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Thresholds and Actions

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Part of administrating a cluster is taking action when certain conditions are met. Application Center can do this automatically by using thresholds and actions. A threshold is a criteria you set that, when met, indirectly causes Health Monitor to take a specified action. Notification is one of these actions, where an administrator can be alerted via e-mail.

Thresholds

Thresholds are monitoring rules that evaluate a single property of a data collector. When these rules are met, an action is initiated, such as sending e-mail or running a batch file.

For example, the CPU reaches 90 percent usage for over 2 minutes. This condition might indicate that an application has encountered a problem, too many applications are open at once, or that you need to add hardware to handle your present request load. Many of the thresholds are already set by default in Application Center.

Actions

The following table describes the actions that you can take when a specified threshold is reached.

Action

Description

Notification

An e-mail message is sent to the administrator. This e-mail can be sent automatically when the threshold is exceeded and can include information about the event, such as severity and the time when it occurred.

Restart the server*

The effected member or cluster is restarted, if that is the appropriate action.

Run a batch or executable file*

A batch (*.bat) file or any executable (*.exe) file that is compatible with Windows 2000, such as a Microsoft® Visual Basic executable, is run automatically.

Generate a Windows 2000 event

You can configure Health Monitor to generate a Windows 2000 event, which is recorded in the Windows 2000 Event Log. This event is also available through WMI to other applications and services.

Write text to a log

Plain text is written to a log file to record the occurrence and its related information. This log can be in any supported log file format.

Run scripts*

Scripts written in Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) or Microsoft JScript™ can be run automatically in response to an exceeded threshold.

Bb687497.note(en-us,TechNet.10).gif Note   You must run Windows Script Host (WSH) scripts from the command line by using Cscript.exe or Wscript.exe.

Bb687497.caution(en-us,TechNet.10).gif Caution   Actions with an (*) have security implications and should be accessible to administrators only.

Online / Offline Actions

Application Center creates the Online/Offline Monitors data group. The group contains data collectors and thresholds that trigger the command-line command AC.exe and sets a cluster member online or offline. To configure data collectors as online or offline, copy or move the data collectors to the Online or Offline folders. These data collectors and their associated actions are synchronized across the cluster.

Bb687497.caution(en-us,TechNet.10).gif Caution   If the data groups are deleted, you must compile the Acsdefaultpolicies.mof file to restore it, and then reconfigure any changes you made to the data groups. To compile the .mof file, at the command prompt, type

% op_sys %\System32\Webm Mofcomp.exe Acsdefaultpolicies.mof

Where % op_sys % is the Windows 2000 installation directory of the partition on which you installed Application Center.

  • For more information about thresholds and actions, see the Health Monitor Help.

  • For more information about Application Center events, see Events.

  • For more information about the Windows 2000 Event Log, see the Windows 2000 Help.

  • For more information on compiling .mof files, see Installing and Using the Samples.

Did you find this information useful? Please send your suggestions and comments about the documentation to acdocs@microsoft.com.