Performance Manager uses terms you might be unfamiliar with or have different meanings for:

Archive

A file containing data gathered by Performance Manager. Instead of watching data displayed in real time, you can capture data in an archive and graph the data later. More information on archives.

cron

A UNIX daemon that executes commands at a specified time. The daemon reads these commands from the crontab file.

Cluster

A collection of nodes that appears to be a single-server system, allowing for greater application availability and scalability than would be possible with a single system.

Group

A collection of nodes and/or clusters that are frequently managed together.

Managed Node

Managed nodes are those that run one or more metrics servers recognized by Performance Manager.

Management Station

Management Stations are the operating centers for managing and monitoring the nodes in the system.

Metric

A particular item of information about a node. For example, the average run queue length over the past 5 seconds, the number of bytes transferred to or from a disk, or the number of characters sent to a terminal. Performance Manager has several hundred metrics, divided among several categories (CPU, Disk, Network, and so on). More information on metrics.

Metrics Server

A UNIX daemon process that services requests for system information. Performance Manager includes support for several metrics servers. More information on metrics servers.

MIB

Management information base.

Node

A computer system that is uniquely addressable on a network. A node can have more than one CPU.

Session

A set of choices you make using Performance Manager. A session comprises selected nodes, metrics, display types, intervals, and threshold settings. You can save as many sessions as you want, but you can only run one session at a time. More information on sessions.

tear-off menu

A tear-off menu has an underscored key letter. If you click that letter, the menu will tear off, or float, in a separate display.

Threshold

A limit you can set on a metric. If that limit is crossed, an action you previously specified is taken. For example, you could set a threshold of 90% capacity on some or all of your disks, with the action being to run a command that moves some files off that disk. More information on thresholds.