Introduction to the health monitor

The health monitor is a server-side tool that adds a management-by-exception capability by constantly monitoring the health of an instance and active databases. The health monitor can also alert a database administrator (DBA) of potential system health issues.

The health monitor proactively detects issues that might lead to hardware failure, or to unacceptable system performance or capability. The proactive nature of the health monitor enables users to address an issue before it becomes a problem that affects system performance.

Important: The health monitor, health indicators, and related components have been deprecated in Version 9.7 and might be removed in a future release. Health monitor is not supported in DB2® pureScale® environments. For more information, see Health monitor has been deprecated.

The health monitor checks the state of your system using health indicators to determine whether an alert should be issued. Preconfigured actions can be taken in response to alerts. The health monitor can also log alerts in the administration notification log and send notifications by email or pager. This management-by-exception model frees up valuable DBA resources by generating alerts to potential system health issues without requiring active monitoring.

The health monitor periodically gathers information about the health of the system with a minimal impact to overall performance. It does not turn on any snapshot monitor switches to collect information.