Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager Management Pack Guide
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Published: October 1, 2003
Management Pack Guide
Developed by: Windows System Resource Manager Group
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On This Page
Acknowledgements
Recommended Knowledge and Skills
Overview of Windows System Resource Manager Management Pack
Configuration
Operations Tasks
Recommendations for the Network Operations Desk
Reference
Acknowledgements
Program Manager: Chris Stackhouse
Writer: Vilas Vyas
Technical Reviewers: Aruna Koka, Padmapriya A., Brenda Carter
Editor: Liz Bjorkman
Recommended Knowledge and Skills
To deploy and operate the Microsoft® Windows System Resource Manager (WSRM) Management Pack, it is recommended that you possess the following knowledge and skills:
Possess a working knowledge of the Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) monitoring features.
Be familiar with the recommended process for deploying Management Packs as described in Chapter 7, “Deploying Management Packs” of the Microsoft Operations Manager 2000 SP1 Deployment Guide.
Be familiar with the basic concepts in Windows System Resource Manager (WSRM) such as process matching criteria, resource allocation policies, calendar, and accounting. For more information, refer to the WSRM Online Help.
Overview of Windows System Resource Manager Management Pack
The Windows System Resource Manager Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2000 (MOM) SP1 provides a monitoring and management system for the Windows System Resource Manager.
Overview of WSRM
WSRM is available to use with Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Enterprise Edition and Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Datacenter Edition. WSRM allows you to manage CPU and memory utilization on a per-process basis. An administrator sets targets for the amount of hardware resources that running applications or users are allowed to consume. This means that you can allocate resources among multiple applications on a server according to your business priorities.
Using WSRM, a system administrator can do the following:
Set CPU and memory allocation policies on processes. This includes selecting processes to be managed and setting resource usage targets or limits.
Manage CPU utilization.
Set CPU Affinity of Processes.
Limit the process working set size (physical resident pages in use).
Manage committed memory (pagefile usage).
Apply policies to users or groups on a server.
Apply policies on a date/time schedule.
Generate, store, view, and export resource-utilization accounting records that can be used to monitor resource usage, compare actual and expected performance, and provide the basis for charge-back accounting.
Overview of WSRM Management Pack
With WSRM Management Pack, MOM provides central monitoring and automatic problem notification for large networks, continuously monitoring the WSRM components. By using the WSRM Management Pack, an administrator can centrally monitor WSRM service running on various servers in an enterprise. You can monitor important indicators to discover and resolve minor problems before they develop into potentially lengthy service outages. This Management Pack helps administrators monitor the health of WSRM by providing public views and alerts.
Public views give information about the effectiveness of WSRM resource management.
Alerts notify the administrator of the failure of any configuration setting such as failure in setting a resource allocation policy, or failure to manage working set size.
For more information about MOM and other Management Packs, including installation and configuration, see www.microsoft.com/mom.
Windows System Resource Manager Management Pack Monitoring Scenarios
The WSRM Management Pack monitors events that WSRM places in the Application event log and generates alerts to notify the administrator of critical operational issues such as:
Low resource conditions
WSRM database issues
WSRM service errors
WSRM functionality errors
WMI errors
Errors in backing up the XML files that WSRM uses
Registry errors
The WSRM Management Pack also monitors key performance metrics such as Actual Managed CPU and Target Managed CPU to monitor the overall health of WSRM.
Windows System Resource Manager Components
This section provides an overview of WSRM components and how they are deployed.
WSRM Management Pack Deployment Topology
WSRM includes a server component and a client component. The WSRM Management Pack is deployed only on the server component. No other Management Packs are required to monitor WSRM.
WSRM Server Component
The WSRM server component includes the following sub-components:
WSRM service – A Microsoft Windows NT service that manages the CPU and memory usage based on the resource allocation policy specified.
XML data store – Configuration data such as process matching criteria, resource allocation policies, and calendar settings are stored in XML files as part of the XML data store.
Accounting store – Stores information about resource usage by processes. An administrator can use this information to generate reports of resource usage by user, by process, or by other properties of interest.
WSRM Client Component
The WSRM client component includes the graphical user interface and the command-line interface. The various actions that a system administrator can take, such as creating policies, identifying and classifying the processes to be managed into Process Matching Criteria, and scheduling different policies to be used with calendaring are exposed in both interfaces.
The WSRM client component can be used locally on the same server or by using a Remote connection with the client on a remote machine.
Terms and Definitions
This section includes a description of WSRM concepts and additional terms related to resource management. These terms are important to understand when you are working with WSRM.
WSRM Concepts
It is useful to understand the following main concepts in WSRM functionality when you deploy the WSRM Management Pack:
Process-matching criteria
Process matching is the mechanism that WSRM uses to match processes and then aggregate them into groups to be managed.
A process-matching criterion creates an association between a group of one or more matched processes and a resource-allocation policy. WSRM then manages all of the matched processes by using the resource allocations that are specified in the resource-allocation policy. If a CPU allocation is specified, the CPU resources are distributed evenly among all the processes in the group. If a memory limit is specified, the limit is applied on a per-process basis to all the processes in the group.
Resource-allocation policies
A resource-allocation policy is the mechanism that specifies the resource usage for a process.
After you have defined a process-matching criterion, you can create a resource-allocation policy to determine the resource usage for all processes that are matched by the process-matching criterion. A resource-allocation policy includes one or more resource allocations. A resource allocation consists of a process-matching criterion and one or more allocations, such as a CPU consumption target, memory limit, or processor affinity. The allocations that are specified apply to all processes that match the process-matching criterion associated with the resource allocation.
The default group
All running processes that are not matched by any of the process-matching criteria in the managing resource-allocation policy are grouped in the default group.
The default group is allocated any CPU bandwidth that is unaccounted for by the managing policy. This bandwidth is distributed on an equal-shares basis. This ensures that all processes in the default group get an equal proportion of the total CPU bandwidth that is available to the default group. WSRM enforces this allocation, which prevents one or more applications in the default group from using more than their share of CPU bandwidth.
WSRM calendar
You can use the WSRM calendar to schedule the automatic activation of a resource-allocation policy. You can specify that this be done on a one-time or recurring basis. You can also use a resource-allocation policy schedule to manage multiple resource-allocation policies and to activate different resource-allocation policies at different, predefined times over a 24-hour period.
When the calendar is enabled, the default calendar resource-allocation policy is in effect. You can configure the calendar default policy to be a user-defined resource-allocation policy or use the default calendar default resource-allocation policy. If no specific policy is scheduled, WSRM applies the default calendar resource-allocation policy. You can also configure the calendar to use a resource-allocation policy other than the default policy for times when no other policies are scheduled.
WSRM accounting
WSRM provides a mechanism you can use to store and retrieve records of the behavior of managed processes. With this information, you can easily generate reports of process-resource usage on a per-user basis, per-application basis, or other relevant basis. You can also use the accounting data to provide charge-back accounting.
Accounting information is stored in an accounting database for easy administration and retrieval. This information is logged in the accounting database at a default interval of ten minutes. You can modify this interval. The interval determines the frequency with which the data for all managed processes on the computer managed by WSRM is logged to the accounting database.
Additional Resource Management Terms
It is useful to know the following terms and definitions when you deploy the WSRM Management Pack:
Committed memory
Memory that either resides in the working set of a process or maps to a disk file, such as a page file or other memory-mapped file.
CPU affinity
On systems with more than one processor, CPU affinity specifies the set of processors on which the process is allowed to run exclusively. Also known as processor affinity.
CPU allocation
An allocation of CPU bandwidth that is specified in a resource-allocation. The CPU bandwidth is then allocated to the managed processes matched by the process-matching criterion in the resource-allocation.
CPU bandwidth
The rate of usage of the CPU over time. WSRM represents CPU resources as a percentage from 0 through 100.
CPU consumption target
Specifies a target CPU bandwidth for the resource allocation. WSRM uses a dynamic process priority management algorithm to try to limit the CPU usage of a process to the target specified in the matching resource-allocation policy of that process.
Managed CPU
The total CPU resources being used by managed processes.
Managed process
All running processes, except those on the system-defined exclusion list or the user-defined exclusion list.
Managing policy
The resource-allocation policy that controls how the computer is managed when WSRM is running in the managing state. If no user-defined resource-allocation policy is specified, WSRM uses the default resource-allocation policy.
Process
An object created by Windows to represent a running program. This includes the virtual address space and the control information necessary for the program to run.
Process priority
A value for each process that helps determine how CPU resources are used. WSRM dynamically changes the priority of a process so the CPU usage matches the targeted CPU allocation for that process.
Resource allocation
The part of a resource-allocation policy that specifies the set of resources to be allocated to the processes that match a given process-matching criterion.
Working set
The amount of physical memory assigned to a process by the operating system.
Configuration
This section provides some notes about agent configuration. It also provides an option for filtering events to reduce the impact of the Management Pack if it is being used over slow network connections or for other scenarios.
