Health

The following topics describe how to use health monitoring:

Requirements and Prerequisites for Health Monitoring

Model Support

Any

Supported Domains

Any

User Roles

Admin

Maintenance User

About Health Monitoring

The health monitor on the management center tracks various health indicators to ensure that the hardware and software in the system are working correctly. You can use the health monitor to check the status of critical functionality across your deployment.

You can configure the frequency for running the health modules for alerting. The Management Center also supports time series data collection. You can configure the frequency of collecting the time series data on the device and its health modules. The device monitor reports these metrics in several predefined health monitor dashboards by default. The metric data is collected for analysis and hence no alerting is associated with it.


Diagram illustrating how to apply health policies to a managed device and how to collect health data at a Defense Center to monitor the health status.

You can use the health monitor to create a collection of tests, referred to as a health policy, and apply the health policy to one or more appliances. The tests, referred to as health modules, are scripts that test for the criteria you specify. You can modify a health policy by enabling or disabling tests or by changing test settings, and you can delete health policies that you no longer need. You can also suppress messages from selected appliances by excluding them.

The health monitoring system run the tests in a health policy at the configured intervals. You can also run all tests, or a specific test, on demand. The health monitor collects health events based on the test conditions configured.

The health modules are of two types: legacy-based and telegraph-based.

The legacy-based health module monitors the health status of certain systems, such as fans, power supplies, and database integrity. When the conditions specified in the health policy for these monitored systems are met, the legacy infrastructure-based health modules directly raise alerts (green, red, or orange) with a short message.

The telegraph-based health module monitors the telegraph plug-ins that retrieve metric information of the monitored system. You can create custom dashboards with your preferred health metrics for telegraph-based health module, allowing you to monitor specific statistics or troubleshoot specific issues.


Note

All appliances automatically report their hardware status via the Hardware Alarms health module. The management center also automatically reports status using the modules configured in the default health policy. Some health modules, such as the Appliance Heartbeat module, run on the management center and report the status of the management center's managed devices. For the health modules to provide managed device status, you must deploy all health policies to the device.

You can use the health monitor to access health status information for the entire system, for a particular appliance, or, in a multi-domain deployment, a particular domain. Hexagon charts and status tables on the Health Monitor page provide a visual summary of the status of all appliances on your network, including the management center. Individual appliance health monitors let you drill down into health details for a specific appliance.

Fully customizable event views allow you to quickly and easily analyze the health status events gathered by the health monitor. These event views allow you to search and view event data and to access other information that may be related to the events you are investigating. For example, if you want to see all the occurrences of CPU usage with a certain percentage, you can search for the CPU usage module and enter the percentage value.

You can also configure email, SNMP, or syslog alerting in response to health events. A health alert is an association between a standard alert and a health status level. For example, if you want to make sure an appliance never fails due to hardware overload, you can set up an email alert. You can then create a health alert that triggers an email alert whenever CPU, disk, or memory usage reaches the Warning level you configure in the health policy applied to that appliance. You can set alerting thresholds to minimize the number of repeating alerts you receive.


Note

The health monitoring can take 5–6 minutes from the occurrence of the health event to generate the health alert.

You can also generate troubleshooting files for an appliance if you are asked to do so by Support.

Only users with administrator user role privileges can access system health data.

High Availability Pair

In a management center high-availability deployment running Version 6.7 or higher, the active management center creates a health monitor page that uses REST APIs to show detailed metric-based information. The standby management center creates the health monitor page that shows the alert information and provide a visual summary of the status of all appliances on your network using pie charts and status tables. The standby management center does not display the metric-based information.

Health Modules

Health modules, or health tests, test for the criteria you specify in a health policy.

Table 1. Health Modules (All Appliances)

Module

Module Type

Description

CPU Usage (per core)

Telegraph

This module checks that the CPU usage on all the cores is not overloaded and alerts when CPU usage exceeds the thresholds configured for the module. The Warning Threshold % default value is 80. The Critical Threshold % default value is 90.

Disk Status

Legacy

This module examines the performance of the hard disk and malware storage pack (if installed) on the appliance.

This module generates a Warning (yellow) health alert when the hard disk and RAID controller (if installed) are in danger of failing, or if an additional hard drive is installed that is not a malware storage pack. This module generates an Alert (red) health alert when an installed malware storage pack cannot be detected.

Disk Usage

Telegraph

This module compares disk usage on the appliance’s hard drive and malware storage pack to the limits configured for the module and alerts when usage exceeds the thresholds configured for the module. This module also alerts when the system excessively deletes files in monitored disk usage categories, or when disk usage excluding those categories reaches excessive levels, based on module thresholds. See Disk Usage and Drain of Events Health Monitor Alerts for information about troubleshooting scenarios for Disk Usage alerts.

Use the Disk Usage health status module to monitor disk usage for the / and /volume partitions on the appliance and track draining frequency. Although the disk usage module lists the /boot partition as a monitored partition, the size of the partition is static so the module does not alert on the boot partition.

Attention

 

If you receive alerts for high unmanaged disk usage for the partition /volume although the usage is below the critical or warning threshold specified in the health policy, this could indicate that there are files which must be deleted manually from the system. Contact TAC if you receive these alerts.

File System Integrity Check

Legacy

This module performs a file system integrity check and runs if the system has CC mode or UCAPL mode enabled, or if the system runs an image signed with a DEV key. This module is enabled by default.

Health Monitor Process

Legacy

This module monitors the status of the health monitor itself and alerts if the number of minutes since the last health event received by the management center exceeds the Warning or Critical limits.

Interface Status

Legacy

This module determines if the device currently collects traffic and alerts based on the traffic status of physical interfaces and aggregate interfaces. For physical interfaces, the information includes interface name, link state, and bandwidth. For aggregate interfaces, the information includes interface name, number of active links, and total aggregate bandwidth.

Note

 

This module also monitors the high availability standby device traffic flow. Though it is known that the standby device would not be receiving any traffic yet, the management center alerts that the interface is not receiving any traffic. The same alerting principle is applied when traffic is not received by some of the subinterfaces on a port channel.

If you use the show interface CLI command to know the interface statistics of your device, the input and output rates in the CLI command result can be different from the traffic rates that appear in the interface module.

This module displays the traffic rates according to the values from Snort performance monitoring. The sampling intervals of Snort performance monitoring and the management center interface statistics are different. Due to the difference in sampling interval, throughput values in the management center GUI can be different from the throughput values appears in the threat defense CLI result.

Local Malware Analysis

Legacy

This module monitors ClamAV updates for Local Malware Analysis.

Memory Usage

Legacy

This module compares memory usage on the appliance to the limits configured for the module and alerts when usage exceeds the levels configured for the module.

For appliances with more than 4 GB of memory, the preset alert thresholds are based on a formula that accounts for proportions of available memory likely to cause system problems. On >4 GB appliances, because the interval between Warning and Critical thresholds may be very narrow, its recommended that you manually set the Warning Threshold % value to 50. This will further ensure that you receive memory alerts for your appliance in time to address the issue. See Memory Usage Thresholds for Health Monitor Alerts for additional information about how thresholds are calculated.

Beginning with Version 6.6.0, the minimum required RAM for management center virtual upgrades to Version 6.6.0+ is 28 GB, and the recommended RAM for management center virtual deployments is 32 GB. We recommend you do not decrease the default settings: 32 GB RAM for most management center virtual instances, 64 GB for the management center virtual 300 (VMware only).

Attention

 

A critical alert is generated by the health monitor when insufficient RAM is allocated to a management center virtual deployment.

Complex access control policies and rules can command significant resources and negatively affect performance.

Process Status

Legacy

This module determines if processes on the appliance exit or terminate outside of the process manager.

If a process is deliberately exited outside of the process manager, the module status changes to Warning and the health event message indicates which process exited, until the module runs again and the process has restarted. If a process terminates abnormally or crashes outside of the process manager, the module status changes to Critical and the health event message indicates the terminated process, until the module runs again and the process has restarted.

Threat Data Updates on Devices

Legacy

Certain intelligence data and configurations that devices use to detect threats are updated on the management center from the cloud every 30 minutes.

This module alerts you if this information has not been updated on the devices within the time period you have specified.

