The test overview: I'm trying to setup a test that will check the size of a file and notify if the file remains the same size or shrinks in between tests. I can't use a File Integrity(CRC) because the file is re-written each day and isn't always exactly the same sequence. The only real thing I can check is if it shrinks/grows. So I've tried to use the folder/file size test. At the moment, the file I'm checking has a real size of 11,781,540 Bytes.
However the test returns "11 Mb" (The MegaByte size of the file).
On a side note: There is a nomenclature issue. I've always understood Mb = Megabits and MB = MegaBytes. Doesn't 11,781,540 actually equal 11 MB with a capital B? Or is this Mb coming from the host OS and Host Monitor is simply inheriting the wrong unit suffix?
Regardless of the Mb/MB units, I need to convert this to an integer so I'm using the following Tune up Reply value:
%SuggestedReply_Integer%
The problem is that it seems HM is really pulling the integer 11 x 1024 X 1024. Therefore until my file changes by a full MB, the %Reply_Interger% and %SuggestedReply_Integer% remain the same 11534336. My file however only changes my approx 60 KB each day. That means I'll have false notifications for approximately 17 days.
Shouldn't the Folder/File Size report the actual size in bytes and allow us to select the units we want to display/log? Could the Folder/File Size test parameters be modified to allow us to select the reply value of Byte, KB, MB, GB etc..? Then again, can this test method even be modified without breaking backward compatibility for people's existing tests? I'll leave that to you!
Assuming I could get the value to be in the real Byte size of the file I will then use the following Action Profile. I've used this for other methods such as SNMP GET values etc and it's worked great.
Action Profile Sends an Email when "GOOD" Status and uses Advanced Condition: %Reply%-%LastReply% <= 0. The test never reports BAD but that's not our goal. Our goal is to simply get an email notification of the file size and not have an failed test stay in Host Monitor.
For the moment I did find a solution, though I still think the folder/file size method appears to unnecessarily return an inaccurate result.
My workaround, is to used a Folder/File Availability Test and set it to go BAD when the file doesn't exist. Then apply the following Tune up Reply value:
%FileSize%
Then I use the same ACTION profile from above.
This method returns the BYTE value I need.
Is it just me or is this a strange way to get a size value? What are your thoughts on tweaking the parameters in the Folder/File Size method to return Bytes by default and convert it to KB, MB, GB, Etc?
Thanks again for a great product. As shown above, the flexibility of HM has made it possible to build the test I needed. I'm just looking for a more logical way to do it.