Computed threshold not correct for dynamic alarm policies defined for use with (Enhanced) MCS profiles

Products

• NIMSOFT PROBES
• CA Unified Infrastructure Management for z Systems
• DX Infrastructure Management

Issue/Introduction

Define a disk dynamic alarm policy to generate an alarm when the metrics is > 98% of the computed baseline. The alarm policy is applied to an UMP USM monitoring group where (Enhanced) MCS profile is deployed. The alarm is being generated even though the current QoS metric is not > (baseline + 98% of baseline)

Example of the erroneous alarm being raised:

Disk Usage (%) on C:\ for U191202 is at 46.53 %. It has violated the threshold ( > 45.44 ) for at least 5.0 minutes out of 5.0 MINUTES. Baseline Value is: 46.36

The custom alarm policy used is as follows:

${metric_name} on ${component_name} for ${device_name} is at ${metric_value} ${metric_unit}. It has violated the threshold ( ${threshold_operator} ${threshold_value} ) for at least ${tot_time_window} ${tot_time_window_unit} out of ${tot_sliding_window} ${tot_sliding_window_unit}. Baseline Value is: ${metric_baseline}

Cause

This is the expected behavior since dynamic alarms configured through Alarm Policies through the Operator Console -> Settings -> Alarm Policy are generated by the plugin_metric function of the spooler probe on a robot or the hub probe on the hub. 

The dynamic alarms configured through probe Configuration Pages or Templates modified through the Admin Console are processed by the baseline_engine probe and are configured differently.

Environment

UIM/UMP:  9.02 GA
hub:  7.97
robot:  7.907HF3
mon_config_service:  9.02hf2

Resolution

To configure dynamic alarms for Alarm Policies that will generate alarms by the plugin_metric plugin, the following applies (configured through Operator Console -> Settings -> Alarm Policies):

If your computed baseline is 80 and you want to generate the alarm when the current metric goes above 88% of the computed baseline, you must enter 110 in the dynamic threshold field.  The configured threshold will then be 110% of the computed baseline value (88%).

To configure dynamic alarms that will generate alarms by the baseline_engine, the following applies (configured for probes through the Admin Console):

If your computed baseline is 10 and you want to generate an alarm when the current metric goes above 5% of the computed baseline, then you enter a value of 5 in the dynamic threshold field corresponding to the level of the alarm that is to be raised.   The configured threshold will then be 105% of the computed baseline value (10.5%).

Additional Information

Manage Alarms with Centralized Alarm Policies

Configuring Alarm Thresholds

The ${threshold_value} variable description that appears when configuring alarm messages for alarm polices through the Operator Console is incorrect:

This will be corrected in the UIM 9.02 SP1 release.