eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by SPFarmTest

A SharePoint farm is a collection of SharePoint servers or SQL servers that work in concert to provide a set of basic SharePoint services that support a single site.

Since the primary purpose of any farm is to provide high availability to servers and services, administrators should be proactively alerted if that farm goes down. If not, end-users will be denied access to all servers and services riding on that farm for long periods of time!

Administrators will also require deep visibility into what servers and services make up the farm and what their current status is. Without this, unavailable servers/services can neither be identified, nor restored!

Moreover, until serious performance issues surface, administrators tend to remain clueless about which servers in a farm are updated/upgraded with critical patches/hot fixes and which are not. To avoid this, administrators should continuously track the upgrade status of the farm and of the servers in the farm.

The SPFarmTest test addresses all these requirements! The test auto-discovers the SharePoint farm in which the monitored SharePoint server resides. Periodically, the test checks the status of this farm and alerts you if the farm goes offline. This way, you can initiate timely measures for restoring the farm to normalcy and in the process, ensure that users are able to access servers and services continuously. The test also reports the number, types, and names of servers in this farm and points you to the offline servers. Disabled service instances in the farm are also brought to light by this test. Additionally, the test also draws your attention to servers in a farm that need to be upgraded, so that you can quickly apply the required patches/hot fixes on those servers and maximize their performance.

Output of the test : One set of results for the Sharepoint farm in which the monitored SharePoint server operates

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Status Indicates the current status of this farm.   The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are detailed in the table below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Offline 1
Online 0

Note:

This measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate the status of a farm. In the graph of this measure however, farm status is represented using the numeric equivalents only.
Needs_upgrade Indicates whether/not this farm needs an upgrade.   The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are detailed in the table below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0

Note:

This measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate whether/not a farm needs an upgrade. In the graph of this measure however, the same is represented using the numeric equivalents only.

If this measure reports the value No, it could be because the patches were applied on the servers in the farm, but the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard was not run after patch application on a few servers.
Servers_in_Farm Indicates the total number of servers in this farm. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which servers are in the farm, the status of each server, whether/not that server needs upgrade, and if so, whether/not it can be upgraded.
Service_instances_Farm Indicates the total number of service instances in this farm. Number Within a farm, there are several services that run on one or more servers. These services provide basic functionality for SharePoint and regulate which services should run on which servers, in an effort to manage the impact on overall farm architecture and performance.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the services running in the farm and the servers they are running on. This way, when one or more of these servers go down, you will be able to identify the services that will be impacted.
Servers_online Indicates the number of servers in this farm that are online currently. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which servers are online, whether/not that server needs upgrade, and if so, whether/not it can be upgraded.
Servers_offline Indicates the number of servers in this farm that are offline currently. Number Ideally, the value of this measure should be 0.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which servers are offline, , whether/not that server needs upgrade, and if so, whether/not it can be upgraded.
Servers_need_upgrad Indicates the number of servers in this farm that need to be upgraded. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which servers require an upgrade.
App_Servers Indicates the number of application servers in this farm. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which are the application servers in the farm.
DB_Servers Indicates the number of application servers in this farm. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which database servers are in the farm.
Disable_service_instance Indicates the number of service instances running in this farm that are currently disabled. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which services are disabled and which servers they are running on.
Front_end_Servers Indicates the number of web front end servers in this farm. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which are the web front end servers in the farm.
Offline_service_instance Indicates the number of service instances running in this farm that are currently offline. Number Ideally, the value of this measure should be 0.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which services are offline and which servers they are running on.
Online_service_instance Indicates the number of service instances running in this farm that are currently online. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which services are online and which servers they are running on.