Monitoring Policies

A monitoring policy is a set of monitors applied to a set of devices. Each monitor checks one thing, such as free disk space or missing updates, and raises an alert when its condition is met.

Open RMM → Policies.

Built-in policies

Plenix ships with ready-made policies for workstations, servers, domain controllers and critical servers. They cover the checks most IT teams set up by hand, for example:

• Workstations. System disk over 90% and 97% full, CPU or memory above 95% for 30 minutes, a reboot pending for 3 days, a critical update missing for 2 days, software with known vulnerabilities, an operating system that is out of support, less than 8 GB of RAM, and not seen for 30 days.
• Servers. Offline for 5 minutes, system disk over 85% and 95% full, CPU or memory above 90% for 15 minutes, a reboot pending for a day, a critical update missing for a day, and Windows Server versions that are out of support or close to it.
• Domain controllers and critical servers. Tighter limits: offline for 2 minutes and disk over 80% full.
• Software checks. Required software missing, a remote access tool installed, and no third-party antivirus.

Built-in policies arrive switched off and are read-only. Turn on the ones you want as they are. To change the limits, choose Copy to edit and work on your copy.

What a monitor can check

Device offline, CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, uptime, reboot pending, missing updates, vulnerable software, outdated software, required software missing, unwanted software installed, unsupported operating system, hardware below spec, not seen, and a custom condition you build yourself.

Choosing the devices

A policy applies to one of these:

• all devices
• one or more customers
• one or more groups or filters (see Groups and Filters)
• devices you choose

You can narrow any of these further with rules, for example only servers or only Windows 11.

The policy page shows how many devices each policy covers and when it was last checked.

Alerts

Each monitor has its own alert settings: how long the condition must hold before it alerts, the severity, whether to raise a ticket and at what priority, and whether to notify your team. Open the Alerts tab to see every open alert, the device it is on and the policy that raised it. When the condition clears, the alert and its ticket close by themselves, unless you turn that off for the monitor.

Fixing a problem automatically

A monitor can run a component when it raises an alert, for example Clear temporary files when a disk fills up, or Restart a service when a service stops. See Components.

Network devices

Switches, routers, printers and other network nodes that Plenix found by scanning are never covered by monitoring policies, because they do not run the Plenix agent. They do not raise Device offline alerts or tickets. To watch one, turn on the reachability check on its network page: Plenix then checks whether the node answers on the network and alerts you when it stops.

Turning monitoring off for one device

Open the device and switch monitoring off in the device header, with a reason. The device stays in your fleet, but no policy applies to it and it raises no alerts. Plenix records who switched it off and when. Use this for machines that are being rebuilt or are due to be retired. The device's Policies tab shows which policies are watching it.