The Standard tcpAction is a monitoring action that monitors the tcp connectivity of the discovered elements by periodically polling the elements. It is the default monitoring action for all predefined, autodetect application signatures included with Application Connectivity Monitor.

After the Standard Probe discovers and creates a basic topology application object (SoftwareService) for a specified autodetect signature, it automatically initiates the Standard tcpAction monitoring action. Thereafter, the tcpAction periodically polls the element to determine the connectivity status of that element.

The polling interval of the tcpAction is set through the Polling and Thresholds Console.

Where applicable, the parameters of the Standard tcpAction can be changed through the Customize Monitoring Action dialog box. The parameters include:

  • address: The hostname or IP address of the server. For autodetect signatures, this can be left blank. The information is collected at runtime.
  • For signatures that use the tcpAction in conjunction with custom probes, this parameter must be provided, depending on the information available upon discovery.
  • port: The port number of the server.

    For autodetect signatures, this can be left blank. The information is supplied from the detection information.

    If you explicitly supply this parameter in the dialog box, the entered value overrides the default value (the detection port).

  • requestString: The request string to send to the server.
  • matchPattern: The pattern against which the server response is to be matched.
  • timeout: The timeout for the action in seconds.

When a user-developed custom probe is used to discover an element and some components of that element are TCP connectivity points, TCPConnectivityCheck objects can be created to instrument those points. The created TCPConnectivityCheck objects can be instrumented with the tcpAction.

Attributes that can be instrumented with the tcpAction include:

  • success: TRUE/FALSE. TRUE only if all the communication proved OK, and the response (if needed) matched the specified pattern.
  • totalResponseTime: The total time of interaction with the server.
  • resolveTime: The amount of time it took to resolve the address.
  • connectTime: The amount of time it took to connect to the server.
  • recvTime: The time it took to receive a response from the server.
  • response: The actual response of the server.
  • status: The status of communication (for example, OK).
  • operationalStateDetails: The timestamp and status.

The attributes that are commonly instrumented for TCPConnectivityChecks are:

  • operationalStateDetails
  • status
  • success
  • totalResponseTime