PRTG Manual: Probe Health Sensor
The Probe Health sensor monitors internal PRTG parameters. It shows the status of the PRTG probe (either for the local probe, the hosted probe, a remote probe, or a cluster probe).
It checks various parameters of your PRTG system that can affect the quality of the monitoring results:
- Health: This index value sums up the probe state into a value between 100% (healthy) and 0% (failing). Frequent or repeated health values below 100% should be investigated.
- Probe Process CPU Load: This channel shows the current percentage CPU load that the probe process causes. Extensive CPU load can lead to false, incomplete, and incorrect monitoring results. This value usually should stay below 50%.
- Data Storage Free: This channel shows the free disk space on the probe system. PRTG dynamically sets limits for this channel. You can manually override these limits in the sensor channel settings.
- Handles: This is a counter for the data structures of the operating system. It is responsible for internal resource management. Repeated obviously increasing values should be investigated.
- Interval Delay non-WMI&SNMP: This channel shows the percentage interval delay for all sensor types that are not of the type SNMP or WMI. If this value is over 0%, try to increase the scanning intervals or distribute your sensors over multiple probes.
- Interval Delay SNMP: This channel shows the percentage interval delay for SNMP sensors. If this value is above 0%, there are probably too many very slow SNMP V3 sensors. In this case, try to increase the monitoring intervals or distribute the sensors over several probes.
- Interval Delay WMI: This channel shows the percentage interval delay for WMI sensors. If this value is above 0%, WMI sensors could not check the target device according to their interval. 100% means that WMI sensors on the average are checked with twice their interval. For values above 0%, try to increase the monitoring intervals or distribute the sensors over several probes to keep the number of WMI sensors per probe below 120 (with 60-second interval) or 600 (with 300-second interval).
- Lost Flow Packets: This channel shows the percentage of lost flow packets. The higher this value, the less flow packages PRTG can handle. Usually, this value should be 0%. Investigate increasing values.
- Memory Usage: This channel shows the amount of memory being used by the PRTG probe service as reported by the memory manager. Repeated obviously increasing values should be investigated. If the value is constantly above 2 GB, this indicates that PRTG is running at its limits. In this case you should distribute some sensors to remote probes.
- Message Queue: This channel shows the number of monitoring results from the probe that have not been processed yet by the core. This value usually should stay below 1/10 of the sensor count.
- Open Requests: This channel shows the number of currently active monitoring requests. This value should stay below the maximum of 500 open requests.
- Syslog Buffer: This channel shows the number of buffered syslog packages. Usually, this value should be 0 (or very low). Investigate increasing values.
- Threads: This channel shows the number of program parts that are running simultaneously currently. This value can increase with heavy load. The number should not exceed 100 in normal operation.
- Toplist Memory: This channel shows the amount of RAM that the Toplists on this probe are using. Stay below 1 GB memory usage (depending on available memory on the probe system). If necessary, reduce the number of Toplists or distribute them to multiple probes.
- Trap Buffer: This channel shows the number of buffered SNMP traps. Usually, this value should be 0 (or very low). Investigate increasing values.
Probe Health Sensor
Dutch: Probe Status, French: État de la probe, German: Zustand der Probe, Japanese: プローブヘルス, Portuguese: Funcionamento da sonda, Russian: Работоспособность зонда, Simplified Chinese: 探针健康状况, Spanish: Salud de sonda
- PRTG creates this sensor automatically and you cannot delete it.
- You can create this sensor only on a probe device (either local probe, a remote probe, or a cluster probe).
- Knowledge Base: My probe system is running out of disk space. What can I do?
On the details page of a sensor, click the Settings tab to change its settings.
Usually, a sensor connects to the IP Address or DNS Name of the parent device where you created this sensor. See the Device Settings for details. For some sensor types, you can define the monitoring target explicitly in the sensor settings. See below for details on available settings.
Basic Sensor Settings |
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Sensor Name |
Enter a meaningful name to identify the sensor. By default, PRTG shows this name in the device tree, as well as in alarms, logs, notifications, reports, maps, libraries, and tickets. |
Parent Tags |
Shows Tags that this sensor inherits from its parent device, group, and probe. This setting is shown for your information only and cannot be changed here. |
Tags |
Enter one or more Tags, separated by spaces or commas. You can use tags to group sensors and use tag–filtered views later on. Tags are not case sensitive. We recommend that you use the default value. You can add additional tags to the sensor if you like. Other tags are automatically inherited from objects further up in the device tree. These are visible above as Parent Tags.
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Priority |
Select a priority for the sensor. This setting determines where the sensor is placed in sensor lists. Top priority is at the top of a list. Choose from one star (low priority) to five stars (top priority). |
Sensor Display |
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Primary Channel |
Select a channel from the list to define it as the primary channel. In the device tree, the last value of the primary channel will always be displayed below the sensor's name. The available options depend on what channels are available for this sensor.
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Graph Type |
Define how different channels will be shown for this sensor.
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Stack Unit |
This setting is only available if stacked graphs are selected above. Choose a unit from the list. All channels with this unit will be stacked on top of each other. By default, you cannot exclude single channels from stacking if they use the selected unit. However, there is an advanced procedure to do so. |
By default, all following settings are inherited from objects higher in the hierarchy and should be changed there, if necessary. Often, best practice is to change them centrally in the Root group's settings, see section Inheritance of Settings for more information. To change a setting only for this object, disable inheritance by clicking the button next to inherit from under the corresponding setting name. You will then see the options described below.
Scanning Interval |
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Click |
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Scanning Interval |
Select a scanning interval (seconds, minutes, or hours) from the list. The scanning interval determines the time the sensor waits between two scans. You can change the available intervals in the system administration on PRTG on premises installations. |
If a Sensor Query Fails |
Define the number of scanning intervals that a sensor has time to reach and check a device again in case a sensor query fails. The sensor can try to re-reach and check a device several times, depending on the option you select here, before it will be set to a Down status. This helps you avoid false alarms if the monitored device has only temporary issues. For previous scanning intervals with failed requests, the sensor will show a Warning status. Choose between:
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Access Rights |
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Click |
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User Group Access |
Define which user group(s) will have access to the object you're editing. A table with user groups and types of access rights is shown. It contains all user groups from your setup. For each user group, you can choose from the following access rights:
You can create new user groups in the System Administration—User Groups settings. To automatically set all objects further down in the hierarchy to inherit this object's access rights, set a check mark for the Revert children's access rights to inherited option.
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Channel Unit Configuration |
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Click |
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Channel Unit Types |
For each type of sensor channel, define the unit in which data is displayed. If defined on probe, group, or device level, these settings can be inherited to all sensors underneath. You can set units for the following channel types (if available):
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Knowledge Base: My probe system is running out of disk space. What can I do?
To change display settings, spike filter, and limits, switch to the sensor's Overview tab and click the gear icon of a specific channel. For detailed information, see the Sensor Channel Settings section.
Click the Notification Triggers tab to change notification triggers. For detailed information, see the Sensor Notification Triggers Settings section.
For more general information about settings, see the Object Settings section.
For information about sensor settings, see the following sections:
