Windows Service Status Test

This test is specific to Microsoft Windows systems. This test discovers all the services that are configured for automatic startup on the system. Everytime the test executes, it checks if each of the automatic services is up or not. If a service is down and the maximum number of restart attempts has not been reached, then the test attempts to restart the service. Whether the service restarted successfully or not is reported as one of the measures of the test. If a service is down and the maximum number of restart attempts has been reached, the test takes no automatic action to restart the service.

This test is disabled by default. To enable the test, go to the enable / disable tests page using the menu sequence : Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable, pick the desired Component type, set Performance as the Test type, choose the test from the disabled tests list, and click on the >> button to move the test to the ENABLED TESTS list. Finally, click the Update button.

Target of the test : Windows-based applications only

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every auto-discovered service

Configurable parameters for the test
  1. Test period – How often should the test be executed
  2. Host - The host for which the test is to be configured.
  3. restartattempts - Specify the maximum number of times the eG Enterprise system should try to restart an automatic service that has stopped. If attempts made to start the automatic service continue to fail beyond this prescribed limit, then eG will not perform any further restart attempts.
  4. rediscover - Specify the number of times the test is to be executed before the eG Enterprise system runs a new discovery for services.
  5. restart - If the automatic services stop, then eG can be configured to automatically restart the services by setting RESTART to True. To disable auto-restart, specify False.
  6. restartcheckperiod - After a restart attempt, the eG agent will wait for a while and then verify whether the service has successfully restarted or not. In the RESTARTCHECKPERIOD text box, specify this waiting period.
  7. excludesvcs - Some automatic services - for example, services that cannot be restarted automatically - can be excluded from monitoring by providing the service names in the EXCLUDESVCS text box, as a comma-separated list. For this specification, you can also use wild card patterns – for instance, *Published*.*World Wide*.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Service availability:

Indicates whether the service is currently running or not.

Percent

A value of 100 is reported if the service is running when this test executes. If the service is down, the test attempts to restart the service and once again checks the service status. If the service has been restarted, availability is reported as 100. On the other hand, if the service has failed to restart, availability is reported as 0.

Successful restart:

Indicates whether the stopped service has been successfully restarted or not.

Number

This measure is relevant only if the test execution has determined that the service has stopped. The value of 1 denotes that the service was successfully restarted by the test. Otherwise, this measure takes a value of 0.

Failed restarts:

Indicates the number of restarts that have failed.

Number

This measure has a value of 0 if the service does not have to be restarted by the test, or if a restart of the service by the test is successful. If a restart of the service by the test is not successful, this value is incremented by 1. If the value of this measure equals the RESTARTATTEMPTS parameter of the test, the eG agent stops attempting to restart the failed service.