iSeries Navigator monitors

Monitors display current information about the performance of your systems. Additionally, you can use them to carry out predefined actions when a specific event occurs. You can use the system, message, job, file, and B2B transaction monitors to display and monitor information about your systems. The system and job monitors use the performance data collected by Collection Services.

The monitors included in iSeries™ Navigator use Collection Services data to track the elements of system performance of specific interest to you. Moreover, they can take specified actions when certain events, such as the percentage of CPU utilization or the status of a job, occur. You can use monitors to see and manage system performance as it happens across multiple systems and groups of systems.

With the monitors, you can start a monitor, and then turn to other tasks on your server, in iSeries Navigator, or on your PC. In fact, you could even turn your PC off. iSeries Navigator continues monitoring and performing any threshold commands or actions you specified. Your monitor runs until you stop it. You can also use monitors to manage performance remotely by accessing them with iSeries Navigator for Wireless.

iSeries Navigator provides the following types of monitors:

System monitor: Collect and display performance data as it happens or up to 1 hour. Detailed graphs help you visualize what is going on with your servers as it happens. Choose from a variety of metrics (performance measurements) to pinpoint specific aspects of system performance. For example, if you are monitoring the average CPU utilization on your server, you can click any collection point on the graph to see a details chart that shows the 20 jobs with the highest CPU utilization. Then, you can right-click any of these jobs to work directly with the job.
Job monitor: Monitor a job or a list of jobs based on job name, job user, job type, subsystem, or server type. Choose from a variety of metrics to monitor the performance, status, or error messages for a job. To work directly with a job, just right-click the job from the list that is shown in the Job Monitor window.
Message monitor: Find out whether your application completes successfully or monitor for specific messages that are critical to your business needs. From the Message Monitor window, you can see the details of a message, reply to a message, send a message, and delete a message.
B2B activity monitor: If you have an application like Connect for iSeries configured, you can use a B2B activity monitor to monitor your B2B transactions. You can view a graph of active transactions over time, and you can run commands automatically when thresholds are triggered. You can search for and display a specific transaction as well as view a bar graph of the detailed steps of that specific transaction.
File monitor: Monitor one or more selected files for a specified text string, for a specified size, or for any modification to the file.

To find out more about monitors, see the following topics:

Monitor concepts
Monitors can display real-time performance data. Additionally, they can continually monitor your system in order to run a selected command when a specified threshold is reached. Learn how monitors work, what they can monitor, and how they can respond to a given performance situation.
Job monitors and Collection Services
In order to avoid creating a negative performance impact on your system, you should understand how the different metrics in the job monitor uses Collection Services.
Create a new monitor
Creating a new monitor is a quick and easy process that begins at the New Monitor window. In iSeries Navigator, expand Management Central, expand Monitors, right-click the type of monitor you want to create (for example, Job), and then click New Monitor.

Parent topic: Work with Management Central