This article applies to PRTG Network Monitor 15.4.20 or later

Summarized Sensor and Channel States in the Business Process Sensor

The Business Process sensor allows you to get an overall status of a whole business process while monitoring several involved process components. This makes the Business Process sensor a powerful and also very flexible tool because you can create one overall status based on your individual network components and business processes.

While admins are generally interested in the states and data of every process component, less technical employees of a company often do not need to see more than the summarized status of a process to know if it works or not. For example, an accounting manager is okay with the information “Our website works fine”, whereas a business infrastructure manager prefers to get exact information about the involved web servers, databases and other hardware and applications.

To get a cumulated sensor status for several network components, you can use the Business Process sensor.

This article describes how the Business Process sensor calculates summarized sensor and channel states from the states of single monitored objects.

1. States of Monitored Objects

With the Business Process sensor you can create individual sensor channels from the monitoring objects that you have in your network. You can select single sensors or whole devices, groups, or probes for a specific business process channel.

Every object in a channel has its own status that contributes to the overall status of this channel.

The Business Process sensor decides for every monitoring object if it is in an up or down condition.

Note: The Business Process up and down conditions are different from the “normal” up and down states of a sensor. This is necessary for the Business Process sensor to be able to calculate summarized states. Have a look at the following table to see which sensor status leads to which Business Process condition (BP condition).

2. Summarized Channel States

The Business Process sensor calculates the percentage of the up and down proportion per channel.

Enlarge here.

For example, the channel Core Server Security contains 75 % of up sensors... 25 % Up Status + 25 % Warning Status + 25 % Warning Status = 75 % BP Up Condition ...and 25 % of down sensors. 25 % Down Status = 25 % BP Down Condition

With individual error and warning thresholds, you can define the limits for the up, warning, and down states for every channel.

Define the threshold in %.

This is what the sensor does to check which overall channel status it has to display:

Step 1

Calculate the up percentage of a channel based on the objects it contains. As a result, you could translate this into the statement: “x % of the monitored objects work fine.”

Step 2

Compare the calculated channel up value to the error threshold.

1. Set the channel status to down if the calculated up percentage of a channel is below the indicated error limit. The question to answer is: “Do x % of the monitored objects work fine?” If the answer is no, then the channel will be in a down condition.
2. If 2.1 does not result in a down status and the answer is yes, then go on with step 3 and check the warning threshold.

Step 3

Compare the calculated channel up value to the warning threshold.

1. Set the channel status to warning if the calculated percentage of the channel is lower than the indicated warning limit. The question to answer is: “Do x % of the monitored objects work fine?” If the answer is no, then the channel will be in a warning condition.
2. If 3.1 does not result in a warning status and the answer is yes, then set the channel status to up.

Note: If the indicated threshold points exactly to the borderline between two states, then the sensor displays the more positive status. For example, if you enter 75 as a warning limit and if you have 3 up sensors (75%) and 1 down sensor (25%), the sensor channel will display an up status, not a warning status because 75 % of the monitored objects work fine.

Example A:

If these are your settings…

Enlarge here.

... this is your result:

Enlarge here.

Why?

Because you have 50 % of object up states and 50 % of down states in your channel and an error limit of 51 %. The sensor checks “Do 51 % of the objects work fine?” and the answer is no. Because of this, the Core Server Security channel displays a down status.

If you set an error threshold of 50%, the sensor would check if 50% of the monitoring objects work fine. The answer is yes and consequently, the sensor would display an up status.

Example B

If these are your settings…

Enlarge here.

... this is your result:

Enlarge here.

Why?

Because you have 75 % of object up states and 25 % of down states in your channel and a warning limit of 76 %. The sensor checks “Do 76 % of the objects work fine?” and the answer is no. Because of this, the Core Server Security channel displays a warning status, but not a down status because 50 % of the sensors work fine.

Channel Weight of Monitoring Objects

Note: Every object in a channel has equal weight or importance, no matter if it is a sensor, device, group or probe. If you want to give double weight or importance to an object, add it twice to the channel. If you want to give triple weight to it, add it three times.

In the following example, the SSL Security Check (Port 443) 16 sensor is added twice and has double weight.

Enlarge here.

The Core Server Security channel contains 80 % of up sensors... 2 * 20 % Up Status + 2 * 20 % Warning Status = 80 % BP Up Condition ... and 20 % of unknown sensors. 20 % Unknown Status = 20 % BP Down Condition

Consequently, the overall Core Server Security channel state is up, because 80 % of it work fine and at least 61 % have to work fine to not trigger a warning status.

3. The Global Business Process Status

The Global State channel is the default primary channel of the Business Process sensor and summarizes the states of the individual channels. It always shows the status that all channels have or, if not all of the channels are in the same status condition, the “most alarming” status that one of the individual channels has.

For example, the Global State in Example B above shows a warning status because one of the individual channels, the Core Server Security channel, is in a warning status, too. Example A displays a down status because one of the channels, the Core Server Security channel again, is in a down status.

Generally, the Business Process can have the following sensor states:

• Unknown (gray)
• Up (green)
• Warning (yellow)
• Down (red)

The order from the least alarming to the most alarming sensor status is the following:

(Unknown Status) < Up Status < Warning Status < Down Status

More

• Monitoring business processes: The Business Process sensor in the PRTG Manual.
• You would like to see some sample use cases of the Business Process sensor to get inspired? This overview article lists some use cases, like the monitoring business processes Website Back End and Website Front End.
• Read about Monitoring Business Processes and the Real Business Impact of Technical Outages (including an example of the business process Online Shop) in our Paessler Blog.
• You want to monitor business processes and additionally perform calculations within your individual channels? Have a look at the Sensor Factory sensor in the PRTG Manual.
• You find more information about possible sensor states in the PRTG Manual.