State Manager Test

The state manager is a critical process responsible for evaluating and determining the current status of various monitored entities within the target environment. These entities include layers, tests, measures, and broader infrastructure components such as services, segments, zones, and individual system components. Using the performance metrics collected and reported by the eG agents, the state manager computes and updates the health state of each entity. The possible states include Normal, Minor, Major, Critical, and Unknown. As the state manager is responsible for updating the health state of entities, delays or bottlenecks in its operation can lead to outdated or inaccurate states, affecting alerts and dashboards. To prevent such anomalies, the state manager should be continuously monitored. This can be easily achieved using the State Manager test.

This test continuously monitors the state manager on the eG manager and reports its queue size and how much time the state manager is actively processing data. These metrics help administrators identify if the state manager is overloaded or unable to keep up with incoming updates from agents. Additionally, this test reports whether the metathread is running in the background or not. If the metathread is not running, test statuses may not update, leading to false alerts.

Target of the test : eG Manager

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the eG manager being monitored

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter Description

Test period

How often should the test be executed .

Host

The host for which the test is to be configured.

Port

The port number at which the specified host listens.

Timeout

Specify the duration (in seconds) for which this test should wait for a response from the eG manager. If there is no response from the eG manager beyond the configured duration, the test will timeout. By default, this is set to 240 seconds.

JMX Remote Port

Here, specify the port at which the JMX listens for requests from remote hosts. In the <EG_MANAGER_INSTALL_DIR>\manager directory (on Windows; on Unix, this will be the /opt/egurkha/manager directory) of the eG manager, you will find a management.properties file. Set the port defined against the com.sun.management.jmxremote.port parameter of the file as the JMX Remote Port.

JNDI Name

The JNDIName is a lookup name for connecting to the JMX connector. By default, this is jmxrmi. If you have registered the JMX connector in the RMI registry using a different lookup name, then you can change this default value to reflect the same.

JMX User, JMX Password, and Confirm Password

By default, JMX requires no authentication or security. Therefore, the User, Password , and Confirm Password parameters are set to none by default.

JMX Bind Address

JMX Bind Address denotes the IP address or hostname on which the Java Management Extensions (JMX) service will listen for incoming remote management connections. By default, this flag is set to Local Host indicating that the JMX service binds to the default IP address (127.0.0.1) of the target host. However, if the JMX service is listening on different IP address of the target host, then set this flag to Other IP.

Provider

This test uses a JMX Provider to access the MBean attributes of the eG manager and collect metrics. Specify the package name of this JMX Provider here. By default, this is set to com.sun.jmx.remote.protocol.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Statemanager queue

Indicates the current queue size of the state manager process.

Number

A high value indicates that too many requests to the state manager are pending processing. A gradual, but consistent increase in the value of this measure could indicate a processing bottleneck.

State manager busy time

Indicates how busy the state manager is currently.

 

Percent

A value close to 100% indicates that the state manager is too busy now, and may not have the bandwidth to attend to subsequent state requests. If the value of this measure remains high or consistently climbs up, it indicates that the state manager process is being overloaded.

Is metathread running?

Indicates whether/not the metathread is running on the manager.

 

The values that this measure reports and the numeric values that correspond to them have been discussed in the table below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0

Note:

By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate whether/not the metathread is running. In the graph of this measure however, the same will be represented using the numeric equivalents only.

Entries in the metatest table

Indicates the total number of entries in the metatest table.

Number

 

Metathread cycle time

Indicates the time that the metathread takes to complete one full iteration or cycle of its logic or operation.

Seconds

A low value is preferred for this measure.