Stress Level Calculator Tool V2

The new version of the ControlUp Stress Settings Calculator contains multiple breaking changes that help you to adjust your Stress Settings based on the environment's performance data. Thanks to the introduction of the new Export-CUQuery PowerShell cmdlet, suggested stress thresholds are now calculated for most available metrics in ControlUp. Note that calculations provided by the tool are recommendations and not requirements.

Prerequisites

• ControlUp Version 8.6.5. This version comes with the new Export-CUQuery Powershell cmdlet that allows you to export Monitor data to a CSV file. If you have an earlier version, refer to the Stress Levels Calculator Tool article.
• Powershell version 5 or 7. We recommend using PowerShell 7 when running the script as this PowerShell version significantly improves the performance of the tool, especially when analyzing big datasets.

Downloads

• Stress Level Calculator: Download the latest version.
• Optional: A script action that exports your data with full configuration capabilities. You can download the script to be imported here. For more information, refer to the corresponding section section.

Supported Data Sources for Monitor Exports

• App Delivery Controllers
• Computers
• Datastores
• Datastores on Hosts
• Folders
• Gateways
• Hosts
• Load Balancers
• LB ServiceGroups
• LB Services
• Logical Disks
• Sessions
• Virtual Disks

Note on Performance

The Stress Level Calculator is a standalone PowerShell script which you can run from PowerShell 5 or PowerShell 7. If you work with big datasets, such as time series data from thousands of monitored machines, then we suggest using PowerShell 7 to benefit from the best performance.

Which Data you Should Export

You should think about your ControlUp data and decide for which metrics you want to adjust stress levels. For example, you may want to see how your Sessions activity data performs and use the calculator to decide which stress levels would work best for that data. Or you may want to see CPU usage or how other resources perform. You can export data from:

• Monitor. For data coming directly from the monitor. Best for dynamic, shorter duration data that can change during a session, where you need frequent snapshots of what's happening. For example, CPU usage or other resources.
• Insights. For data that is best calculated over time. For example logon duration or session activity that is calculated per session and has more interesting data over time.

The data you select to export for the tool should depend on which stress levels are most important for your organization to capture accurately.

Recommended Monitor Data

Hosts

• Active memory
• Consumed memory
• CPU Usage %

Sessions

• CPU
• Memory (working and private bytes)
• GPU Encoder and Decoder Utilization
• GPU Frame Buffer Utilization
• Non-paged Pool Memory
• Memory Utilization
• Pages / Sec
• Virtual Disk read or write IOPS

Folders

• Average CPU Usage
• Average Machine Memory Utilization
• Hosts CPU
• Hosts Memory

Recommended Insights Data

Insights data that is measured once, such as Logon Duration or Profile Load Time, should be exported. Based on whether the data is related to managed machines or user sessions, we recommend exporting the metrics below.

User Sessions Activity

• Active Time %
• Desktop Load Time (s)
• Disconnected Time %
• Group Policy Load Time (s)
• Idle Time %
• Logon Duration (s)
• Logon Duration Others (s)
• Max Latency (ms)
• Profile Load Time (s)
• Session Duration (s)
• Session ID

Machine Statistics

• CPU AVG (%)
• CPU Count (#)
• CPU MAX (%)
• CPU MIN (%)
• Disk Read Time (ms) AVG
• Disk Read Time (ms) MAX
• Disk Read Time (ms) MIN
• Disk Transfers per sec AVG
• Disk Transfers per sec MAX
• Disk Transfers per sec (MIN)
• Disk Write Time (ms) AVG
• Disk Write Time (ms) MAX
• Disk Write Time (ms) MIN
• Free Space on System Drive (GB) AVG
• Free Space on System Drive (GB) MAX
• Free Space on System Drive (GB) MIN
• Memory (GB)
• Memory Utilization AVG (%)

Step 1: Generate the Data

The Stress Level Calculator can work with CSV files that you can create from the Insights portal or from the attached Metric Exporter script. Creating CSV files from both methods is explained in the sections below.

Option 1: CSV Files from Insights Portal

1. Collect the data you want to import - we can find suggestions here.
   Open a report in Insights which contains data you want to analyze. Select a time range (1) and click Export > CSV (2). The CSV is downloaded, containing data collected for the selected time range.
   
2. Save the CSV on the computer that runs the Stress Level Calculator.
3. Run the tool and follow the instructions.

Option 2: CSV Files from SBA

We strongly recommend to use the SBA as it was optimized to export supported metrics. You can find all supported metrics at the end of this section.

1. Download the script action to a console machine.
2. In the Real-Time Console, open Script Actions > Organizational Scripts > Import. The file dialog opens.
   
3. After you import the XML, open the properties of the script. In the Settings tab, set the following values:
   • Execution Context: ControlUp Console/Monitor
   • Security Context: Shared credentials and select a user that is set up as a shared credential in the Monitor Settings.
     
4. In the Real-Time Console, right-click a monitor machine > Script Actions > ControlUp Stress Calculator v2 Metrics Explorer (Draft). The properties dialog opens.
   