Monitored updates include:

  • Local URL category and reputation data

  • Security Intelligence URL lists and feeds, including global Block and Do Not Block lists and URLs from Threat Intelligence Director

  • Security Intelligence network lists and feeds (IP addresses), including global Block and Do Not Block lists and IP addresses from Threat Intelligence Director

  • Security Intelligence DNS lists and feeds, including global Block and Do Not Block lists and domains from Threat Intelligence Director

  • Local malware analysis signatures (from ClamAV)

  • SHA lists from Threat Intelligence Director, as listed on the Objects > Object Management > Security Intelligence > Network Lists and Feeds page

  • Dynamic analysis settings configured on the Integration > AMP > Dynamic Analysis Connections page

  • Threat Configuration settings related to expiration of cached URLs, including the Cached URLs Expire setting on the Integration > Other Integrations > Cloud Services page. (Updates to the URL cache are not monitored by this module.)

  • Communication issues with the Cisco cloud for sending events. See the Cisco Cloud box on the Integration > Other Integrations> Cloud Services page.

Note

 

Threat Intelligence Director updates are included only if TID is configured on your system and you have feeds.

By default, this module sends a warning after 1 hour and a critical alert after 24 hours.

If this module indicates failure on the management center or on any devices, verify that the management center can reach the devices.

Table 2. Management Center Health Modules

Module

Module Type

Description

AMP for Endpoints Status

Legacy

The module alerts if the management center cannot connect to the AMP cloud or Cisco AMP Private Cloud after an initial successful connection, or if the private cloud cannot contact the public AMP cloud. It also alerts if you deregister an AMP cloud connection using the Secure Endpoint management console.

AMP for Firepower Status

Legacy

This module alerts if:

  • The management center cannot contact the AMP cloud (public or private) or the Secure Malware Analytics Cloud or Appliance, or the AMP private cloud cannot contact the public AMP cloud.

  • The encryption keys used for the connection are invalid.

  • A device cannot contact the Secure Malware Analytics Cloud or Secure Malware Analytics Appliance to submit files for dynamic analysis.

  • An excessive number of files are detected in network traffic based on the file policy configuration.

If your management center loses connectivity to the Internet, the system may take up to 30 minutes to generate a health alert.

Appliance Heartbeat

Legacy

This module determines if an appliance heartbeat is being heard from the appliance and alerts based on the appliance heartbeat status.

Database Size

Legacy

This module checks the size of the configuration database and alerts when the size exceeds the values (in gigabytes) configured for the module.

Discovery Host Limit

Legacy

This module determines if the number of hosts the management center can monitor is approaching the limit and alerts based on the warning level configured for the module. For more information, see Host Limit.

Event Backlog Status

Legacy

This module alerts if the backlog of event data awaiting transmission from the device to the management center has grown continuously for more than 30 minutes.

To reduce the backlog, evaluate your bandwidth and consider logging fewer events.

Event Monitor

Telegraph

This module monitors overall incoming event rate to management center.

Event Stream Status

Legacy

This module monitors connections to third-party client applications that use the Event Streamer on the management center.

Hardware Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors the status of the management center hardware entities, namely, fan speed, temperature, and power supply. This module alerts when the threshold value exceeds the configured Warning or Critical limits.

ISE Connection Monitor

Legacy

This module monitors the status of the server connections between the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and the management center. ISE provides additional user data, device type data, device location data, SGTs (Security Group Tags), and SXP (Security Exchange Protocol) services.

License Monitor

Legacy

This module monitors license expiration.

Management Center HA Status

Legacy

This module monitors and alerts on the high availability status of the management center. If you have not established management center high availability, the HA Status is Not in HA.

Note

 

This module replaces the high availability status module, which previously provided high availability status for the management center. In Version 7.0, we added high availability status for managed devices.

MySQL Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors the status of the MySQL database, including the database size, number of active connections, and memory use. Disabled by default.

RabbitMQ Status

Telegraph

This module collects various statistics for RabbitMQ.

RRD Server Process

Legacy

This module determines if the round robin data server that stores time series data is running properly. The module alerts if the RRD server has restarted since the last time it updated; it enters Critical or Warning status if the number of consecutive updates with an RRD server restart reaches the numbers specified in the module configuration.

Realm

Legacy

Enables you to set a warning threshold for realm or user mismatches, which are:

  • User mismatch: A user is reported to the management center without being downloaded.

    A typical reason for a user mismatch is that the user belongs to a group you have excluded from being downloaded to the management center. Review the information discussed in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Device Configuration Guide.

  • Realm mismatch: A user logs into a domain that corresponds to a realm not known to the management center.

For more information, Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Device Configuration Guide.

This module also displays health alerts when you try to download more users than the maximum number of downloaded users supported per realm. The maximum number of downloaded users for a single realm depends on your management center model.

For more information, see User Limit in the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Device Configuration Guide

Security Intelligence

Legacy

This module alerts if Security Intelligence is in use and the management center cannot update a feed, or feed data is corrupt or contains no recognizable IP addresses.

See also the Threat Data Updates on Devices module.

Smart License Monitor

Legacy

This module monitors Smart Licensing status and alerts if:

  • There is a communication error between the Smart Licensing Agent (Smart Agent) and the Smart Software Manager.

  • The Product Instance Registration Token has expired.

  • The Smart License usage is out of compliance.

  • The Smart License authorization or evaluation mode has expired.

Sybase Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors the status of the Sybase database on the management center, including the database size, number of active connections, and memory use.

Time Series Data (RRD) Monitor

Legacy

This module tracks the presence of corrupt files in the directory where time series data (such as correlation event counts) are stored and alerts when files are flagged as corrupt and removed.

Time Synchronization Status

Legacy

This module tracks the synchronization of a device clock that obtains time using NTP with the clock on the NTP server and alerts if the difference in the clocks is more than ten seconds.

Unresolved Groups Monitor

Legacy

Monitors unresolved groups used in policies.

URL Filtering Monitor

Legacy

This module alerts if the management center fails to:

  • Register with the Cisco cloud.

  • Download URL threat data updates from the Cisco cloud.

  • Complete URL lookups.

You can configure time thresholds for these alerts.

See also the Threat Data Updates on Devices module.

VPN Status

Legacy

This module alerts when one or more VPN tunnels between threat defense devices are down.

This module tracks:

  • Site-to-site VPN for Secure Firewall Threat Defense

  • Remote access VPN for Secure Firewall Threat Defense
Table 3. Device Health Modules

Module

Module Type

Description

AMP Connection Status

Telegraph

The module alerts if the threat defense cannot connect to the AMP cloud or Cisco AMP Private Cloud after an initial successful connection, or if the private cloud cannot contact the public AMP cloud. Disabled by default.

AMP Threat Grid Connectivity

Telegraph

The module alerts if the threat defense cannot connect to the AMP Threat Grid cloud after an initial successful connection.

ASP Drop

Telegraph

This module monitors the connections dropped by the data plane accelerated security path.

Automatic Application Bypass

Legacy

This module monitors bypassed detection applications.

Chassis Environment Status

Legacy

This module monitors chassis parameters such as fan speed and chassis temperature, and enables you to set a warning threshold and critical threshold for temperature. The Critical Chassis Temperature (Celsius) default value is 85. The Warning Chassis Temperature (Celsius) default value is 75.

Cluster/HA Failover Status

Legacy

This module monitors the status of device clusters. The module alerts if:

  • A new primary unit is elected to a cluster.

  • A new secondary unit joins a cluster.

  • A primary or secondary unit leaves a cluster.

Configuration Resource Utilization

Legacy

This module alerts if the size of your deployed configurations puts a device at risk of running out of memory.

The alert shows you how much memory your configurations require, and by how much this exceeds the available memory. If this happens, re-evaluate your configurations. Most often you can reduce the number or complexity of access control rules or intrusion policies.

Snort Memory Allocation

  • Total Snort Memory indicates the memory allotted for the Snort 2 instances running on the threat defense device.

  • Available Memory indicates the memory allotted by the system for a Snort 2 instance. Note that this value is not just the difference between the Total Snort Memory and the combined memory reserved for other modules. This value is derived after few other computations and then divided by the number of Snort 2 processes.

    A negative Available Memory value indicates that Snort 2 instance does not have enough memory for the deployed configuration. For support, contact Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC).

Connection Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors the connection statistics and NAT translation counts.

Data Plane CPU Usage

Telegraph

This module checks that the average CPU usage of all data plane processes on the device is not overloaded and alerts when CPU usage exceeds the percentages configured for the module. The Warning Threshold % default value is 80. The Critical Threshold % default value is 90.

Snort CPU Usage

Telegraph

This module checks that the average CPU usage of the Snort processes on the device is not overloaded and alerts when CPU usage exceeds the percentages configured for the module. The Warning Threshold % default value is 80. The Critical Threshold % default value is 90.

