Query Server Info

This Process Automation tool queries various load metrics on the server so that automated launchers can throttle launches.

Inputs

Timeout Seconds

The time (in seconds) to wait for a response.

Outputs

Init Status

An integer that indicates how far along the Process Automation Server is in its initialization at the time the tool is invoked. The value "4" indicates Active. All other values are currently reserved for future use.

This output is useful for checking that PAS is fully initialized before attempting to launch processes.

Load Status

An integer that is a function of CPU usage and memory usage and sums up how "busy" the PAS is.

The possible values are as follows:

Value	Indicates
0	Idle
1	Active - Low
2	Active - High
3	Busy
4	Overload
5	Unknown

Memory Percent

Memory usage as a percentage of a maximum value that Task Manager displays as Private Bytes.

The default maximum value is 1.4G, so while it would be rare, it is possible to see values greater than 100%.

Cpu Percent

CPU usage, calculated as a rolling average of ten samples spaced no closer than three seconds. Therefore, the values used to calculate the average span 30 seconds or more.

Thread Count

The total number of OS threads in use at a given time. Note that this is not the number of processes (see Active Processes below) and it's not the number of threads allocated, which you might see in PerfMon or Task Manager. Most of the time, this value should not be very high relative to the number of active processes. It might approach the number of threads allocated under very heavy loads.

You can compare this value to the Active Processes value to assess whether or not it is high. In some cases, it is normal to be high, but in general the design is such that PAS does not require very many threads to accommodate a large number of active processes as long as they are not all doing something at precisely the same instant.

Active Processes

The total number of processes that are running.

Protection Active

This is a boolean value that can be used to throttle inputs, if possible. If this value is true, it indicates that PAS has gone into self-protection mode to avoid running out of resources based on the current load. In this mode, PAS will reject launches until the pending backlog has been worked off and the values used to calculate the overload condition have fallen below the configured thresholds again.

Exit Paths

Success

This path is taken if the metrics are successfully retrieved.

Timeout

This path is taken if the metrics are not successfully retrieved before the timeout period has passed.

Failure

This path is taken if the operation fails.