SiteScope User's Guide

Real Media Player Monitor

The SiteScope Real Media Player Monitor allows you to emulate a user playing media or streaming data from a Real Media Server. The error and warning thresholds for the monitor can be set on as many as ten Real Media Player performance statistics.

Usage Guidelines

The Real Media Player Monitor allows you to monitor availability and delivery quality parameters for media files and streaming data compatible with RealNetworks Real Media Players. You can monitor multiple parameters or counters with a single monitor instance. This allows you to report on delivery performance. Create a separate monitor instance for files or data streams that are representative of the content available from the site you want to monitor.

Before you can use the Real Media Player Monitor, Real Media Player client libraries must be installed on the server where SiteScope is running. Normally, it is sufficient to download and install a Real Media Player client on the server.

Completing the Real Media Player Monitor Form

To display the Real Media Player Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing Real Media Player Monitor in a monitor table, or click the add a Monitor link on a group's detail page and choose the "Add Real Media Player Monitor" link.

Complete the items on the Real Media Player Monitor Form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.

URL

Enter the URL of the media file or streaming source you want to monitor. This should be the URL of the media file or metadata file that references the streaming media source.

Counters

Choose the media player performance parameters or counters you want to check with this monitor. The table list to the right of this item displays those currently selected for this monitor. Use the choose counters link to bring up the counters selection screen. Check or clear the check boxes on the choose counters screen to select between one to ten counters to monitor on this server. The performance parameters or counters available for the Real Media Player Monitor include:

stream quality
live pause num
live pause time
buffering congestion num
buffering congestion time
buffering seek time
buffering seek num
buffering time
buffering num
first frame time
network performance
bandwidth
late packets
lost packets
recovered packets

Duration

Enter the playback duration (in milliseconds) that the monitor should use for the media file or source indicated by the URL above. The duration value does not need to match the duration of the media contained in the file. For example, you can direct SiteScope to monitor a media file that contains 45 seconds of media content. The default Duration for the Real Media Player Monitor is 15000 milliseconds which equals 15 seconds. In this configuration, the monitor instance would connect to the media source and play the media content for 15 seconds and report the status for those 15 seconds. If the media content of the file or source you are monitoring is less than the Duration value selected for the monitor, the monitor plays the entire media content and reports the results, including the time required to play the media content.

Update every

Enter how frequently the monitor should read the server statistics. The drop-down list to the right of the text box lets you specify time increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. You must specify a time increment of at least 15 seconds.

Title (Optional)

Enter a name for this monitor. This name appears in the Name text box on the monitor table when you open the group's detail page. If you don't enter a name, a default name will be created.

Advanced Options

The advanced options give you the ability to customize error and warning thresholds. If you choose not to set them, SiteScope will use pre-set defaults if available. If a default is not available, SiteScope will not be able to utilize the condition.

Disable

Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

Update Every (on error)

This options allows you to set a new monitoring interval for monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally, but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of alerts generated by this monitor.

Schedule (Optional)

By default, SiteScope's monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Choose the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For information about creating schedules, read these instructions.

Monitor Description (Optional)

Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR> <HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.

Report Description (Optional)

Enter additional information about this monitor for use in report headers. The description will appear on the reports for this monitor instance.

Depends On (Optional)

To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select the monitor or group on which this monitor is dependent. Select None to remove any dependency.

Depends Condition (Optional)

If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor, choose the status condition that the other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally as long as the monitor or group on which it depends reports the condition selected in this option.

List Order (Optional)

By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Setting Monitor Status Thresholds

SiteScope Application Monitors allow you to set multiple threshold conditions to determine the status reported by each monitor. The individual conditions are combined as logical OR relationships so that when one or more of the conditions (for example any of the conditions for Error if) are met the monitor status is set to the applicable condition. If multiple conditions are met for more than one status condition (such as conditions for both error and for warning), the status for the monitor is set to the highest valued condition. Thus a match of an error condition and a warning condition would be reported as an error status, error being the highest value, warning the next highest and good the lowest value.

Error if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more error conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change error threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. After choosing a counter or parameter, use the comparison operator drop-down list to specify an error threshold such as: >= (greater than or equal to), != (not equal to), or < (less than) and enter a comparison value in the box provided. Comparison values should be entered as whole numbers.
Warning if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more warning conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change warning threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. Set these value relative to those you set for the error threshold in the Error if item.
Good if: You can set this monitor to return a good status for certain conditions. You may define those conditions here. Complete this item as you would for the Error if and Warning if items.