eG Administration
 

Agent Status and License Usage Overview

At any point in time, administrators may want to assess how effectively/otherwise their eG agent licenses have been utilized, so as to determine whether more licenses need to be procured. At the same time, they may also want to know how many of these agents are currently running and how many are not. To enable this analysis, eG Enterprise provides the LICENSE INFORMATION page.

To access this page, use the following the menu sequence: Agents -> Status -> Overview. This page typically reveals the number of monitors of various types (Total Monitors, Basic Monitors, and Premium Monitors) that the current installation of the eG solution is permitted to use, and the percent consumption [Usage (%)] of these monitors. What follows is a brief discussion of the rows of information provided by this page:

  • The Total Monitors listing indicates the total number of basic and premium monitors that the current installation of eG Enterprise is allowed to use, the total number of such monitors that are currently utilized, and the overall usage percentage.

  • Premium Monitors are typically a combination of premium agents and agentless premium components. These concepts have been demystified below:

    • Premium Agents - If any applications on the host (e.g., Web, email, DNS, etc.) have to be monitored, the internal agent used for this purpose is counted as a premium agent.

    • Agentless Premium - In eG parlance, hosts/applications that are monitored in an agentless manner are called Agentless Components. All applications that are monitored using a remote agent are called Agentless Premium components.

  • External Agents - The eG license restricts the number of external agents that can be configured in the target environment. Since each eG installation requires at least one external agent, the customer's license must allow for at least one.

    The total number of Premium Monitors that an eG installation is allowed to use is automatically computed as the difference between the Total Monitors and Basic Monitors. For instance, if the eG license allows 20 monitors totally and 7 basic monitors, then 13 will be automatically set as the maximum number of premium monitors that can be configured in the environment. If required, the customer can even have 19 basic monitors, reserving 1 premium monitor for the 1 external agent that is a must for every eG installation.

    Moreover, the eG license does not explicitly restrict the number of Premium Agents or Agentless Premium components that can be configured in a target environment - instead, it restricts the total number of Premium Monitors. This imparts to customers the flexibility to decide how to use these Premium Monitors - i.e., they can decide how many of the Premium Monitors should be reserved for Premium Agents and how many for Agentless Premium components. However, since the Premium Monitors restriction includes the ceiling on external agents as well, customers cannot exhaust their Premium Monitors license on premium agents and agentless premium components alone - in other words, if the eG license allows a total of 10 Premium Monitors and 3 External Agents, it implies that only 7 Premium Monitors can be consumed by premium agents and/or agentless premium components - 3 Premium Monitors will be reserved for external agents.

  • Basic Monitors are typically a combination of basic agents and agentless basic components. These concepts have been demystified below:

    • Basic Agent - A basic agent can be used to monitor only the operating system of a host and the processes running on it. To use a basic agent, the user must manage the host as any of the following: Generic server, Eventlog server, Windows Generic server, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, Windows server, MS File server, or MS Print server.

    • Agentless Basic - eG Enterprise supports both agent-based and agentless monitoring of .target components. For implementing agentless monitoring, the solution uses Remote agents. A remote agent implements agentless monitoring for one or more of the target servers/applications - i.e., without requiring an internal agent for the target server/application, the remote agent can collect critical statistics about the target. For more details regarding eG's Agentless Monitoring capability, refer to eG User Manual. In eG parlance, hosts/applications that are monitored in an agentless manner are called Agentless Components. Typically, a Generic server, Windows Generic server, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, Windows server, MS File server, MS Print server, AS400 server, Netware server, Snmp Generic server, when managed by remote agents, will be counted as Agentless Basic components.

      The eG license does not restrict the number of Basic agents or Agentless Basic components that can be configured in an eG installation - instead, it only restricts the total number of Basic Monitors. This imparts to customers the flexibility to decide how to use the basic monitors - i.e., they can decide how many of the Basic Monitors should be reserved for Basic Agents and how many for Agentless Basic components.

Besides enabling administrators to instantly determine whether agent licenses have been under-utilized, this information also helps administrators to proactively detect if their eG installation is about to exhaust its licenses, and if so, which type of license - this way, administrators can effectively plan their future license requirements.

In addition, the page reports the count of agents of each type that are currently running and the number of agents that are not, thereby alerting administrators to inactive agents.

After viewing usage summary, you can swiftly switch to the detailed agent status page by clicking on the Agent Status button in this page.