of my problem!   When I defined
my vmxp windows hosts in question, I put them in their own subpage right from
the start and have no "PAGE="  definitions in the hobbit-client.cfg file (yet)
to match their CPU load.

But even if this were the case, I am still wondering why they are being
flagged as yellow at 7% load and red at/about 10% load.

Hope that helps.

Yes, I think it does. Thanks for the details. I just (mistakingly?) didn't
think any adjustments needed to be made for what I believed to be a built-in
default.

When I get a chance to stop by my client's site (probably Wednesday the 9th) I
will make a few of these changes and see if I can get the results I am looking
for.

I'll report back with my results to give this thread closure. :)

Thanks again.


P.S.  I just did some testing locally on a virtual XP machine under VMWare
workstation and it seems that the DEFAULT in my hobbit-clients.cfg file has a 
LOAD of 5 and 10 which hobbit then applies to ALL systems - even Windows.


So, if I have any Windows systems to be monitored with the bbwin client, I am 
required to explicitly set up a  LOAD, DISK etc settings for them by either 
using the PAGE, HOST or other methods you pointed out.

P.P.S. the 10% windows load showing as red and the 7% load showing as yellow 
correspond nicely with the  5 and 10 DEFAULT load settings in my 
hobbit-clients.cfg so this makes sense. :)


--
Bill Arlofski
Reverse Polarity, LLC
http://www.revpol.com/