174 Chapter 7. Monitoring7. 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 aretime-based, ensure the timeout is not less than the time alloted to thresholds. Other-wise, the metrics serve no purpose, as the probe will time out before any thresholdsare 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 haschanged state. Refer to Section 7.5.2 Establishing Thresholds for best practicesregarding these thresholds.9. When finished, click Create Probe. Remember, you must commit your Monitoringconfiguration 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 probefrom the System Details ⇒ Probes tab), and click delete probe. Finally, confirm thedeletion.7.5.2. Establishing ThresholdsMany of the probes offered by RHN contain alert thresholds that, when crossed, indicatea change in state for the probe. For instance, the Linux::CPU Usage probe allows you toset CRITICAL and WARNING thresholds for the percent of CPU used. If the monitoredsystem reports 75 percent of its CPU used, and the WARNING threshold is set to 70 per-cent, the probe will go into a WARNING state. Some probes offer a multitude of suchthresholds.In order to get the most out of your Monitoring entitlement and avoid false notifications,Red Hat recommends running your probes without notifications for a time to establishbaseline performance for each of your systems. Although the default values provided forprobes may suit you, every organization has a different environment that may require al-tering thresholds.7.5.3. Monitoring the RHN ServerIn addition to monitoring all of your client systems, you may also use RHN to monitor yourRHN Server, whether that be an RHN Satellite Server a RHN Proxy Server. To monitoryour RHN Server, find a system monitored by the server, and go to that system’s SystemDetails ⇒ Probes tab.Click create new probe and select the Satellite Probe Command Group.Next, complete the remaining fields as you would for any other probe. Refer toSection 7.5.1 Managing Probes for instructions.Although the RHN Server appears to be monitored by the client system, the probe is actu-ally run from the server on itself. Thresholds and notifications work normally.
