Processes plug-in

The Processes plug-in of SSC Serv allows you to collect information about the total number of processes and threads running on the system as well as detailed performance information on selected processes.

SSC Serv is a native Windows service which collects system metrics periodically and sends them to a collectd server for processing and storage. No remote access to the Windows machine is required. The service is running on the Windows server and sends data, allowing the Windows server to be locked down tightly for maximum security. SSC Serv is very light-weight, integrates well with Windows and doesn't get in the way.

Collected metrics

System-wide

The Processes plugin collects the system-wide number of processes and threads. This information is dispatched as processes/ps_count which has the processes and threads data sources.

Per-process

When configured, the Processes plugin can collect metrics about specific processes. These metrics are reported with plugin set to processes and the plugin instance set to the matching process name. The reported metrics are:

Processes and threads

The ps_count value list contains the number of processes and threads matching the configured process name.

CPU usage

The ps_cputime value list tracks the amount of time spend by the matching processes in kernel mode and user mode. The values are scaled to microseconds per second to match collectd's numbers.

Memory usage

The are multiple metrics which quantify a process' memory usage:

Working Set: The Working Set is the amount of physical memory assigned to the process or processes. It is reported as ps_rss (Resident Set Size) for compatibility with UNIX systems.
Commit Charge: The Commit Charge is the amount of memory specifically assigned to a process. (Virtual) Memory that was reserved (allocated) but not committed (accessed) is not accounted in the Commit Charge. That's why the Commit Charge may also be smaller than the Working Set. This value is reported as memory-commit_charge.
Kernel memory: Sum of the memory used in the kernel's paged and non-paged pools. This value is reported as memory-kernel.
Page faults: The ps_pagefaults value list contains the number of page faults caused by the process. The rate is tracked in the majflt data source; the minflt data source is unused.

I/O metrics

The process' I/O operations are reported as ps_disk_ops (operations) and ps_disk_octets (transferred bytes).

Registry

The Processes plug-in stores its configuration in the Windows Registry under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\octo\SSC Serv\Processes key. Each explicitly configured process is stored in its own subkey. The name of the subkey is not relevant, by default the configuration utility will use a GUID, for example {88e571a0-d6d7-11e3-be70-0019d10dfc65}. Each subkey has a single value called Name which is used to match running processes. Matching is case-insensitive.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\octo\SSC Serv\
  Processes\
    {88e571a0-d6d7-11e3-be70-0019d10dfc65}\
      Name  "Explorer.EXE"

SSC Serv