Out-of-the-box, HQ collects key metrics for each resource on a managed platform. To see a complete list of the metrics that are available for your managed resources, and to tailor monitoring settings, choose the "Monitoring Defaults" option on the "Administration" page in the HQ user interface. Click the "Edit Metric Template" button for a resource type to display monitoring options and settings. Take a look at the settings for your platform type.

You'll see the complete list of metrics that HQ can monitor for your platform. The "Collection Interval ", "Default On", and "Indicator" columns show the default frequency of metric collection, whether it's currently being collected, and whether HQ displays an chart for it on the "Indicators" page for resources of that type. If you want to choose different metrics to appear on "Indicators" page for a resource, this is where you can make that change.

Documentation: Monitoring Defaults

You can configure HQ to track log entries and resource configuration changes so you can alert on these events, and correlate them with application behavior. Navigate to the "Inventory" page for a resource and click "Edit" in the "Configuration Properties" to get started.

Documentation: Event and Log Tracking

A group is a set of resources. You can create groups of resources based on common:

• Monitoring requirements: You can monitor a group of resources of the same type, known as a compatible group, at the aggregate level.
• Control options: You can perform supported control actions, like "restart", or "collect garbage" on all the members of a compatible group with a single command.
• Access control requirements: If you use HQ Enterprise, you can control access to resources at the group level.

One way to create a new group is to choose "New Group" from the "Tools" menu on any resource page.

Documentation: About Resource Groups

Alerts are a core HQ feature. For a production deployment, you'll want to plan your alerting strategy carefully. You'll have to decide what resources should have alerts, the conditions that will trigger an alert, and what should happen when an alert is triggered: from notifications to automated actions. You can define escalation processes, a series of actions to perform for unresolved alerts, and assign an escalation to an alert. If you haven't already thought out your alerting strategy, you can familiarize yourself with HQ's alerting functionality by defining some sample alerts. Open source HQ allows you to assign alerts at the resource level. HQ Enterprise offers additional alerting options:

• Resource type alerts: You define an alert that applies to each member of a compatible group.
• Recovery alerts: A recovery alert detects when the condition(s) that triggered a primary alert are no longer true, and re-enables the primary alert. (When an alert is triggered it is disabled, so that it doesn't continue to trigger during the time between triggering and problem resolution.)
• Group alerts: You specify how many members of the group must meet a condition to trigger the alert. Note: group alerts have built-in recovery alerts.
• More actions: In HQ Enterprise, you have more options in terms of the types of actions HQ will perform when an alert is triggered. For instance, you could define a script to be run, or control action to be executed (e.g. shut down or restart) when an an alert is triggered.

Documentation: Defining Alerts for Resources, Defining Alerts for Resource Groups, Defining Recovery Alerts, Escalation Schemes