Agent Log File Settings
The general recommendations for configuring agent logs (included in Chapter 6, “Deploying Agents”, of the Microsoft Operations Managemer 2000 SP1 Deployment Guide) are sufficient for use with the WSRM Management Pack.
Configuring the Filtering of WSRM Monitoring Data
There are several cases in which you might decide not to collect warnings, performance data, and miscellaneous noncritical events. These include:
Deployments across satellite links.
Large branch office deployments.
Deployments with very slow WAN links.
Deployments where alerts are forwarded to a global network operations center.
Warnings and informational messages that are not needed.
You can filter events that you do not want to be notified about. First, you must create a folder to hold the new filter rules, and then you must add the filter rules.
In addition, you might decide to disable certain performance data to decrease traffic. After making changes, you must commit changes to the system.
**Note :**WSRM Management Pack public views do not operate if performance data gathering is disabled.
If you have not already created a folder to hold new rules, you can do it now.
To create a folder for filter rule
In the MOM Administrative console, navigate to Rules\Processing Rule Groups.
Right-click Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager (enabled), click New, and then click New Processing Rule Group.
Enter a name and description for the new folder.
Ensure that the Enabled check box is selected.
Click Next, and then click Finish.
When a dialog box appears with the message, “Would you like to deploy the processing rules in this newly created processing rule group to a group of computers?” click Yes.
On the Processing Rule Group Properties dialog box, click Add.
Select Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager, and then click OK.
To create filtering rules
In the MOM Administrative console, navigate to Rules\Processing Rule Groups\Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager.
Expand the processing rule group you just created.
Right-click Event Processing Rules, and then click Filter Events
Verify that the provider name is Application, and then click Next.
Click Advanced.
In the Advanced Criteria dialog box, set the following parameters:
In the Field box, select Event Type.
In the Condition box, select is less than.
In the Value box, select Error.
Click Add to list
Click Close, and then click Next
In the Filter Processing Rule Properties - Schedule dialog box, in the drop-down box click Always process data, and then click Next.
In the Filter Processing Rule Properties - Filter dialog box, select Do not evaluate further processing rules, nor insert matching events into the database (Pre-Filter), and then click Next.
In the Company Knowledge Base dialog box, click Next.
In the Filter Processing Rule Properties - General dialog box, in the Name box type a name for the filter (for example, Filter non-error Application events).
Click Finish.
To apply new filtering rules
In the MOM Administration console, navigate to Rules\Processing Rule Groups.
Right-click Rules, and then click Commit. These changes take approximately 10 minutes to take effect
To disable performance data
In the MOM Administration console, navigate to Rules\Processing Rule Groups\Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager (enabled)\Windows System Resource Manager (enabled)\Generic (enabled).
Click Performance Processing Rules.
For each rule of type Measuring in the right pane, perform the following steps to disable the rule:
Double-click the rule.
Make sure the Enabled check box is cleared, and then click OK.
In the MOM Administration console, navigate to Rules\Processing Rule Groups.
Right-click Rules, and then click Commit. These changes take approximately 10 minutes to take effect.
Operations Tasks
You must triage all alerts on a daily basis. In addition, you must perform other tasks on a regular basis, depending on your environment. Many important problems do not cause alerts, but they still require periodic attention.
You can perform the daily and weekly tasks as specified in this section, but you must adjust the frequency of these tasks to meet the needs of your particular environment.
Daily Tasks
On a daily basis, perform the following tasks:
Review all open alerts.
Verify that all domain controllers are communicating with the MOM Administrator console.
Review warnings. (Optional)
Reviewing All Open Alerts
Triage all new alerts in the following order of priority:
Critical errors
Errors
Warnings (optional)
Information (optional)
To review open alerts
In the MOM Administrator console, click Monitor, All Open Alerts.
Review all alerts that are older than 24 hours to make sure they are addressed in a timely manner.
Verifying That All Domain Controllers Are Communicating with the MOM Administrator Console
Communication failure between the domain controller and the monitoring infrastructure prevents you from receiving alerts.
To verify that domain controllers are communicating with the MOM Administrator console
In the MOM Administrator console, click Monitor, All Agents.
In the details pane, click the Last Contact column header. This sorts all computers based on the last contact time. If the last contact time is greater than five minutes, troubleshoot why the computer is not communicating with MOM.
Weekly Tasks
To determine the effectiveness of WSRM in managing the server resources (CPU and memory), review the alerts generated during the week and categorize them into the following areas:
Accounting
Configuration
Generic
Low resource conditions
This also provides an indication of the common error conditions occurring.