System CPU Usage

Telegraph

This module checks that the average CPU usage of all system processes on the device is not overloaded and alerts when CPU usage exceeds the percentages configured for the module. The Warning Threshold % default value is 80. The Critical Threshold % default value is 90.

Critical Process Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors the state of critical processes, their resource consumption, and the restart counts.

Deployed Configuration Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors statistics about the deployed configuration, such as the number of ACEs and IPS rules.

Firewall Threat Defense Platform Faults

Legacy

This module generates an alert for platform faults for Firepower 1000, 2100 and Secure Firewall 3100 devices. A fault is a mutable object that is managed by the management center. Each fault represents a failure in the threat defense instance or an alarm threshold that has been raised. During the lifecycle of a fault, it can change from one state or severity to another.

Each fault includes information about the operational state of the affected object at the time the fault was raised. If the fault is transitional and the failure is resolved, then the object transitions to a functional state.

For more information, see the Cisco Firepower 1000/2100 FXOS Faults and Error Messages Guide.

Management Center Access Configuration Changes

Legacy

This module monitors access configuration changes made on the management center directly using the configure network management-data-interface command.

Flow Offload Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors hardware flow offload statistics for a managed device.

Hardware Alarms

Legacy

This module determines if hardware needs to be replaced on a physical managed device and alerts based on the hardware status. The module also reports on the status of hardware-related daemons.

Inline Link Mismatch Alarms

Legacy

This module monitors the ports associated with inline sets and alerts if the two interfaces of an inline pair negotiate different speeds.

Intrusion and File Event Rate

Legacy

This module compares the number of intrusion events per second to the limits configured for this module and alerts if the limits are exceeded. If the Intrusion and File Event Rate is zero, the intrusion process may be down or the managed device may not be sending events. Select Analysis > Intrusions > Events to check if events are being received from the device.

Typically, the event rate for a network segment averages 20 events per second. For a network segment with this average rate, Events per second (Critical) should be set to 50 and Events per second (Warning) should be set to 30. To determine limits for your system, find the Events/Sec value on the Statistics page for your device (System (system gear icon) > Monitoring > Statistics), then calculate the limits using these formulas:

  • Events per second (Critical) = Events/Sec * 2.5

  • Events per second (Warning) = Events/Sec * 1.5

The maximum number of events you can set for either limit is 999, and the Critical limit must be higher than the Warning limit.

Link State Propagation

Legacy

ISA 3000 only.

This module determines when a link in a paired inline set fails and triggers the link state propagation mode. If a link state propagates to the pair, the status classification for that module changes to Critical and the state reads: 


Module Link State Propagation: ethx_ethy is Triggered

where x and y are the paired interface numbers.

Memory Usage Data Plane

Telegraph

This module checks the percentage of allocated memory used by the Data Plane processes and alerts when memory usage exceeds the percentages configured for the module. The Warning Threshold % default value is 80. The Critical Threshold % default value is 90.

Memory Usage Snort

Telegraph

This module checks the percentage of allocated memory used by the Snort process and alerts when memory usage exceeds the percentages configured for the module. The Warning Threshold % default value is 80. The Critical Threshold % default value is 90.

Network Card Reset

Legacy

This module checks for network cards which have restarted due to hardware failure and alerts when a reset occurs.

NTP Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors the NTP clock synchronization status of the managed device. Disabled by default.

Power Supply

Legacy

This module determines if power supplies on the appliance require replacement and alerts based on the power supply status.

Routing Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors the current state of routing table.

Snort3 Statistics

Telegraph

This module collects and monitors the Snort 3 statistics for events, flows, and packets.

Snort Identity Memory Usage

Legacy

Enables you to set a warning threshold for Snort identity processing and alerts when memory usage exceeds the level configured for the module. The Critical Threshold % default value is 80.

This health module specifically keeps track of the total space used for the user identity information in Snort. It displays the current memory usage details, the total number of user-to-IP bindings, and user-group mapping details. Snort records these details in a file. If the memory usage file is not available, the Health Alert for this module displays Waiting for data. This could happen during a Snort restart due to a new install or a major update, switch from Snort 2 to Snort 3 or back, or major policy deployment. Depending on the health monitoring cycle, and when the file is available, the warning disappears, and the health monitor displays the details for this module with its status turned Green.

Snort Reconfiguring Detection

Telegraph

This module alerts if a device reconfiguration has failed. This module detects reconfiguration failure for both Snort 2 and Snort 3 instances.

Snort Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors the Snort statistics for events, flows, and packets.

Security Services Exchange Connection Status

Telegraph

The module alerts if the threat defense cannot connect to the security services exchange cloud after an initial successful connection. Disabled by default.

Threat Defense HA (Split-brain check)

Legacy

This module monitors and alerts on the high availability status of the threat defense and provides a health alert for a split brain scenario. If you have not established threat defense high availability, the HA Status is Not in HA.

VPN Statistics

Telegraph

This module monitors site-to-site and remote access VPN tunnels between threat defense devices.

XTLS Counters

Telegraph

This module monitors XTLS/SSL flows, memory and cache effectiveness. Disabled by default.

Configuring Health Monitoring

Procedure

Step 1

Determine which health modules you want to monitor as discussed in Health Modules.

You can set up specific policies for each kind of appliance, enabling only the appropriate tests for that appliance.

Tip

 

To quickly enable health monitoring without customizing the monitoring behavior, you can apply the default policy provided for that purpose.

Step 2

Apply a health policy to each appliance where you want to track health status as discussed in Creating Health Policies.

Step 3

(Optional.) Configure health monitor alerts as discussed in Creating Health Monitor Alerts.

You can set up email, syslog, or SNMP alerts that trigger when the health status level reaches a particular severity level for specific health modules.

Health Policies

A health policy contains configurable health test criteria for several modules. You can control which health modules run against each of your appliances and configure the specific limits used in the tests run by each module.

When you configure a health policy, you decide whether to enable each health module for that policy. You also select the criteria that control which health status each enabled module reports each time it assesses the health of a process.

You can create one health policy that can be applied to every appliance in your system, customize each health policy to the specific appliance where you plan to apply it, or use the default health policy provided for you.

Default Health Policy

The management center setup process creates and applies an initial health policy, in which most—but not all—available health modules are enabled. The system also applies this initial policy to devices added to the management center.

This initial health policy is based on a default health policy, which you can neither view nor edit, but which you can copy when you create a custom health policy.

Upgrades and the Default Health Policy

When you upgrade the management center, any new health modules are added to all health policies, including the initial health policy, default health policy, and any other custom health policies. Usually, new health modules are added in an enabled state.


Note

For a new health module to begin monitoring and alerting, reapply health policies after upgrade.

Creating Health Policies

If you want to customize a health policy to use with your appliances, you can create a new policy. The settings in the policy initially populate with the settings from the health policy you choose as a basis for the new policy. You can edit the policy to specify your preferences, such as enable or disable modules within the policy, change the alerting criteria for each module as needed, and specify the run time intervals.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Policy.

Step 2

Click Create Policy.

Step 3

Enter a name for the policy.

Step 4

Choose the existing policy that you want to use as the basis for the new policy from the Base Policy drop-down list.

Step 5

Enter a description for the policy.

Step 6

Choose Save.

What to do next

Apply a Health Policy

When you apply a health policy to an appliance, the health tests for all the modules you enabled in the policy automatically monitor the health of the processes and hardware on the appliance. Health tests then continue to run at the intervals you configured in the policy, collecting health data for the appliance and forwarding that data to the management center.

If you enable a module in a health policy and then apply the policy to an appliance that does not require that health test, the health monitor reports the status for that health module as disabled.

If you apply a policy with all modules disabled to an appliance, it removes all applied health policies from the appliance so no health policy is applied.

When you apply a different policy to an appliance that already has a policy applied, expect some latency in the display of new data based on the newly applied tests.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Policy.

Step 2

Click the Deploy health policy (deploy icon) next to the policy you want to apply.

Step 3

Choose the appliances where you want to apply the health policy.

Note

 

You cannot remove the policy from an appliance after you have deployed it. To stop health monitoring for an appliance, create a health policy with all modules disabled and apply it to the appliance.

Step 4

Click Apply to apply the policy to the appliances you chose.

What to do next

  • Optionally, monitor the task status; see View Task Messages.

    Monitoring of the appliance starts as soon as the policy is successfully applied.

Edit a Health Policy

You can edit a health policy that you want to modify.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Policy.

Step 2

Click Edit (edit icon) next to the policy you want to modify.

