Procstat monitoring integration

The Procstat plugin enables you to collect metrics from individual processes in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances configured in the CloudWatch agent. Site24x7's integration with Procstat allows you to monitor the metric usage and provides detailed information about the processes in your integrated EC2 monitor.

Table of contents

• Benefits of Procstat integration
• Use case
• Prerequisites for monitoring using the CloudWatch agent
• Policies and permissions
• Supported metrics
  • Procstat agent for Windows
  • Procstat agent for Linux 
• Threshold configuration
• Licensing
• Viewing Procstat monitor data
• Procstat monitor data

Benefits of Procstat integration

You can leverage the following benefits through Procstat monitoring:

• Monitor the resource usage of one or more processes.
• Configure thresholds and receive alerts when a process is in Up, Down, Critical, or Trouble status.
• View the process metrics and track the metric usage.

Use case

Consider that you have a CloudWatch Agent EC2 monitor integrated with Site24x7 that has multiple processes. The Procstat monitor provides critical insights about the processes running in your EC2 instance. You can also obtain the number of processes being used with respect to their performance status.

Prerequisites for monitoring using the CloudWatch agent

CloudWatch agent namespace

Site24x7 follows the default namespace CWAgent to collect metrics from Amazon CloudWatch. If you have a custom namespace, we recommend that you use the default namespace, CWAgent so that Site24x7 can fetch the data.

Policies and permissions

Site24x7 requires you to enable ReadOnly permissions for the following so the CloudWatch agent works seamlessly in your AWS environment:

CloudWatch agent policies

• CloudWatchAgentAdminPolicy
• CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy

EC2 permissions

• "ec2:DescribeInstances"
• "ec2:DescribeImages"

CloudWatch permissions

• "cloudwatch:GetMetricData"
• "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics"
• "cloudwatch:ListMetrics"

CloudWatch agent in Site24x7

CloudWatch agent in Site24x7 for Procstat monitors is automatically added.

Supported metrics

Procstat agent for Windows

Metric name	Description	Unit
Cpu_Time_System	The amount of time that the process is in system mode. This metric is measured in hundredths of a second.	Count
Cpu_Time_User	The amount of time that the process is in user mode. This metric is measured in hundredths of a second.	Count
Cpu_Usage	The percentage of time that the process is active in any capacity.	Percentage
Memory_Rss	The amount of real memory (Resident Set Size) that the process is using.	Bytes
Memory_Vms	The amount of virtual memory that the process is using.	Bytes
Read_Bytes	The number of bytes that the process has read from disks.	Bytes
Write_Bytes	The number of bytes that the process has written to disks.	Bytes
Read_Count	The number of disk read operations that the process has executed.	Count
Write_Count	The number of disk write operations that the process has executed.	Count

Procstat agent for Linux

Metric name	Description	Unit
Cpu_Time_System	The amount of time that the process is in system mode. This metric is measured in hundredths of a second.	Count
Cpu_Time_User	The amount of time that the process is in user mode. This metric is measured in hundredths of a second.	Count
Cpu_Usage	The percentage of time that the process is active in any capacity.	Percentage
Memory_Rss	The amount of real memory (resident set) that the process is using.	Bytes
Memory_Vms	The amount of virtual memory that the process is using.	Bytes
Read_Bytes	The number of bytes that the process has read from disks.	Bytes
Write_Bytes	The number of bytes that the process has written to disks.	Bytes
Read_Count	The number of disk read operations that the process has executed.	Count
Write_Count	The number of disk write operations that the process has executed.	Count
Cpu_Time	The amount of time that the process uses the CPU. This metric is measured in hundredths of a second.	Count
Memory_Swap	The amount of swap memory that the process is using.	Bytes
Memory_Stack	The amount of stack memory that the process is using.	Bytes
Memory_Locked	The amount of memory that the process has locked.	Bytes
Memory_Data	The amount of memory that the process uses for data.	Bytes
Involuntary_Context_Switches	The number of times that the process was involuntarily context-switched.	Count
Voluntary_Context_Switches	The number of times that the process was context-switched voluntarily.	Count
Realtime_Priority	The number of current uses of the real-time priority for the process.	Count
Nice_Priority	The number of current uses of the nice priority for the process.	Count
Signals_Pending	The number of signals pending to be handled by the process.	Count
Rlimit_Cpu_Time_Hard	The hard CPU time resource limit for the process.	Count
Rlimit_Cpu_Time_Soft	The soft CPU time resource limit for the process.	Count
Rlimit_File_Locks_Hard	The hard file locks the resource limit for the process.	Count
Rlimit_File_Locks_Soft	The soft file locks the resource limit for the process.	Count
Rlimit_Memory_Data_Hard	The hard resource limit on the process for memory used for data.	Bytes
Rlimit_Memory_Data_Soft	The soft resource limit on the process for memory used for data.	Bytes
Rlimit_Memory_Locked_Hard	The hard resource limit on the process for locked memory.	Bytes
Rlimit_Memory_Locked_Soft	The soft resource limit on the process for locked memory.	Bytes
Rlimit_Memory_Rss_Hard	The hard resource limit on the process for physical memory.	Bytes
Rlimit_Memory_Rss_Soft	The soft resource limit on the process for physical memory.	Bytes
Rlimit_Memory_Stack_Hard	The hard resource limit on the process stack.	Bytes
Rlimit_Memory_Stack_Soft	The soft resource limit on the process stack.	Bytes
Rlimit_Memory_Vms_Hard	The hard resource limit on the process for virtual memory.	Bytes

Threshold configuration

To configure thresholds for your integrated monitor:

1. Log in to your Site24x7 account and navigate to Admin > Configuration Profiles > Threshold and Availability.
2. Click Add Threshold Profile.
3. Select CloudWatch Agent Procstat from the Monitor Type drop-down menu.
4. Provide an appropriate name in the Display Name field. The supported metrics are displayed in the Threshold Configuration section. You can set threshold values for all the metrics listed above.
5. After you set the threshold values for the applicable metrics, click Save.

Licensing

Five Procstat monitors are considered a basic monitor.

Viewing Procstat monitor data

To view Procstat data,

1. Navigate to Cloud > AWS > EC2 Instance.
   The Procstat data is available only for an EC2 Instance configured with CloudWatch Agent.
2. Select the applicable monitor.
3. Navigate to the CloudWatch Agent Plugins tab. The Procstat monitors will be listed in the CloudWatch Agent Procstat section.
   
   
4. Click the required Process Name. You'll be redirected to the Procstat monitor Summary tab. 

Procstat monitor data

You can view your Procstat data on the following tabs.

Summary

The Summary tab provides overall details like overall Availability, Down/Trouble History, and metric details such as CPU Usage, Read Count, Write Count, and Read Bytes.

Outages

The Outages tab displays the Down/Trouble History with the start time and end time of an outage, the duration, and comments (if any). To add an outage, click Add Outage and enter the Start Time, End Time, and Description. Click Save to save the outage details and view the outage on the Outages tab. You also have the option to share the outage details in CSV, PDF, or email format. To share the outage data, click Share This.

Inventory

View the inventory details, such as the Instance ID, Region, Monitor Licensing Category, and Check Frequency, on the Inventory tab.

Log Report

The Log Report tab displays the Collection Time and Status of your Procstat monitor based on the time, location, and availability. Click Download CSV to obtain your log reports in CSV format.