Managing synthetic metric rules

Synthetic metric rules are rules that define how you monitor your synthetic transactions. On the Synthetic Metric Rules page, you can define and manage these rules, and the criteria for generating events and issuing notifications. 

Metrics

Rules are based on metrics. Metrics are measurements of a transaction. There are four basic metrics that are defined for all transactions:

In addition to the basic metrics, page timers and custom timers that are defined in your scripts are measured, and you can define rules based on their measurements. Page timer and custom timer metrics are measured in seconds.

Rules

There are four default rules, that use the out-of-the-box metrics. These are automatically applied to all of your synthetic transactions. All of the default metric rules are active by default.

The following default metric rules are included out-of-the-box:

*Critical thresholds are disabled by default

You can modify the thresholds, and notification settings of the default metric rules, or activate/deactivate them. You cannot delete default metric rules.

You can define additional rules for the predefined metrics to apply to specific applications. Each rule must apply to a unique combination of application, Execution Plan, transaction, metric and location.

For example, if you define a rule that measures performance for:

• Application: MyApp
• Execution Plan: MyEP
• Transaction: MyTran
• Location: Houston
  

You cannot define another performance rule for the same combination of MyApp, MyEP, MyTran, and Houston.

More general rules are overridden by more specific rules. For example, if you define a Performance rule for an application and for Any Execution Plan, it is applied to every Execution Plan for that application. If you then define another Performance rule for a specific Execution Plan of that application, the Execution Plan-specific rule is applied to that one Execution Plan, and the application-level rule is applied to all of the remaining Execution Plans for that application that do not have a rule of their own.

You can deactivate or activate any rules, including the default rules. Deactivating a rule means that no events are generated and no notifications are issued by the deactivated rule. If a rule is deactivated, and a more general rule covering the rule's metric is active, the more general rule takes effect.

To create/edit a synthetic metric rule

1. From the TrueSight Operation Management menu, select Configuration > Synthetic Metric Rules.
2. Do one of the following:
   
   • From the Synthetic Metric Rules action menu, select Create Rule.
      
   • From the action menu for the rule you want to edit, select Edit.
      

3. On the Create/Edit Synthetic Rule page, enter or modify the following details:
    

   Field	Description
   Name (required)	Logical name for the metric rule. Metric rule names must be unique. Maximum length is 255 characters.
   Status	Active or Inactive If the status is set to Inactive, no events are generated and no notifications are sent.
   Application (required)	Application to which the rule is applied For default rules, the value is always Any For user-defined rules, select a specific application from the dropdown. You cannot apply a rule to more than one application. Instead, create an additional rule for each application.
   Execution Plan	Execution Plan to which the rule is applied Note: An Execution Plan must have run at least once in order for it to be available on this list. From the dropdown: Select Any to apply the rule to all of the application's Execution Plans or Select a specific Execution Plan. You cannot apply a rule to more than one of an application's Execution Plans, without applying it to all of them. Instead, create an additional rule for each Execution Plan.
   Transaction	Transaction to which the rule is applied From the dropdown: Select Any to apply the rule to all of the Execution Plan's transactions or Select a specific transaction. You cannot apply the same rule to more than one of an Execution Plan's transactions, without applying it to all of them. Instead, create an additional rule for each transaction.
   Metric	Metric that the rule is based on Default value is Availability. From the dropdown, select a metric. The metrics available for selection are generated based on data from previous runs of the selected Execution Plan. This means that the Execution Plan must have run at least once for metrics to be available for selection. When you select a metric, the following details are displayed about the metric: Category Indicates what the metric is monitoring Possible values are: Transaction Custom Timer Page Timer Metric For the Transaction category, the four default metrics are shown: Availability Accuracy Execution Performance For Custom Timer and Page Timer categories, the name of the timer is shown. Only the timers that are defined for the selected Execution Plan are available. Avg Average measured result for this metric, for all historic runs of the Execution Plan Value is NA if Any is selected Min Lowest measured result for this metric, for the Execution Plan Value is NA if Any is selected Max Highest measured result for this metric, for the Execution Plan Value is NA if Any is selected Count Number of historic runs of the Execution Plan Value is NA if Any is selected Unit Unit of measure for this metric Possible values are: Seconds - for Performance, Custom Timer, and Page Timer metrics Errors - for Availability, Accuracy, and Execution metrics
   Thresholds and Notifications	Defines the thresholds that trigger events and notifications to be generated for the selected metric Default settings for thresholds are inherited from the Default metric rule of the same metric. For example, if you create a new Availability rule, the values for your new rule are initially set to the values you have defined in your default Availability rule. This is true even if the default rule is inactive. Timer metrics' use the default Performance rule's values as default values. To set or edit thresholds and notifications, do the following: Select the Minor and Critical threshold checkboxes to indicate the event levels you want this rule to generate. At least one threshold (Minor or Critical) must be enabled. By default Minor is enabled and Critical is disabled.  Enter the threshold value for each level: If you select a threshold, you must enter a value; threshold values cannot be blank. If you enable both Minor and Critical, the value for Minor must be less than the value for Critical, or the values can be equal if the Critical threshold includes a higher number of Consecutive executions. Number of Errors for error metrics. Number of Seconds for performance metrics. You can enter fractional values with up to three places after the decimal point. Use a period (.) as a decimal point; do not use a comma. If the fractional value is less than one, a leading zero is not required. Enter the number of Consecutive executions that violate the threshold required to generate an event. Consecutive violations apply only to the same combination of Execution Plan, transaction, and location. This means that even if a metric rule is defined for all Execution Plans, all transactions, or all locations, the threshold breaches are only considered consecutive if they are for the same Execution Plan, the same transaction, and in the same location. Select a Notification level: Always - sends a notification for any event Critical - sends a notification for critical events only Never - does not send event notifications In Notification Notes, enter standard text to be added to the notification for this threshold. This text is appended to the end of the notification that is issued for events triggered by this metric rule.
   Location	Location to which the rule is applied From the dropdown Select Any to apply the rule to all locations or Select a specific location. You cannot apply the same rule to more than one location, without applying it to all locations. Instead, create an additional rule for each location.

