FAQ

What protocols and ports do the web tests support?

Web tests support http and https protocols and the port must be in the ranges 80-90, 440-450 and 1024-65535.

Which operating systems support the Pulsar Agent?

Currently the Pulsar Agent only supports Linux servers; we are planning to create a windows agent but there is no release date yet.

What metrics does the Pulsar Agent collect?

- Apache (requests per second, idle, busy and total workers)

- CPU (idle, iowait, irq, nice, softirq, system and user time)

- Disk (percent usage per mounted disk)

- Load (1 minute, 5 minutes and 15 minutes load average)

- Memory (Free, Total, Used)

- MySQL (open tables, queries per seconds, slow queries and threads)

- Network (received/transmitted per interface)

- Swap (Free, Total, Used)

What are the OS requirements for the monitoring agent?

The monitoring agent only requires Python v2.4 or above, which is usually installed in all modern Linux distributions by default.

What are the types of alert notifications that Pulsar uses?

Currently we support the following notifications methods:

- Email

- SMS: each notification uses 1 SMS credit. You have to buy enough credits in advance.

- Gtalk: add your gmail account and the Pulsar bot to your contact list and your all set.

- Twitter: by direct messages, not public stream publications.

How much do SMS credits cost?

- 20 SMS credits for $5 (0.25 each)

- 50 SMS credits for $8 (0.16 each)

- 100 SMS credits for $12 (0.12 each)

- 200 SMS credits for $20 (0.1 each)