Monitoring a Solaris host

The CPU usage values, when combined, provide a detailed view of how the CPU resources are being utilized on a host.

Metric	Description	Granularity
CPU Usage	The total CPU usage in percentage for the time range that you set.	1 second

Metric	Description	Granularity
User	The amount of CPU time spent running user-space processes (applications and services).	1 second
System	The amount of CPU time spent running kernel-space processes (OS core functions).	1 second
Wait	The amount of CPU time spent waiting for input/output operations to complete.	1 second
Nice	The amount of CPU time spent running processes with a lower priority (nice value).	1 second
Steal	The amount of CPU time lost as to the hypervisor manages other virtual machines or containers on the same physical host.	1 second

The CPU load metric displays the value on a graph for a selected time period.

Datapoint: Filesystem

Metric	Description	Granularity
CPU Load	The average number of processes that are run for the time range that you set.	1 second

Metric	Description	Granularity
Load	The peak CPU load. The highest number of processes that are run for the time range that you set.	1 second

The CPU usage metric displays the following metrics in percentage on a graph for a selected time period for each CPU:

Metric	Description	Granularity
User	The amount of CPU time spent running user-space processes (applications and services).	1 second
System	The amount of CPU time spent running kernel-space processes (OS core functions).	1 second
Wait	The amount of CPU time spent waiting for input/output operations to complete.	1 second
Nice	The amount of CPU time spent running processes with a lower priority (nice value).	1 second
Steal	The amount of CPU time lost due to the hypervisor managing other virtual machines or containers on the same physical host.	1 second

Datapoint: Filesystem

Metric	Description	Granularity
Memory Usage	The total memory usage in percentage	1 second

You can measure the used value in percentage by using the formula (total - actualFree) ÷ total. The sensor uses the actualFree value that is the real-constrained memory that includes free and cached memory, instead of free, which is a low value (used for caching or buffering).

The following table outlines the unit for memory:

Metric	Unit	Description	Granularity
Used	Percentage	Amount of memory in use	1 second

The values are displayed on a graph for a selected time period.

Datapoint: Filesystem

Open files usage when available on the operating system; current vs max. The values are displayed on a graph for a selected time period. The Solaris operating system has limited support. Global zone supports only the current metric and non-global zone does not support any metrics.

Metric	Unit	Description	Granularity
Current	Byte	The total memory available for use by the system, including both active and inactive memory.	1 second
Used	Percentage	The memory that processes use.	1 second

Datapoint: Filesystem

These metrics provide insights into file system performance, capacity, and usage, allowing administrators to monitor and optimize their storage systems effectively.

Metric	Description	Granularity
Device	The name of the device.	60 seconds
Mounts	Mount location of the file system	60 seconds
Options	The options or parameters that are used while mounting the file system.	60 seconds
Free	The amount of free space available on the file system.	1 second
Leaked	Space that has is allocated but not used, considered "leaked" or wasted.	1 second
Reads/s	The number of read operations per second.	1 second
Writes/s	The number of write operations per second.	1 second
Type	The type of file system.	60 seconds
Capacity	The total capacity of the file system.	60 seconds
Used	The amount of space used on the file system.	1 second
Inode Usage	The percentage of inodes (data structures that describe files and directories) in use.	1 second
Bytes Read/s	The number of bytes read from the file system.	1 second
Bytes Written/s	The number of bytes written to the file system.	1 second

Datapoint: Filesystem

* The total, read, and write usage datapoint metrics display the disk I/O utilization as a percentage.

* Leaked (refers to deleted files that are in use and equates to capacity - used - free. You can find these files with lsof | grep deleted).

By default, Instana only monitors local file systems. You can list the file systems that are monitored or excluded in the configuration.yaml file.

The name for the configuration setting is the device name, which you can obtain from the first column of the mnttab file or the df command output.

The following example shows the list of file systems that are monitored:

com.instana.plugin.host:
  filesystems:
    - 'rpool/export/home'
    - 'rpool/VARSHARE'
    - 'rpool/ROOT/11.4.90.214.1'
    - 'rpool/VARSHARE/sstore'
 

The following example shows the file systems that are included or excluded:

com.instana.plugin.host:
  filesystems:
    include:
      - 'rpool/export/home'
      - 'rpool/VARSHARE'
    exclude:
      - 'rpool/ROOT/11.4.90.214.1'
      - 'rpool/VARSHARE/sstore'
 

The following table outlines the network traffic and errors per an interface.

Metric	Description	Granularity
Interface	The network interface being used for communication.	60 seconds
Mac	The Media Access Control (MAC) address of the network interface.	60 seconds
IPs	The IP addresses assigned to the network interface.	60 seconds
RX Bytes	The total number of bytes received by the network interface per second.	1 second
RX Errors	Errors encountered while receiving data on the network interface.	1 second
TX Bytes	The total number of bytes transmitted by the network interface per second.	1 second
TX Errors	Errors encountered while transmitting packets on the network interface.	1 second
Received/s	The number of packets received by the network interface per second.	1 second
Transmitted/s	The number of packets transmitted by the network interface per second.	1 second

Datapoint: Filesystem

The following metrics provide insights into TCP connection activity, including established connections, segment transmission rates, and error occurrences:

Metric	Description	Granularity
Established	The number of established TCP connections.	1 second
Open/s	The number of new TCP connections that are opened per second.	1 second
In Segments/s	The number of incoming TCP segments per second.	1 second
Out Segments/s	The number of outgoing TCP segments per second.	1 second
Established Resets	The number of established TCP connections that were reset per second.	1 second
Out Resets	The number of outgoing TCP connections that were reset per second.	1 second
Fail	The number of failed TCP connection attempts per second.	1 second
Error	The number of TCP errors per second.	1 second
Retransmission	The number of TCP retransmissions per second.	1 second

These metrics offer insights into running processes, including their process ID, name, CPU usage, normalized CPU usage, and memory consumption. The top process list is updated every 30 seconds and the list contains only the processes with system usage. For example, the processes with more than 10% CPU usage over the last 30 seconds or processes with more than 512 MB memory usage (RSS) are displayed in the process top list.

To create a combined list of processes from the top 10 CPU and memory usage lists, set combineTopProcesses to true. The processes are included in the combined list even if their CPU usage is less than 10% or memory usage is less than 512 MB. If the same process is listed in the top 10 CPU and top 10 memory usage lists, it is listed only once in the combined list, which can include up to 20 entries.

com.instana.plugin.host:
  combineTopProcesses: true
 

The normalized CPU is calculated by dividing the CPU by the number of logical processors.

Metric	Description	Granularity
PID	The unique identifier that is assigned to each process by the operating system.	30 seconds
Process Name	The name of the process as defined by the application or service.	30 seconds
CPU	The amount of CPU resources consumed by the process.	30 seconds
CPU (normalized)	The CPU usage of the process, normalized to a scale.	30 seconds
Memory	The amount of memory consumed by the process.	30 seconds

Datapoint: Filesystem