Work processes

Purpose

Work processes are the actual workers in SAP. It is important to check their state, availability and run time. This monitor will watch work processes of all kinds, with the ability to tune the monitoring for specific tasks or cases. It will detect long running processes, stopped or private processes, compute the usage ratio, and notify as soon as a threshold on those metrics is reached.

Configuration hints

This monitor allows to send an alarm if it finds too many work processes in a given situation, or if some are running for too long.

To start the configuration, create a rule in the surveillance table. You can use the User filter to watch processes used by a specific user or group of users (regular expression)

The Task filter Select the specific task for which you want to check the processes. You can also select ANY if you want to build a general rule to match any kind of work process

The State filter Will select only the work processes of the give state. This allows to monitor the number of processes being in a given state, for example PRIVATE or STOPPED, which are states you want to avoid.

The Runtime threshold You can set the maximum runtime for a given type of work process. All WP matching the task and state filter, running for more than threshold will generate an alarm

The Count threshold You can set the maximum number work processes to be in a given state, in absolute value or in ratio of the total. For example, to get an alarm when 80% of DIALOG work processes are RUNNING.

Thresholds are independent and can be set to 0 if not used.

Surveillance table

Parameter	Description
Active	Use this field to activate or deactivate a line of configuration.
Task	The type of workprocess to watch, or ANY to watch all.
Status	Watch for the processes of the given status
User	A filter to match only the process used by the given user. Regular expressions may be used.
Runtime threshold (elapsed in sec)	The threshold for the maximum runtime (seconds) of a given process. Does not depend on the configured status.
Count threshold (nb or %)	The threshold for the number of processes being in the defined status. Use an absolute value or a percentage of the total number of processes available for the given task (specify % unit).
Severity	The level of severity of the alarm generated by this line of surveillance.
Auto clear	If checked, the alarm will be cleared as soon as the alarm condition is not met anymore.
Alarm tag	This field allows to add custom text within the alarm message. %MSG% variable will contain the actual generated message and can be used such as: “my_prefix %MSG% my_suffix”. By default, tag will be used as prefix.
Alarm	If checked, this line of surveillance will be used for alarm generation.
Metric	If checked, this line of surveillance will be used for QOS generation.
Report	If checked, this line of surveillance will used for showing threshold and severity in the daily report

Examples

Active	Task	Status	User	Runtime threshold (elapsed in sec)	Count threshold (nb or %)	Severity	Auto clear	Alarm tag	Alarm	Metric	Report
true	DIALOG	RUNNING	*	90	80%	MAJOR	true	true	false	false

Effect : Send a MAJOR alarm for any DIALOG process running a task since more than 90 sec or if 80% of the DIALOG processes are in RUNNING state.

Examples

Active	Task	Status	User	Runtime threshold (elapsed in sec)	Count threshold (nb or %)	Severity	Auto clear	Alarm tag	Alarm	Metric	Report
true	DIALOG	PRIV	*	1	CRITICAL	true	true	false	false

Effect : Send a CRITICAL alarm if one DIALOG process is in PRIVATE status

Examples

Active	Task	Status	User	Runtime threshold (elapsed in sec)	Count threshold (nb or %)	Severity	Auto clear	Alarm tag	Alarm	Metric	Report
true	ANY	STOPPED	*	1	CRITICAL	true	true	false	false

Effect : Send a CRITICAL alarm if any process is in STOPPED state

Examples

Active	Task	Status	User	Runtime threshold (elapsed in sec)	Count threshold (nb or %)	Severity	Auto clear	Alarm tag	Alarm	Metric	Report
true	SPOOL	RUNNING	JDOE	120	WARNING	false	true	false	false

Effect : Send a WARNING alarm each time user JDOE runs a SPOOL task for more than 120 seconds. Do not clear the alarm

Generated metrics

metricId	metricUnit	metricTarget	metricDescription
WORKPROCESSES_PERCENTAGE_USED	Percent or Work processes	[INSTANCE][TASK][STATUS]	Sends the usage ratio of a work process of a given type
WORKPROCESSES_USED_COUNT	Percent or Work processes	[INSTANCE][TASK][STATUS]	Sends the number of a work processes of a given type
WORKPROCESSES_FREE_COUNT	Work processes	[INSTANCE][TASK]	Sends the number of work processes in WAITING state for a given task