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1.2.5. About Probes

Now that the Red Hat Network monitoring daemon has been installed and notification methods have been created, you may begin installing probes on your monitoring-entitled systems. If a system is entitled to monitoring, a Probes tab appears within its System Details page. This is where you will conduct most probe-related work.

1.2.5.1. Managing Probes

Probes are created through the Red Hat Satellite server. Once the probe has been created, the probes are propagated to the specified monitoring-entitled systems registered to the Satellite. Follow the steps below to add a probe in the Satellite server:
  1. Log into the Satellite as either a Satellite Administrator or the System Group Administrator for the system.
  2. Navigate to the System Details → Probes tab and click create new probe.
  3. On the System Probe Creation page, complete all required fields. First, select the Probe Command Group. This alters the list of available probes and other fields and requirements. See Appendix A, Probes for the complete list of probes by command group. Remember that some probes require the Red Hat Network monitoring daemon to be installed on the client system.
  4. Select the desired Probe Command and the monitoring Scout, typically Red Hat Monitoring Satellite but possibly a Red Hat Satellite Proxy Server. Enter a brief but unique description for the probe.
  5. Select the Probe Notifications checkbox to receive notifications when the probe changes state. Use the Probe Check Interval dropdown menu to determine how often notifications should be sent. Selecting 1 minute (and the Probe Notification checkbox) means you will receive notifications every minute the probe surpasses its CRITICAL or WARNING thresholds. See Section 1.2.4, “Enabling Notifications” to find out how to create notification methods and acknowledge their messages.
  6. Use the RHNMD User and RHNMD Port fields, if they appear, to force the probe to communicate via sshd, rather than the Red Hat Network monitoring daemon. See Section 1.2.2.2, “Configuring SSH” for details. Otherwise, accept the default values of nocpulse and 4545, respectively.
  7. If the Timeout field appears, review the default value and adjust to meet your needs. Most but not all timeouts result in an UNKNOWN state. If the probe's metrics are time-based, ensure the timeout is not less than the time allotted to thresholds. Otherwise, the metrics serve no purpose, as the probe will time out before any thresholds are crossed.
  8. Use the remaining fields to establish the probe's alert thresholds, if applicable. These CRITICAL and WARNING values determine at what point the probe has changed state. See Section 1.2.5.2, “Establishing Thresholds” for best practices regarding these thresholds.
  9. When finished, click Create Probe. Remember, you must commit your monitoring configuration change on the Scout Config Push page for this to take effect.
To delete a probe, navigate to its Current State page (by clicking the name of the probe from the System Details → Probes tab), and click delete probe. Finally, confirm the deletion.