Recommendations for the Network Operations Desk
The Network Operations Desk can participate in monitoring WSRM by performing the daily and weekly tasks that are described in the “Operations Tasks” section of this guide. Although all alerts and error conditions require the attention of a WSRM administrator, the Network Operations Desk can try to resolve the problem based on the Knowledge Base information provided in the WSRM Management Pack for that alert or error condition.
Based on your monitoring requirements, you can reduce the volume of monitoring data that is sent to the Network Operations Desk by filtering monitoring data. For more information, see the “Configuring the Filtering of WSRM Monitoring Data” section earlier in this guide.
Reference
This section describes some of the contents of the WSRM Management Pack.
Reports
The WSRM Management Pack does not provide reports.
Computer Groups
The WSRM Management Pack has the following computer group:
Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager
This computer group has the following processing rule group(s) associated with it:
Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager \ Windows System Resource Manager
With this computer group to processing rule group association all the rules that are in the Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager \ Windows System Resource Manager processing rule group and child processing rule groups are deployed to computers that are running Windows System Resource Manager on Windows Server 2003.
Processing Rules
The WSRM Management Pack contains the following processing rule groups. These are contained in the following location:
Rules \ Processing Rule Groups \ Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager \ Windows System Resource Manager
Processing Rule Group: Accounting
The Accounting processing rule group contains Event processing rules for errors related to Accounting.
Table 1 Event Processing Rules in the Accounting Processing Rule Group
Rule |
Default alert severity |
|---|---|
WSRM - Database location contains non-English characters |
Critical Error |
WSRM - Error Initializing Accounting thread |
Critical Error |
WSRM - Error Initializing database |
Critical Error |
WSRM - Running low on disk space |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Unable to log accounting information |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - WMI inaccessible |
Critical Error |
Processing Rule Group: Configuration
The Configuration processing rule group contains Event processing rules for Configuration related errors.
Table 2 Event Processing Rules in the Configuration Processing Rule Group
Rule |
Default alert severity |
|---|---|
WSRM - Backup Operation Failed |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Backup XML files missing |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Calendar Default Policy not found |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Error accessing xml file |
Critical Error |
WSRM - Managing policy not found |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Registry Access Error |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Registry Value Error |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Resource Allocation Policy could not be set as managing policy |
Critical Error |
WSRM - Unable to start WSRM |
Critical Error |
WSRM - User Name not logged |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - WSRM could not start |
Critical Error |
WSRM - WSRM not supported |
Security Breach |
WSRM - XML files missing |
Alert Disabled |
Processing Rule Group: Generic
The Generic processing rule group contains Event processing rules for generic errors.
Table 3 Event Processing Rules in the Generic Processing Rule Group
Rule |
Default alert severity |
|---|---|
WSRM - Cannot locate user name |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Could not apply maximum working set size |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Process exceeded committed memory limit and terminated |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - Unable to start WSRM Calendar |
Critical Error |
WSRM - Unable to terminate process |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - WSRM could not start and timed out |
Alert Disabled |
WSRM - WSRM managing processes when there is no CPU contention |
Alert Disabled |
The Generic processing rule group also contains the following Performance processing rules:
Table 4 Performance Processing Rules in the Generic Processing Rule Group
Rule |
Enabled/disabled |
|---|---|
WSRM: PMC - Actual Managed CPU |
Enabled |
WSRM: PMC - Page File Size |
Enabled |
WSRM: PMC - Process Count |
Enabled |
WSRM: PMC - Target Managed CPU |
Enabled |
WSRM: PMC - Working Set Size |
Enabled |
Processing Rule Group: Low Resource Conditions
The Low Resource Conditions processing rule group contains Event processing rules for events related to Low Resource Conditions.
Table 5 Event Processing Rules in the Low Resource Conditions Processing Rule Group
Rule |
Default alert severity |
|---|---|
WSRM - Unable to allocate memory |
Critical Error |
WSRM - WSRM counters cannot function properly |
Critical Error |
Scripts
The WSRM Management Pack does not include any scripts.
Default Views
The WSRM Management Pack provides a default set of public views. The public view taxonomy is:
Public Views
Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager
Alerts
Attributes
Computer Groups
Computers
Events
Performance
WSRM: PMC - Actual Managed CPU
WSRM: PMC - Page File Size
WSRM: PMC - Process Count
WSRM: PMC - Target Managed CPU
WSRM: PMC - Working Set Size