PITBOSS Activities Test
Pitboss, a watchdog deamon controls the processes on a ADC appliance. If the pitboss detects a failing process, it will try to restart it, and if the pitboss fails to restart a process in 5 attempts, on the sixth failure, the ADC will undergo a full reboot. If the failure of the pitboss forces the process as well as the ADC to reboot frequently, then with each reboot, the performance of the ADC appliance would be on the downhill! To detect such failures at the earliest and identify the processes that are failing, administrators can use the PITBOSS Activities test. Using this test, administrators can figure out the number of times a pitboss watch was added to a process and deleted to a process. In addition, this test throws light on the number of times the process has reached the maximum number of restarts thus allowing the pitboss to restart the ADC appliance.
For this test to run and report metrics, the ADC appliance should be configured to create a Syslog file in a remote Syslog server, where the details of all interactions with the ADC appliance will be logged. To know how to configure a remote Syslog server for the use of the ADC appliance, refer to Creating a Syslog file in a remote Syslog server topic.
This test is disabled by default. To enable the test, follow the Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable menu sequence in the eG administrative interface, pick Citrix ADC VPX/MPX as the Component type, select Performance as the Test type, choose this test from the list of disabled tests list, and click on the < button.
Target of the test : An ADC VPX/MPX
Agent deploying the test : A remote agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for the ADC appliance being monitored.
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
Test Period |
How often should the test be executed |
Host |
The IP address of the host for which the test is being configured. |
Port |
The port at which the host listens. By default, this is NULL. |
Log File Path |
This test reports metrics by parsing a Syslog file. Specify the full path to the Syslog file here. |
Search String |
By default, the Syslog file may contain information relating to a number of servers that are inter linked with the target ADC appliance. In order to obtain the metrics of the target ADC appliance alone, specify the hostname or the IP address of the target ADC appliance for which the logs are to be read from the syslog file, in the Search String text box. Using this search string the information in the Syslog file may be parsed and metrics may be collected. |
Search String Index |
Here, specify the cursor position after which the eG agent should search for the specified Search String (or the position up to which the eG agent should ignore while searching for the specified Search String) in the syslog file. For example, if the specified Search String appears in the syslog file at the 17th position, then you may need to specify the Search String as 16. |
DD Frequency |
Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD Frequency. |
Detailed Diagnosis |
To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:
|
Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation |
---|---|---|---|
Pitboss watch added |
Indicates the number of times pitboss watch was added on a process with the process ID. |
Number |
A high value for this measure is a cause of concern as this may indicate that a large number of processes running on the ADC appliance are failing. |
Pitboss watch deleted |
Indicates the number of times pitboss watch was deleted from a process with the process ID. |
Number |
|
Pitboss system restarts |
Indicates the number of times the process with pid had reached the maximum number of restarts thus leading to system reboot. |
Number |
Ideally, the value of this measure should be zero. |
Pitboss process restarts |
Indicates the number of times the process with pid had reached the maximum number of restarts thus leading to process reboot. |
Number |
Ideally, the value of this measure should be zero. |