For each type of monitor, Management Central offers several measurements, known as metrics, to help you pinpoint different aspects of system activity. A metric is a measurement of a particular characteristic of a system resource or the performance of a program or a system.
For a system monitor, you can select from a wide range of available metrics, such as CPU utilization, interactive response time, transaction rate, disk arm utilization, disk storage, disk IOP utilization, and more.
For a message monitor, you can specify one or more message IDs, message types, severity levels. You can also select from a list of predefined sets of messages that are associated with a specific type of problem, such as a communications link problem, a cabling or hardware problem, or a modem problem.
For a file monitor, you can select to monitor files across multiple endpoint systems for a specified text string or for a specified size. Or, you can select to trigger an event whenever a specified file has been modified. You can select one or more files to be monitored, or you can select the History log option, which will monitor the i5/OS™ history log (QHST).
For a job monitor, available metrics include job count, job status, job log messages, CPU utilization, logical I/O rate, disk I/O rate, communications I/O rate, transaction rate, and more.
The Metrics page in the New Monitor window allows you to view and change the metrics that you want to monitor. To access this page, click Monitors, right-click the type of monitor you want to create (for example, Job), and then click New Monitor. Fill in the required fields, and then click the Metrics tab.
Use the online help to assist you in selecting your metrics. Remember to specify threshold values that allow you to be notified and to specify actions to be taken when a certain value (called the trigger value) is reached.
Job monitor metrics
You can use any metric, a group of metrics, or all the metrics from the list to be included in your monitor. Metrics you can use in a job monitor include the following:
| Job Count | Monitor for a specific number of jobs matching the job selection. |
|---|---|
| Job Status | Monitor for jobs in any selected status, such as Completed, Disconnected,
Ending, Held while running, or Initial thread held. Remember:
 Metrics
for job status can affect performance. Limit the number of jobs
that you are monitoring to 40. |
| Job Log Messages | Monitor for messages based on any combination of Message ID, Type, and Minimum severity. |
Job numeric values
| CPU Utilization | The percentage of available processing unit time used by all jobs that are included by this monitor on this system. |
|---|---|
| Logical I/O Rate | The number of logical I/O actions, per second, by each job that is being monitored on this system. |
| Disk I/O Rate | The average number of I/O operations, per second, performed by each job that is being monitored on this system. The value in this column is the sum of the asynchronous and synchronous disk I/O operations. |
| Communications I/O Rate | The number of communications I/O actions, per second, by each job that is being monitored on this system. |
| Transaction Rate | The number of transactions per second by each job that is being monitored on this system. |
| Transaction Time | The total transaction time for each job that is being monitored on this system. |
| Thread Count | The number of active threads in each job that is being monitored on this system. |
| Page Fault Rate | The average number of times, per second, that an active program in each job that is being monitored on this system refers to an address that is not in main storage. |
Summary numeric values
| CPU Utilization | The percentage of available processing unit time used by all jobs monitored on this system. For multiple-processor systems, this is the average percent busy for all processors. |
|---|---|
| Logical I/O Rate | The number of logical I/O actions, per second, by all jobs monitored on this system. |
| Disk I/O Rate | The average number of I/O operations, per second, performed by all jobs monitored on this system. The value in this column is the sum of the asynchronous and synchronous disk I/O operations. |
| Communications I/O Rate | The number of communications I/O actions, per second, by all jobs monitored on this system. |
| Transaction Rate | The number of transactions per second by all jobs monitored on this system. |
| Transaction Time | The total transaction time for all jobs monitored on this system. |
| Thread Count | The number of active threads for all jobs monitored on this system. |
| Page Fault Rate | The average number of times, per second, that active programs in all jobs monitored on this system refer to an address that is not in main storage. |