5. Under Export Location, set the path under which the export files should be saved. In our case, we use a local path on the monitor machine. Set the retention period for the export files under Maximum File Age and decide which data you want to export.
   
6. Click OK to execute the script. Information about the exported files are shown in the output window.
   
7. The next step is to create a Scheduled Trigger to automate the creation of CSV files. This is recommended as more export files mean higher accuracy for the Stress Level calculation.

So far, you have learned how to manually execute the SBA. You should use this approach if you only want to generate data once. Whenever possible, automate actions. The next section discusses Scheduled Triggers, which you should use here.

Finalize the Script and Create a Scheduled Trigger

Finalizing the imported script action is the first step before creating a Scheduled Trigger. Script action is currently in draft mode. You must finalize a script to run it based on a trigger, as only Organizational Scripts can be run this way.

1. In the console, click Script Actions and open the My Draft Scripts tab.
2. Select the script and click Modify
   
3. Define the export path by changing the default value. In our case, C:\exports will be used to store the CSV files.
   

To set up a Scheduled Trigger with the Stress Level Calculator action:

1. In the console, click Triggers.
2. Click Add Trigger > Scheduled and click Next.
   
3. Configure the schedule for the trigger. Select Machine as we want to set a criteria filter with machine-related metrics. Set the Schedule according to your requirements. Click Next.
   
4. Under Filter Criteria, set a filter for running the trigger only on a specific machine. This can be any filter criteria, but for our purpose, we only want to run the trigger on a particular monitor machine, hence we use the Name metric and the hostname of the monitor machine. Click OK > Next to configure the scope.
   
5. Select the scope of your organization tree. The trigger is executed only on machines that reside in the marked folders. Click Next to configure the follow-up action.
   
6. Add the script as the follow-up action and click OK and Next.
   
7. By default, the trigger is named Maschine Scheduled Trigger. We recommend to make the trigger name user friendly. Once you renamed the trigger, apply the changes.
   
8. Once the scheduler is triggered, the exported files are stored in the C:\export folder on the selected monitor machine, defined in the filter criteria in Step 4.

Supported Metrics for the Script Action

Click a section to see all supported metrics you can export from the script action.

Step 2: Run the Stress Level Calculator

.\ControlUp_Stress_Levels_Calculator V2 - Requires CU 8.6.5.ps1

Import the data

Once you set your arguments as described above and you click OK, you see the following tab options:

• Monitor Data. Use this tab to calculate the values for data exported from the ControlUp Monitor.
• Insights Data. Use this tab to calculate the values for the CSV data exported from Insights.
• Help. Access help information for running the tool.

1. In either the Insights Data or Monitor Data tab, click Browse and select the CSV file for Insights data, or the folder for Monitor Data.
2. For Monitor Data only: In the Data Source field, choose the data you want to analyze. In our case, we select the Computers table.
3. Click Load Data to load all data into the calculator that is related to the table.

After that, select the type of data you want to analyze.

4. The dropdown menu shows all fields related to the selected table.
   

5. If you work with Monitor Data, you can choose a folder in the All Folders dropdown menu. This is especially useful if you want to consider only specific data for a particular folder path in your ControlUp organizational tree.
   

6. In the Select Metric field, select a metric, for example: CPU
   

7. After selecting a metric, the Suggested Stress Threshold is displayed for both the 75th percentile and the 90th percentile. In our case, the suggestion is to change the yellow value to 18 and the red value to 34. In the next chapter, we will have a look at how to make those changes in the Real-Time Console.
   

Adjust Stress Thresholds based on the Results

In the previous step, the tool provided suggested stress thresholds which we need to apply in our organization. This is done from the Real-Time Console. Follow the steps below to apply the suggested values:

1. In the console, click Settings > Stress. The Stress Level Settings window appears.
2. Under Folders Tree, browse the source folder that you used in the tool and select the metric.
3. Change the values in the Yellow and Red fields accordingly. Click Apply to save the changes.
   

Now, the load calculation adds 1 load point for CPU utilization between 18 and 34 percent, and 2 load points for CPU utilization above 34 percent.

Additional Features

• Ignore 0 values. For some metrics, like Latency and Logon duration, we recommend choosing to ignore the values that appear as N/A or 0 in the console.
• Show Median. Displays an actual median value among all the values imported.
  
• Show Average. Displays the calculated average of all values imported.
  

Export Data from the Tool

You may want to export the data from the tool so you can see what changed your stress levels and why. Also, you can examine your environment and see if any changes occurred as a result of changing those levels.

Export the data from the tool so you can use it as a reference for changing the thresholds in the future. It may be useful to review the data one by one. Since the tool does not save information, exporting it allows you to keep historical information about what the ControlUp Stress Calculator recommended.

The tool data can be exported in the following ways. The tool's dialog box includes the following options:

• Copy CSV Data. Copies the results shown in the calculator tool to the clipboard which you can paste into your favorite text editor.
  

• Export to CSV. Allows you to save a CSV file with the results. The default names of the export files depend on from where you exported the data:

  • Monitor Stress Levels Calculation.csv
  • Insights Stress levels Calculation.csv