4. Click one of the following:

   • Save - saves the rule and leaves the page.

   • Save and New - saves the rule and reopens the page with default values so you can create another rule.
   • Save and Clone - saves the rule and reopens the page with all of the fields populated with the same values as the rule you just created except for the Name, which has Clone of prepended to it. You must modify the application, Execution Plan, transaction, metric, or location. You cannot save the rule with the same details.

To activate/deactivate a synthetic metric rule

1. From the TrueSight Operation Management menu, select Configuration > Synthetic Metric Rules.

2. From the action menu for the rule you want to activate/deactivate, select Activate or Deactivate.
   
   

   Note

   If you deactivate a synthetic metric rule, all open events that were opened for the rule are closed.

To activate/deactivate multiple synthetic metric rules

1. From the TrueSight Operation Management menu, select Configuration > Synthetic Metric Rules.
2. Select the checkboxes for the rules you want to activate/deactivate.

3. From the action menu in the table title bar, select Activate Selected or Deactivate Selected.
   

   Note

   If you deactivate synthetic metric rules, all open events for the rules are closed.

To clone a synthetic metric rule

1. From the TrueSight Operation Management menu, select Configuration > Synthetic Metric Rules.

2. From the action menu for the rule you want to clone, select Clone. 
   
   The Create Synthetic Metric Rule page opens with all of the fields populated with the same values as the rule you cloned except for the Name, which has Clone of prepended to it. You must modify the application, Execution Plan, transaction, metric, or location. You cannot save the rule with the same details.
   

To delete a synthetic metric rule

1. From the TrueSight Operation Management menu, select Configuration > Synthetic Metric Rules.

2. From the action menu for the rule you want to delete, select Delete.
   
   

   Notes

   The Delete option is not available for default rules.

   If you delete a synthetic metric rule, all open events for the rule are closed

To delete multiple synthetic metric rules

1. From the TrueSight Operation Management menu, select Configuration > Synthetic Metric Rules.
2. Select the checkboxes for the rules you want to delete.

3. From the action menu in the table title bar, select Delete Selected.
   

   Note

   If you delete synthetic metric rules, all open events for the rules are closed.

Sorting and filtering the Synthetic Metric Rules list

The Synthetic Metric Rules list includes details about all of your defined metric rules, including the default rules.

Click any column heading to sort the table by that column.

Enter text in any of the filter boxes, to show only rules that include that text in the field filter.

The Synthetic Metric Rules list includes the following information:

Enabling and disabling synthetic SLA events

If you do not want SLA-based events to be generated, you can disable them. To do this, from the TrueSight Operations Management menu, select Configuration > Synthetic Metric Rules and scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Synthetic SLA section, and click the SLA Events switch to turn it off. The switch effects all applications.

If you have synthetic SLA events disabled, and you want to turn them on, you can use the same SLA Events switch.

Related topics

Synthetic metrics, rules, and events

Investigating application issues reported by synthetic health events

Analyzing synthetic health details

Editing an application's synthetic settings

Converting from Monitoring Policies to Synthetic Metric Rules