What Happens When a Threshold is Broken

If the value of a monitored attribute rises above the warninghigh threshold, a status of warninghigh is issued. If the value continues to rise and passes the criticalhigh threshold, a status of criticalhigh is issued. If the value continues to rise above the nonrecoverablehigh threshold, a status of nonrecoverablehigh is issued.

If the value then falls back to the safe range, no further events are generated until the value falls below the warninghigh threshold, at which point an event is generated to show a status of normal.

If the value of a monitored attribute falls below the warninglow threshold, a status of warninglow is issued. If the value continues to fall, and passes the criticallow threshold, a status of criticallow is issued. If the value continues to fall below the nonrecoverablelow threshold, a status of nonrecoverablelow is issued.

If the value then rises back to the safe range, no further events are generated until the value rises above the warninglow threshold, at which point an event is generated to show a status of normal.

Threshold values for OS resource utilization attributes can be configured at the command line. This process is explained in Setting Threshold Values. For threshold values measuring percentages, the valid range is from 0 to 100%. If you try to set a threshold value outside of this range, an error is generated. For attributes that do not measure percentages, these values depend on the number of processors in your system and on the usage characteristics of your installation.

Tuning Threshold Values for Your Installation

After a period of usage, you can develop an awareness of what levels to set for OS resource utilization attribute values. You can adjust thresholds once you determine more closely what value indicates a genuine justification for an event to be generated and for a notification to be sent to your pager or email address. For example, you might want to receive notifications every time a certain attribute reaches a warninghigh severity threshold level.

For important or crucial attributes at your installation, you can set the warninghigh threshold level to a low percentage value so that you are notified about a rising value as early as possible.