Step 3

To edit the policy name and its description, click the Edit (edit icon) icon provided against the policy name.

Step 4

The Health Modules tab displays all the device modules and its attributes. Configure your health modules using the following actions:

  • Click the toggle button that is provided against the module and its attributes—turn on (slider enabled) or turn off (slider disabled) to enable or disable testing of health status respectively.

  • To execute a bulk enable or disable testing on the health modules, click the Select All toggle button

Note

 

  • The modules and attributes are flagged with the supporting appliances—threat defense, management center, or both.

  • You cannot choose to include or exclude the individual attributes of CPU and Memory modules.

For information on the modules, see Health Modules.

Step 5

Where appropriate, set the Critical and Warning threshold percentages.

Step 6

In the Run Time Intervals tab, enter the relevant values in the fields:

  • Health Module Run Interval—The frequency for running the health modules. The minimum interval is 5 minutes.

  • Metric Collection Interval—The frequency of collecting the time series data on the device and its health modules. The device monitor reports these metrics in several predefined health monitor dashboards by default. For detailed information on the dashboard, see About Dashboards. The metric data is collected for analysis and hence no alerting is associated with it.

Step 7

Click Save.

Step 8

Apply the health policy to your appliance as described in Apply a Health Policy.

Apply the health policy to each appliance where you want to track health status. When you apply the health policy to an appliance, all the modules you enabled in the policy monitor the health of the processes and hardware on the appliance, and forwards that data to the management center.

Delete a Health Policy

You can delete health policies that you no longer need. If you delete a policy that is still applied to an appliance, the policy settings remain in effect until you apply a different policy. In addition, if you delete a health policy that is applied to a device, any health monitoring alerts in effect for the device remain active until you disable the underlying associated alert response.


Tip

To stop health monitoring for an appliance, create a health policy with all modules disabled and apply it to the appliance.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Policy.

Step 2

Click Delete (delete icon) next to the policy you want to delete, and then click Delete health policy to delete it.

A message appears, indicating if the deletion was successful.

Device Exclusion in Health Monitoring

In the course of normal network maintenance, you disable appliances or make them temporarily unavailable. Because those outages are deliberate, you do not want the health status from those appliances to affect the summary health status on your management center.

You can use the health monitor exclude feature to disable health monitoring status reporting on an appliance or module. For example, if you know that a segment of your network will be unavailable, you can temporarily disable health monitoring for a managed device on that segment to prevent the health status on the management center from displaying a warning or critical state because of the lapsed connection to the device.

When you disable health monitoring status, health events are still generated, but they have a disabled status and do not affect the health status for the health monitor. If you remove the appliance or module from the excluded list, the events that were generated during the exclusion continue to show a status of disabled.

To temporarily disable health events from an appliance, go to the exclusion configuration page and add an appliance to the device exclude list. After the setting takes effect, the system no longer considers the excluded appliance when calculating the overall health status. The Health Monitor Appliance Status Summary lists the appliance as disabled.

You can also disable an individual health module. For example, when you reach the host limit on the management center, you can disable Host Limit status messages.

Note that on the main Health Monitor page you can distinguish between appliances that are excluded if you expand to view the list of appliances with a particular status by clicking the arrow in that status row.


Note

On management center, Health Monitor exclusion settings are local configuration settings. Therefore, if you exclude a device, then delete it and later re-register it with the management center, the exclusion settings remain persistent. The newly re-registered device remains excluded.

Excluding Appliances from Health Monitoring

You can exclude appliances individually or by group, model, or associated health policy.

If you need to set the events and health status for an individual appliance to disabled, you can exclude the appliance. After the exclusion settings take effect, the appliance shows as disabled in the Health Monitor Appliance Module Summary, and health events for the appliance have a status of disabled.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Exclude.

Step 2

Click Add Device.

Step 3

In the Device Exclusion dialog box, under Available Devices, click Add (add icon) against the device that you want to exclude from health monitoring.

Step 4

Click Exclude. The selected device is displayed in the exclusion main page.

Step 5

To remove the device from the exclusion list, click Delete (delete icon).

Step 6

Click Apply.

What to do next

To exclude individual health policy modules on appliances, see Excluding Health Policy Modules.

Excluding Health Policy Modules

You can exclude individual health policy modules on appliances. You may want to do this to prevent events from the module from changing the status for the appliance to warning or critical.

After the exclusion settings take effect, the appliance shows the number of modules being excluded in the device from health monitoring.


Tip

Make sure that you keep track of individually excluded modules so you can reactivate them when you need them. You may miss necessary warning or critical messages if you accidentally leave a module disabled.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Exclude.

Step 2

Click Edit (edit icon) next to the appliance you want to modify.

Step 3

In the Exclude Health Modules dialog box, by default, all the modules of the device are excluded from health monitoring. Certain modules are applicable to specific devices only; for more information, see Health Modules.

Step 4

To specify the duration of the exclusion for the device, from the Exclude Period drop-down list, select the duration.

Step 5

To choose modules to be excluded from health monitoring, click the Enable Module Level Exclusion link. The Exclude Health Modules dialog box displays all the modules of the device. The modules that are not applicable for the associated health policies are disabled by default. To exclude a module, perform the following:

  1. Click the Slider (slider icon) button next to the desired module.

  2. To specify the duration of the exclusion for the selected modules, from the Exclude Period drop-down list, select the duration.

Step 6

If you select an Exclude Period other than Permanent, for your exclusion configuration, you can choose to automatically delete the configuration when it expires. To enable this setting, check the Auto-delete expired configurations check box.

Step 7

Click OK.

Step 8

In the device exclusion main page, click Apply.

Expired Health Monitor Exclusions

When the exclusion period for a device or modules lapses, you can choose to clear or renew the exclusion.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Exclude.

The Warning (warning icon) icon is displayed against the device indicating the expiry of the duration of exclusion of the device or the modules from alerting.

Step 2

To renew the exclusion of the device, click Edit (edit icon) next to the appliance. In the Exclude Health Modules dialog box, click the Renew link. The exclusion period of the device is extended with the current value.

Step 3

To clear the device from being excluded, click Delete (delete icon) next to the appliance, click Remove the device from exclusion, and then click Apply.

Step 4

To renew or clear the modules from exclusion, click Edit (edit icon) next to the appliance. In the Exclude Health Modules dialog box, click the Enable Module Level Exclusion link, and then click the Renew or Clear link against the modules. When you click Renew, the exclusion period is extended on the module with the current value.

Health Monitor Alerts

You can set up alerts to notify you through email, through SNMP, or through the syslog when the status changes for the modules in a health policy. You can associate an existing alert response with health event levels to trigger and alert when health events of a particular level occur.

For example, if you are concerned that your appliances may run out of hard disk space, you can automatically send an email to a system administrator when the remaining disk space reaches the warning level. If the hard drive continues to fill, you can send a second email when the hard drive reaches the critical level.

Health Monitor Alert Information

The alerts generated by the health monitor contain the following information:

  • Severity, which indicates the severity level of the alert.

  • Module, which specifies the health module whose test results triggered the alert.

  • Description, which includes the health test results that triggered the alert.

The table below describes these severity levels.

Table 4. Alert Severities

Severity

Description

Critical

The health test results met the criteria to trigger a Critical alert status.

Warning

The health test results met the criteria to trigger a Warning alert status.

Normal

The health test results met the criteria to trigger a Normal alert status.

Error

The health test did not run.

Recovered

The health test results met the criteria to return to a normal alert status, following a Critical or Warning alert status.

Creating Health Monitor Alerts

You must be an Admin user to perform this procedure.

When you create a health monitor alert, you create an association between a severity level, a health module, and an alert response. You can use an existing alert or configure a new one specifically to report on system health. When the severity level occurs for the selected module, the alert triggers.

If you create or update a threshold in a way that duplicates an existing threshold, you are notified of the conflict. When duplicate thresholds exist, the health monitor uses the threshold that generates the fewest alerts and ignores the others. The timeout value for the threshold must be between 5 and 4,294,967,295 minutes.

Before you begin

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor Alerts.

Step 2

Click Add.

Step 3

In the Add Health Alert dialog box, enter a name for the health alert in the Health Alert Name field.

Step 4

From the Severity drop-down list, choose the severity level you want to use to trigger the alert.

Step 5

From the Alert drop-down list, choose the alert response that you want to trigger when the specified severity level is reached. If you have not yet configured the alert responses, click Alerts to visit the Alerts page and set them.

Step 6

From the Health Modules list, choose the health policy modules for which you want the alert to apply.

