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Simple System Monitoring Application (SSMA) Frequently Asked Questions
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What is the difference between SSMA and SunMC?

SunMC mostly monitors hardware.  It also allows one to manipulate the machine 
being monitored from the SunMC console.  SSMA measures the load 
generated by software on a particular machine.  One cannot manipulate client 
machines from the SSMA web page.  One must make any changes on the 
client directly.  SSMA is a monitoring package only, not a 
full-featured management system.

I don't want to install any software on clients I wish to monitor.

There are ways to configure the software so that there is no need to install 
software on client systems.  This approach has some performance and security 
concerns but will function adequately in scenarios where one is monitoring a 
small number of systems.  Instructions on how to do this are detailed in the 
SSMA Installation and Configuration Guide.

I killed all the runaway programs but the CPU load indicator is still red.  
Why?

It takes a while for SSMA software to cycle through its 
update/processing cycle.  One should see the indicator change within five to 
ten minutes if the change fixed the problem.  The graphs take somewhat longer 
to update and may require up to 30 minutes to be redrawn with new data.

Is this just a tool for monitoring Sun Ray servers?

SSMA was designed and 'tuned' to monitor Sun Ray servers in 
particular, however, it can be used to monitor the performance of any Solaris 
or Linux machine.  With some modification, SSMA could be extended to 
run on HP-UX and AIX as well as any other Unix variant.

What is the significance of the number of users logged into multiple Sun Ray 
servers?

Due to some software issues currently being addressed, one could log out of a 
Sun Ray session but not have all of one's processes terminated upon logout.  
These left-over processes wind up consuming CPU cycles and producing additional 
load on the Sun Ray server.  Users are generally unaware that this happens.  
The Sun Ray user multi-logon report helps a systems administrator as well as a 
user to see how many different Sun Ray servers he/she is logged into.

Why show anything dealing with the automounter?

If the -nobrowse option is not set in /etc/init.d/autofs a server could 
inadvertently be mounting many directories that are not needed.  Compare the 
graphs for a system during the week and then over the weekend.  If the CPU load 
and number of users doesn't drop to around zero, then there are other issues to 
investigate.  Look for abnormal network traffic on either the individual 
network cards or on the TCP Statistics Graph.

