Oracle Processes Test

For each Oracle instance, this test measures statistics pertaining to the smon, pmon, lgwr, dbw, reco, and ckpt processes.

Target of the test : An Oracle server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every SID monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
TEST PERIOD - How often should the test be executed Host – The host for which the test is to be configured Port - The port on which the specified host is listening User – In order to monitor an Oracle database server, a special database user account has to be created in every Oracle database instance that requires monitoring. A Click here hyperlink is available in the test configuration page, using which a new oracle database user can be created. The name of this user has to be specified here. Password – Password of the specified database user This login information is required to query Oracle’s internal dynamic views, so as to fetch the current status / health of the various database components. Confirm password – Confirm the password by retyping it here. Process - processName is a string that will be used for display purposes only. processPattern is an expression of the form - expr or expr or expr or expr or expr1expr2... or expr1expr2, etc. A leading ‘’ signifies any number of leading characters, while a trailing ‘’ signifies any number of trailing characters. The pattern(s) used varies from one application to another and must be configured per application. The default value that appears corresponds to the Unix platform. On Windows environment, this parameter does not require manual configuration. The default value taken is “Oracle*.exe”. instancewise - By default, this test reports the resource usage of all the Oracle server instances that are currently running. For example, if 3 Oracle instances are currently operational, then the test will report the CPU and memory usage of all the three instances by default. Accordingly, the INSTANCEWISE parameter is set to No by default. On the contrary, if you want this test to report the CPU and memory usage of the monitored Oracle instance only, then set this flag to Yes. Note: Typically, while monitoring the ‘Oracle.exe’ process on Windows environments, you might want to set the INSTANCEWISE flag to Yes. However, on Windows 2000 in particular, before switching on the INSTANCEWISE flag, you will have to copy the tlist.exe file to the {WINDOWS_HOME}\system32 directory. This file will be available in the Windows 2000 CD in the \support\tools\support.cab file. useglance - This flag applies only to Oracle database servers operating on HP-UX systems. HP GlancePlus/UX is Hewlett-Packards’s online performance monitoring and diagnostic utility for HP-UX based computers. There are two user interfaces of GlancePlus/UX-Glance is character-based, and gpm is motif-based. Each contains graphical and tabular displays that depict how primary system resources are being utilized. In environments where Glance is run, the eG agent can be configured to integrate with Glance to pull out the process status and resource usage metrics of the configured Oracle processes. By default, this integration is disabled. This is why the useglance flag is set to No by default. You can enable the integration by setting the flag to Yes. If this is done, then the test polls the Glance interface of HP GlancePlus/UX utility to pull out the desired metrics. ISPASSIVE – If the value chosen is yes, then the Oracle server under consideration is a passive server in an Oracle cluster. No alerts will be generated if the server is not running. Measures will be reported as “Not applicable’ by the agent if the server is not up.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Processes running:	Number of instances of a pmon, smon, lgwr, dbw, and reco processes currently executing.	Number	This value indicates if too many or too few processes corresponding to an application are executing on the host.
CPU utilization:	Total percentage CPU utilization of each process instance detected above.	Percent	A very high value could indicate that processes corresponding to the specified pattern are consuming excessive CPU resources.
Memory utilization:	The ratio of the resident set size of a process to the physical memory of the host system on which it executes, expressed as a percentage.	Percent	A sudden increase in memory utilization for a process may be indicative of memory leaks in the application.