Step 7

Optionally, in the Threshold Timeout field, enter the number of minutes that should elapse before each threshold period ends and the threshold count resets.

Even if the policy run time interval value is less than the threshold timeout value, the interval between two reported health events from a given module is always greater. For example, if you change the threshold timeout to 8 minutes and the policy run time interval is 5 minutes, there is a 10-minute interval (5 x 2) between reported events.

Step 8

Click Save to save the health alert.

Editing Health Monitor Alerts

You must be an Admin user to perform this procedure.

You can edit existing health monitor alerts to change the severity level, health module, or alert response associated with the health monitor alert.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor Alerts.

Step 2

Click the Edit (edit icon) icon that is provided against the required health alert that you want to modify.

Step 3

In the Edit Health Alert dialog box, from the Alert drop-down list, select the required alert entry, or click Alerts link to configure a new alert entry.

Step 4

Click Save.

Deleting Health Monitor Alerts

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor Alerts.

Step 2

Click Delete (delete icon) next to the health alert you want to delete, and then click Delete health alert to delete it.

What to do next

About the Health Monitor

You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.

The health monitor provides the compiled health status for all devices managed by the management center, plus the management center itself. The health monitor is composed of:

  • The Health Status summary page ― Provides you with an at-a-glance view of the health of the management center and all of the devices that the management center manages. Devices are listed individually, or grouped according to their geolocation, high availability, or cluster status where applicable.

    • View the health summary of the management center and any device when you hover on the hexagon that represents the device health.

    • The dot to the left of a device indicates its health:

      • Green ― No alarms.

      • Orange ― At least one health warning.

      • Red ― At least one critical health alarm.

  • The Monitoring navigation pane ― Allows you to navigate the device hierarchy. You can view health monitors for individual devices from the navigation pane.

In a multidomain deployment, the health monitor in an ancestor domain displays data from all descendant domains. In the descendant domains, it displays data from the current domain only.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor.

Step 2

View the status of the management center and its managed devices in the Health Status landing page.

  1. Hover your pointer over a hexagon to view the health summary of a device. The popup window shows a truncated summary of the top five health alerts. Click on the popup to open a detailed view of the health alert summary.

  2. In the device list, click Expand (expand icon) and Collapse (collapse icon) to expand and collapse the list of health alerts for a device.

    When you expand the row, all of the health alerts are listed, including the status, title, and details.

    Note

     

    Health alerts are sorted by their severity level.

Step 3

Use the Monitoring navigation pane to access device-specific health monitors. When you use the Monitoring navigation pane:

  1. Click Home to return Health Status summary page.

  2. Click Firewall Management Center to view the health monitor for the Secure Firewall Management Center itself.

  3. In the device list, click Expand (expand icon) and Collapse (collapse icon) to expand and collapse the list of managed devices.

    When you expand the row, all of the devices are listed.

  4. Click on a device to view a device-specific health monitor.

What to do next

  • See Device Health Monitors for information about the compiled health status and metrics for any device managed by the management center.

  • See Using Management Center Health Monitor for information about the health status of the management center.

    To return to the Health Status landing page at any time, click Home.

Using Management Center Health Monitor

You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.

The management center monitor provides a detailed view of the health status of the management center. The health monitor is composed of:

  • High Availability (if configured)―The High Availability (HA) panel displays the current HA status, including the status of the Active and Standby units, the last sync time, and overall device health.

  • Event Rate―The Event Rate panel shows the maximum event rate as a base line as well as the overall event rate received by the management center.

  • Event Capacity―The Event Capacity panel shows the current consumption by event categories, including the retention time of events, the current vs. maximum event capacity, and a capacity overflow mechanism where you are alerted when events are stored beyond the configured maximum capacity of the management center.

  • Process Health―The Process Health panel has an at-a-glace view of the critical processes as well as a tab that lets you see state of all processed, including the CPU and memory usage for each process.

  • CPU―The CPU panel lets you toggle between the average CPU usage (default) and the CPU usage of all cores.

  • Memory―The Memory panel shows the overall memory usage on the management center.

  • Interface―The Interface panel shows average input and output rate of all interfaces.

  • Disk Usage―The Disk Usage panel shows the use of entire disk, and the use of the critical partitions where management center data is stored.

  • Hardware Statistics―The hardware statistics shows the fan speed, power supply, and temperature of the management center chassis. For more information, see Hardware Statistics on Management Center.


Tip

Your session normally logs you out after 1 hour of inactivity (or another configured interval). If you plan to passively monitor health status for long periods of time, consider exempting some users from session timeout, or changing the system timeout settings. See Add or Edit an Internal User and Configure Session Timeouts for more information.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor.

Step 2

Use the Monitoring navigation pane to access the management center and device-specific health monitors.

  • A standalone management center is shown as a single node; a high-availability management center is shown as a pair of nodes.

  • The health monitor is available to both the active and standby management center in an HA pair.

Step 3

Explore the management center dashboard.

The management center dashboard includes a summary view of the HA state of the management center (if configured), as well as at-a-glance views of management center processes and device metrics such as CPU, memory, and disk usage.

Running All Modules for an Appliance

You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.

Health module tests run automatically at the policy run time interval you configure when you create a health policy. However, you can also run all health module tests on demand to collect up-to-date health information for the appliance.

Procedure

Step 1

View the health monitor for the appliance.

Step 2

Click Run All Modules. The status bar indicates the progress of the tests, then the Health Monitor Appliance page refreshes.

Note

 

When you manually run health modules, the first refresh that automatically occurs may not reflect the data from the manually run tests. If the value has not changed for a module that you just ran manually, wait a few seconds, then refresh the page by clicking the device name. You can also wait for the page to refresh again automatically.

Running a Specific Health Module

You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.

Health module tests run automatically at the policy run time interval you configure when you create a health policy. However, you can also run a health module test on demand to collect up-to-date health information for that module.

Procedure

Step 1

View the health monitor for the appliance.

Step 2

In the Module Status Summary graph, click the color for the health alert status category you want to view.

Step 3

In the Alert Detail row for the alert for which you want to view a list of events, click Run.

The status bar indicates the progress of the test, then the Health Monitor Appliance page refreshes.

Note

 

When you manually run health modules, the first refresh that automatically occurs may not reflect the data from the manually run tests. If the value has not changed for a module that you just manually ran, wait a few seconds, then refresh the page by clicking the device name. You can also wait for the page to refresh automatically again.

Generating Health Module Alert Graphs

You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.

You can graph the results over a period of time of a particular health test for a specific appliance.

Procedure

Step 1

View the health monitor for the appliance.

Step 2

In the Module Status Summary graph of the Health Monitor Appliance page, click the color for the health alert status category you want to view.

Step 3

In the Alert Detail row for the alert for which you want to view a list of events, click Graph.

Tip

 

If no events appear, you may need to adjust the time range.

Hardware Statistics on Management Center

The hardware statistics on the management center appliance (only physical) includes information on its hardware entities, such as fan speed, power supply, and temperature. For SNMP to poll and send traps to monitor the health of a management center:

  1. Enable SNMP on the management center for polling the MIBs. By default, the SNMP on the management center is disabled. See Configure SNMP Polling.

  2. Add an ACL entry for each of the required SNMP host to enable traps. Ensure to specify the host’s IP address and select the port as SNMP. See Configure an Access List.

To view the hardware statistics on the Health > Monitor page:

  1. On the Health > Policy page, ensure that the Hardware Statistics module is enabled. You can change the default threshold values.

  2. Add a portlet to the management center health monitoring dashboard—select Hardware Statistics metric group, and then select Fan Speed and Temperature metrics.

You can view the power supply status under the firewall management center in the Health Monitoring > Home page.


Note

  • The fan speed is displayed in RPM.

  • The temperature is displayed in °C (Celsius).

  • When one slot of the power supply is active, the dashboard displays it as Online and the other slot as No Power.

  • Each horizontal line in the graphs shows the status for each PSU and fan respectively.

  • Hover over the graph to view the data of that individual statistics.

Device Health Monitors

The device health monitor provides the compiled health status for any device managed by the management center. The device health monitor collects health metrics for Firepower devices in order to predict and respond to system events. The device health monitor is comprised of the following components:

  • System Details ― Displays information about the managed device, including the installed Firepower version and other deployment details.

  • Troubleshooting & Links ― Provides convenient links to frequently used troubleshooting topics and procedures.

  • Health alerts ― A health alert monitor provides an at-a-glance view of the health of the device.

  • Time range ― An adjustable time window to constrain the information that appears in the various device metrics windows.

  • Device metrics ― An array of key Firepower device health metrics categorized across predefined dashboards, including:

    • CPU ― CPU utilization, including the CPU usage by process and by physical cores.

    • Memory ― Device memory utilization, including data plane and Snort memory usage.

    • Interfaces ― Interface status and aggregate traffic statistics.

    • Connections ― Connection statistics (such as elephant flows, active connections, peak connections, and so on) and NAT translation counts.

    • Snort ― Statistics related to the Snort process.

    • Disk Usage ― Device disk usage, including the disk size and disk utilization per partition.

    • Critical Processes ― Statistics related to managed processes, including process restarts and other select health monitors such as CPU and memory utilization.

    See Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Health Metrics for a comprehensive list of the supported device metrics.

Viewing System Details and Troubleshooting

You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.

The System Details section provides a general system information for a selected device. You can also launch troubleshooting tasks for that device.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor.

Use the Monitoring navigation pane to access device-specific health monitors.

Step 2

In the device list, click Expand (expand icon) and Collapse (collapse icon) to expand and collapse the list of managed devices.

Step 3

Click on a device to view a device-specific health monitor.

Step 4

Click the link for View System & Troubleshoot Details …

This panel is collapsed by default. Clicking on the link expands the collapsed section to see System Details and Troubleshooting & Links for the device. The system details include:

  • Version: The Firepower software version.

  • Model: The device model.

  • Mode: The firewall mode. The threat defense device supports two firewall modes for regular firewall interfaces: Routed mode and Transparent mode.

  • VDB: The Cisco vulnerability database (VDB) version.

  • SRU: The intrusion rule set version.

  • Snort: The Snort version.

Step 5

You have the following troubleshoot choices:

Viewing the Device Health Monitor

You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.

The device health monitor provides a detailed view of the health status of a firewall device. The device health monitor compiles device metrics and provides health status and trends of the device in an array of dashboards.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor.

Use the Monitoring navigation pane to access device-specific health monitors.

Step 2

In the device list, click Expand (expand icon) and Collapse (collapse icon) to expand and collapse the list of managed devices.

Step 3

View the Health Alerts for the device in the alert notification at the top of page, directly to the right of the device name.

Hover your pointer over the Health Alerts to view the health summary of the device. The popup window shows a truncated summary of the top five health alerts. Click on the popup to open a detailed view of the health alert summary.

Step 4

You can configure the time range from the drop-down in the upper-right corner. The time range can reflect a period as short as the last hour (the default) or as long as two weeks. Select Custom from the drop-down to configure a custom start and end date.

Click the refresh icon to set auto refresh to 5 minutes or to toggle off auto refresh.

Step 5

Click the Show Deployment Info (Show Deployment Info icon) icon for a deployment overlay on the trend graph, with respect to the selected time range.

The Show Deployment Info (Show Deployment Info icon) icon indicates the number of deployments during the selected time-range. A vertical band indicates the deployment start and end time. In the case of multiple deployments, multiple bands/lines can appear. Click the icon on top of the dotted line to view the deployment details.

Step 6

The device monitor reports health and performance metrics in several predefined dashboards by default. The metrics dashboards include:

  • Overview ― Highlights key metrics from the other predefined dashboards, including CPU, memory, interfaces, connection statistics; plus disk usage and critical process information.

  • CPU ― CPU utilization, including the CPU usage by process and by physical cores.

  • Memory ― Device memory utilization, including data plane and Snort memory usage.

  • Interfaces ― Interface status and aggregate traffic statistics.

  • Connections ― Connection statistics (such as elephant flows, active connections, peak connections, and so on) and NAT translation counts.

  • Snort ― Statistics related to the Snort process.

  • ASP Drops ― Statistics related to the Accelerated Security Path (ASP) performance and behavior.

You can navigate through the various metrics dashboards by clicking on the labels. See Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Health Metrics for a comprehensive list of the supported device metrics.

Step 7

Click the Add Dashboard (+) to create a custom correlation dashboard by building your own variable set from the available metric groups; see Correlating Device Metrics.

Correlating Device Metrics

The device health monitor includes an array of key threat defense device metrics that serve to predict and respond to system events. The health of any threat defense device can be determined by these reported metrics.

The device monitor reports these metrics in several predefined dashboards by default. These dashboards include:

  • Overview ― Highlights key metrics from the other predefined dashboards, including CPU, memory, interfaces, connection statistics; plus disk usage and critical process information.

  • CPU ― CPU utilization, including the CPU usage by process and by physical cores.

  • Memory ― Device memory utilization, including data plane and Snort memory usage.

  • Interfaces ― Interface status and aggregate traffic statistics.

  • Connections ― Connection statistics (such as elephant flows, active connections, peak connections, and so on) and NAT translation counts.

  • Snort ― Statistics related to the Snort process.

  • ASP Drops ― Statistics related to the Accelerated Security Path (ASP) performance and behavior.

You can add custom dashboards to correlate metrics that are interrelated. Select from predefined correlation groups, such as CPU and Snort; or create a custom correlation dashboard by building your own variable set from the available metric groups. See Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Health Metrics for a comprehensive list of the supported device metrics.

Before you begin

  • To view and correlate the time series data (device metrics) in the health monitor dashboard, enable REST API (Settings > Configuration > REST API Preferences).

  • You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.


Note

Correlating device metrics is available only for threat defense 6.7 and later versions. Hence, for threat defense versions earlier than 6.7, the health monitor dashboard does not display these metrics even if you enable REST API.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor.

Use the Monitoring navigation pane to access device-specific health monitors.

Step 2

In the Devices list, click Expand (expand icon) and Collapse (collapse icon) to expand and collapse the list of managed devices.

Step 3

Choose the device for which you want to modify the dashboard.

Step 4

Click the Add Dashboard (+) icon in the upper right corner of the device monitor to add a new dashboard.

Step 5

From the Select Correlation Group drop-down, choose a predefined correlation group or to create a custom group.

Step 6

To create a dashboard from a predefined correlation group, choose the group and click Add.

Step 7

To create a custom correlation dashboard:

  1. Choose Custom.

  2. Enter a unique name in the Dashboard Name field or accept the default.

  3. Choose a group from the Select Metric Group drop-down, then select corresponding metrics from the Select Metrics drop-down.

See Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Health Metrics for a comprehensive list of the supported device metrics.

Step 8

Click Add Metrics to add and select metrics from another group.

Step 9

To remove an individual metric, click the x icon on the right side of the item. Click the delete icon to remove the entire group.

Step 10

Click Add to add the dashboard to the health monitor.

Step 11

You can Edit or Delete custom correlation dashboards.

Cluster Health Monitor

When a threat defense is the control node of a cluster, the management center collects various metrics periodically from the device metric data collector. The cluster health monitor is comprised of the following components:

  • Overview dashboard―Displays information about the cluster topology, cluster statistics, and metric charts:

    • The topology section displays a cluster's live status, the health of individual threat defense, threat defense node type (control node or data node), and the status of the device. The status of the device could be Disabled (when the device leaves the cluster), Added out of box (in a public cloud cluster, the additional nodes that do not belong to the management center), or Normal (ideal state of the node).

    • The cluster statistics section displays current metrics of the cluster with respect to the CPU usage, memory usage, input rate, output rate, active connections, and NAT translations.


      Note

      The CPU and memory metrics display the individual average of the data plane and snort usage.

    • The metric charts, namely, CPU Usage, Memory Usage, Throughput, and Connections, diagrammatically display the statistics of the cluster over the specified time period.

  • Load Distribution dashboard―Displays load distribution across the cluster nodes in two widgets:

    • The Distribution widget displays the average packet and connection distribution over the time range across the cluster nodes. This data depicts how the load is being distributed by the nodes. Using this widget, you can easily identify any abnormalities in the load distribution and rectify it.

    • The Node Statistics widget displays the node level metrics in table format. It displays metric data on CPU usage, memory usage, input rate, output rate, active connections, and NAT translations across the cluster nodes. This table view enables you to correlate data and easily identify any discrepancies.

  • Member Performance dashboard―Displays current metrics of the cluster nodes. You can use the selector to filter the nodes and view the details of a specific node. The metric data include CPU usage, memory usage, input rate, output rate, active connections, and NAT translations.

  • CCL dashboard―Displays, graphically, the cluster control link data namely, the input, and output rate.

  • Troubleshooting and Links ― Provides convenient links to frequently used troubleshooting topics and procedures.

  • Time range―An adjustable time window to constrain the information that appears in the various cluster metrics dashboards and widgets.

  • Custom Dashboard―Displays data on both cluster-wide metrics and node-level metrics. However, node selection only applies for the threat defense metrics and not for the entire cluster to which the node belongs.

Viewing the Cluster Health Monitor

You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.

The cluster health monitor provides a detailed view of the health status of a cluster and its nodes. This cluster health monitor provides health status and trends of the cluster in an array of dashboards.

Before you begin

  • Ensure you have created a cluster from one or more devices in the management center.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor.

Use the Monitoring navigation pane to access node-specific health monitors.

Step 2

In the device list, click Expand (expand icon) and Collapse (collapse icon) to expand and collapse the list of managed cluster devices.

Step 3

To view the cluster health statistics, click on the cluster name. The cluster monitor reports health and performance metrics in several predefined dashboards by default. The metrics dashboards include:

  • Overview ― Highlights key metrics from the other predefined dashboards, including its nodes, CPU, memory, input and output rates, connection statistics, and NAT translation information.

  • Load Distribution ― Traffic and packet distribution across the cluster nodes.

  • Member Performance ― Node-level statistics on CPU usage, memory usage, input throughput, output throughput, active connection, and NAT translation.

  • CCL ― Interface status and aggregate traffic statistics.

You can navigate through the various metrics dashboards by clicking on the labels. For a comprehensive list of the supported cluster metrics, see Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Health Metrics.

Step 4

You can configure the time range from the drop-down in the upper-right corner. The time range can reflect a period as short as the last hour (the default) or as long as two weeks. Select Custom from the drop-down to configure a custom start and end date.

Click the refresh icon to set auto refresh to 5 minutes or to toggle off auto refresh.

Step 5

Click on deployment icon for a deployment overlay on the trend graph, with respect to the selected time range.

The deployment icon indicates the number of deployments during the selected time-range. A vertical band indicates the deployment start and end time. For multiple deployments, multiple bands/lines appear. Click on the icon on top of the dotted line to view the deployment details.

Step 6

(For node-specific health monitor) View the Health Alerts for the node in the alert notification at the top of page, directly to the right of the device name.

Hover your pointer over the Health Alerts to view the health summary of the node. The popup window shows a truncated summary of the top five health alerts. Click on the popup to open a detailed view of the health alert summary.

Step 7

(For node-specific health monitor) The device monitor reports health and performance metrics in several predefined dashboards by default. The metrics dashboards include:

  • Overview ― Highlights key metrics from the other predefined dashboards, including CPU, memory, interfaces, connection statistics; plus disk usage and critical process information.

  • CPU ― CPU utilization, including the CPU usage by process and by physical cores.

  • Memory ― Device memory utilization, including data plane and Snort memory usage.

  • Interfaces ― Interface status and aggregate traffic statistics.

  • Connections ― Connection statistics (such as elephant flows, active connections, peak connections, and so on) and NAT translation counts.

  • Snort ― Statistics that are related to the Snort process.

  • ASP drops ― Statistics related to the dropped packets against various reasons.

You can navigate through the various metrics dashboards by clicking on the labels. See Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Health Metrics for a comprehensive list of the supported device metrics.

Step 8

Click the plus sign (+) in the upper right corner of the health monitor to create a custom dashboard by building your own variable set from the available metric groups.

For cluster-wide dashboard, choose Cluster metric group, and then choose the metric.

Health Monitor Status Categories

Available status categories are listed by severity in the table below.

Table 5. Health Status Indicator

Status Level

Status Icon

Status Color in Pie Chart

Description

Error

Error (error icon)

Black

Indicates that at least one health monitoring module has failed on the appliance and has not been successfully re-run since the failure occurred. Contact your technical support representative to obtain an update to the health monitoring module.

Critical

Critical (critical icon)

Red

Indicates that the critical limits have been exceeded for at least one health module on the appliance and the problem has not been corrected.

Warning

Warning (warning icon)

Yellow

Indicates that warning limits have been exceeded for at least one health module on the appliance and the problem has not been corrected.

This status also indicates a transitionary state, where, the required data is temporarily unavailable or could not be processed because of changes in the device configuration. Depending on the monitoring cycle, this transitionary state is auto-corrected.

Normal

Normal (Normal icon)

Green

Indicates that all health modules on the appliance are running within the limits configured in the health policy applied to the appliance.

Recovered

Recovered (Recovered icon)

Green

Indicates that all health modules on the appliance are running within the limits configured in the health policy applied to the appliance, including modules that were in a Critical or Warning state.

Disabled

Disabled (disabled icon)

Blue

Indicates that an appliance is disabled or excluded, that the appliance does not have a health policy applied to it, or that the appliance is currently unreachable.

Health Event Views

The Health Event View page allows you to view health events logged by the health monitor on the management center logs health events. The fully customizable event views allow you to quickly and easily analyze the health status events gathered by the health monitor. You can search event data to easily access other information that may be related to the events you are investigating. If you understand what conditions each health module tests for, you can more effectively configure alerting for health events.

You can perform many of the standard event view functions on the health event view pages.

Viewing Health Events

You must be an Admin, Maintenance, or Security Analyst user to perform this procedure.

The Table View of Health Events page provides a list of all health events on the specified appliance.

When you access health events from the Health Monitor page on your management center, you retrieve all health events for all managed appliances.


Tip

You can bookmark this view to allow you to return to the page in the health events workflow containing the Health Events table of events. The bookmarked view retrieves events within the time range you are currently viewing, but you can then modify the time range to update the table with more recent information if needed.

Procedure

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Events.

Tip

 

If you are using a custom workflow that does not include the table view of health events, click (switch workflow). On the Select Workflow page, click Health Events.

Note

 

If no events appear, you may need to adjust the time range.

Viewing Health Events by Module and Appliance

Procedure

Step 1

View the health monitor for the appliance; see Viewing the Device Health Monitor.

Step 2

In the Module Status Summary graph, click the color for the event status category you want to view.

The Alert Detail list toggles the display to show or hide events.

Step 3

In the Alert Detail row for the alert for which you want to view a list of events, click Events.

The Health Events page appears, containing results for a query with the name of the appliance and the name of the specified health alert module as constraints. If no events appear, you may need to adjust the time range.

Step 4

If you want to view all health events for the specified appliance, expand Search Constraints, and click the Module Name constraint to remove it.

Viewing the Health Events Table

You can view and modify the Health Events Table.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Health > Events.

Step 2

You have the following choices:

  • Bookmark — To bookmark the current page so that you can quickly return to it, click Bookmark This Page, provide a name for the bookmark, and click Save.
  • Change Workflow — To choose another health events workflow, click (switch workflow).
  • Delete Events — To delete health events, check the check box next to the events you want to delete, and click Delete. To delete all the events in the current constrained view, click Delete All, then confirm you want to delete all the events.
  • Generate Reports — Generate a report based on data in the table view — click Report Designer.
  • Modify — Modify the time and date range for events listed in the Health table view. Note that events that were generated outside the appliance's configured time window (whether global or event-specific) may appear in an event view if you constrain the event view by time. This may occur even if you configured a sliding time window for the appliance.
  • Navigate — Navigate through event view pages.
  • Navigate Bookmark — To navigate to the bookmark management page, click View Bookmarks from any event view.
  • Navigate Other — Navigate to other event tables to view associated events.
  • Sort — Sort the events that appear, change what columns display in the table of events, or constrain the events that appear
  • View All — To view event details for all events in the view, click View All.
  • View Details — To view the details associated with a single health event, click the down arrow link on the left side of the event.
  • View Multiple — To view event details for multiple health events, choose the check box next to the rows that correspond with the events you want to view details for and then click View.
  • View Status — To view all events of a particular status, click status in the Status column for an event with that status.

The Health Events Table

The Health Monitor modules you choose to enable in your health policy run various tests to determine appliance health status. When the health status meets criteria that you specify, a health event is generated.

The table below describes the fields that can be viewed and searched in the health events table.

Table 6. Health Event Fields

Field

Description

Module Name

Specify the name of the module which generated the health events you want to view. For example, to view events that measure CPU performance, type CPU. The search should retrieve applicable CPU Usage and CPU temperature events.

Test Name

(Search only)

The name of the health module that generated the event.

Time

(Search only)

The timestamp for the health event.

Description

The description of the health module that generated the event. For example, health events generated when a process was unable to execute are labeled Unable to Execute.

Value

The value (number of units) of the result obtained by the health test that generated the event.

For example, if the management center generates a health event whenever a device it is monitoring is using 80 percent or more of its CPU resources, the value could be a number from 80 to 100.

Units

The units descriptor for the result. You can use the asterisk (*) to create wildcard searches.

For example, if the management center generates a health event when a device it is monitoring is using 80 percent or more of its CPU resources, the units descriptor is a percentage sign (%).

Status

The status (Critical, Yellow, Green, or Disabled) reported for the appliance.

Device

The appliance where the health event was reported.

History for Health Monitoring

Table 7.

Feature

Minimum Management Center

Minimum Threat Defense

Details

New cluster health monitor dashboard.

7.3

Any

A new dashboard to view the cluster health monitor metrics was introduced with the following components:

  • Overview―Displays information about the cluster topology, cluster statistics, and metric charts.

  • Load Distribution―Displays load distribution across the cluster nodes.

  • Member Performance―Displays current metrics of all the member nodes of the cluster.

  • CCL―Displays, graphically, the cluster control link data namely, the input, and output rate.

Note

 

These features are applicable only for a cluster. Hence, you must select the cluster under the Devices list on the Monitoring pane to view and use the cluster dashboard.

New/modified screens: System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor.

New hardware statistics module.

7.3

Any

The management center hardware and environment status statistics were added to the health monitor dashboard:

  • A new policy module, Hardware Statistics, was introduced to enable monitoring of hardware daemons on the management center hardware. The metrics included fan speed, temperature, and power supply.

  • A custom metric group, Hardware Statistics, was also added to view graphical representation of the hardware health metrics on the monitoring dashboard.

  • The power supply status is captured in Health Alerts of the management center.

Note

 

These features are applicable only for the management center. Hence, they are available only on the management center dashboard.

New/modified screens:

  • System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor

  • System (system gear icon) > Health > Policy

New hardware and environment status metric group,

7.3

Any

The threat defense hardware and environment status statistics were added to the health monitor dashboard:

  • A custom metric group, Hardware / Environment Status, was introduced to view hardware-related statistics on the threat defense. The metrics included fan speed, chassis temperature, SSD status, and power supply.

  • The device Health Alerts was enhanced to include the power supply status of the threat defense hardware—Critical alert is displayed for abnormal thermal status, and Normal alert is displayed for normal thermal status.

Note

 

These features are applicable only for threat defense. Hence, you must select the appropriate device under the Devices list on the Monitoring pane.

New/modified screens: System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor.

Health monitor usability enhancements.

7.1

Any

Following UI page were improved for better usability and presentation of data:

  • Policy

  • Exclude

  • Monitor Alerts

New/modified screens: .

  • System (system gear icon) > Health > Policy

  • System (system gear icon) > Health > Exclude

  • System (system gear icon) > Health > Monitor Alerts

Elephant flow detection.

7.1

Any

The health monitor includes the following enhancements:

  • The Connection statistics includes active elephant flows.

  • The Connection Group Metrics includes the number of active elephant flows.

The Elephant Flow Detection feature is not supported on the Cisco Firepower 2100 series.

Discontinued high unmanaged disk usage alerts.

7.0.6

Any

The Disk Usage health module no longer alerts with high unmanaged disk usage. After upgrade, you may continue to see these alerts until you either deploy health policies to managed devices (stops the display of alerts) or upgrade the devices (stops the sending of alerts).

Note

 

Versions 7.0–7.0.5, 7.1.x, 7.2.0–7.2.3, and 7.3.x continue to support these alerts. If your management center is running any of these versions, you may also continue to see alerts.

New health modules.

7.0

Any

We added the following health modules:

  • AMP Connection Status: Monitors AMP cloud connectivity from the threat defense.

  • AMP Threat Grid Status: Monitors AMP Threat Grid cloud connectivity from the threat defense.

  • ASP Drop: Monitors the connections dropped by the data plane accelerated security path.

  • Advanced Snort Statistics: Monitors Snort statistics related to packet performance, flow counters, and flow events.

  • Event Stream Status: Monitors connections to third-party client applications that use the Event Streamer.

  • FMC Access Configuration Changes: Monitors access configuration changes made directly on the management center.

  • FMC HA Status: Monitors the active and standby management center and the sync status between the devices. Replaces the HA Status module.

  • FTD HA Status: Monitors the active and standby threat defense HA pair and the sync status between the devices.

  • File System Integrity Check: Performs a file system integrity check if the system has CC mode or UCAPL mode enabled.

  • Flow Offload: Monitors hardware flow offload statistics on the Firepower 9300 and 4100 platforms.

  • Hit Count: Monitors the number of times a particular rule is hit on the access control policy.

  • MySQL Status: Monitors the status of the MySQL database.

  • NTP Status FTD: Monitors the NTP clock synchronization status of the managed device.

  • RabbitMQ Status: Monitors the status of the RabbitMQ messaging broker.

  • Routing Statistics: Monitors both IPv4 and IPv6 route information from the threat defense.

  • Security Services Exchange Connection Status: Monitors security services exchange cloud connectivity from the threat defense.

  • Sybase Status: Monitors the status of the Sybase database.

  • Unresolved Groups Monitor: Monitors the unresolved groups used in access control policies.

  • VPN Statistics: Monitors site-to-site and remote access VPN tunnel statistics.

  • xTLS Counters: Monitors xTLS/SSL flows, memory and cache effectiveness.

Health monitor enhancements.

7.0

Any

The health monitor adds the following enhancements:

  • Enhanced management center dashboard with summary views of:

    • High Availability

    • Event Rate & Capacity

    • Process Health

    • CPU thresholds

    • Memory

    • Interface rates

    • Disk Usage

  • Enhanced threat defense dashboard:

    • Health alert for split brain scenario

    • Additional health metrics available from new Health Modules

New health modules.

6.7

Any

The CPU Usage module is no longer used. Instead, see the following modules for CPU usage:

  • CPU Usage (per core): Monitors the CPU usage on all of the cores.

  • CPU Usage Data Plane: Monitors the average CPU usage of all data plane processes on the device.

  • CPU Usage Snort: Monitors the average CPU usage of the Snort processes on the device.

  • CPU Usage System: Monitors the average CPU usage of all system processes on the device.

The following modules were added to track statistics:

  • Connection Statistics: Monitors the connection statistics and NAT translation counts.

  • Critical Process Statistics: Monitors the state of critical processes, their resource consumption, and the restart counts.

  • Deployed Configuration Statistics: Monitors statistics about the deployed configuration, such as the number of ACEs and IPS rules.

  • Snort Statistics: Monitors the Snort statistics for events, flows, and packets.

The following modules were added to track memory usage:

  • Memory Usage Data Plane: Monitors the percentage of allocated memory used by the Data Plane processes.

  • Memory Usage Snort: Monitors the percentage of allocated memory used by the Snort process.

Health monitor enhancements.

6.7

Any

The health monitor adds the following enhancements:

  • Health Status summary page that provides an at-a-glance view of the health of the Firepower Management Center and all of the devices that the management center manages.

  • The Monitoring navigation pane allows you to navigate the device hierarchy.

  • Managed devices are listed individually, or grouped according to their geolocation, high availability, or cluster status where applicable.

  • You can view health monitors for individual devices from the navigation pane.

  • Custom dashboards to correlate interrelated metrics. Select from predefined correlation groups, such as CPU and Snort; or create a custom correlation dashboard by building your own variable set from the available metric groups.

Functionality moved to the Threat Data Updates on Devices module.

6.7

Any

The Local Malware Analysis module is no longer used. Instead, see the Threat Data Updates on Devices module for this information.

Some information formerly provided by the Security Intelligence module and the URL Filtering Module is now provided by the Threat Data Updates on Devices module.

New health module: Configuration Memory Allocation.

7.0

6.6.3

Any

Version 6.6.3 improves device memory management and introduces a new health module: Configuration Memory Allocation.

This module alerts when the size of your deployed configurations puts a device at risk of running out of memory. The alert shows you how much memory your configurations require, and by how much this exceeds the available memory. If this happens, re-evaluate your configurations. Most often you can reduce the number or complexity of access control rules or intrusion policies.

URL Filtering Monitor improvements.

6.5

Any

The URL Filtering Monitor module now alerts if the management center fails to register to the Cisco cloud.

URL Filtering Monitor improvements.

6.4

Any

You can now configure time thresholds for URL Filtering Monitor alerts.

New health module: Threat Data Updates on Devices.

6.3

Any

A new module, Threat Data Updates on Devices, was added.

This module alerts you if certain intelligence data and configurations that devices use to detect threats has not been updated on the devices within the time period you specify.