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Elastic Compute Service

Monitoring metrics

Managing process monitoring data

To help you understand process-level information inside the instance operating system, Volcano Engine offers you the process monitoring feature. You can view the total number of active processes inside the instance and the TOP 5 processes by CPU consumption. You can also add specific processes within the instance independently to monitor and check their aliveness status.

View process monitoring data

Prerequisites

Check whether the instance has been installed with the O11yAgent collection plugin based on the ECS monitoring guide. If not, refer to White-screen installation guide or Manual plugin installation guide to complete the installation.

Usage notes

The collection frequency for process monitoring is 1 minute, which means that the relevant monitoring data of processes is collected every minute.

After the instance starts, wait approximately 10 minutes and then view the relevant metric data within the instance.

The CPU utilization result reflects the total utilization of multi-core CPUs. If a process uses multiple CPUs, the CPU utilization may exceed 100%.

Procedure

In the top navigation bar, select the project and region of the target instance.

In the left-side navigation pane, select "Instances & Images > Instances".

Click the name of the target instance, Select the "Monitoring > Process monitor" tab to view:

Top process data

Based on CPU consumption, the system shows monitoring data for the TOP 5 processes by default, such as "CPU utilization" and "memory consumption (%)".

tip

If the TOP 5 processes based on CPU consumption are not fixed, all processes that entered the TOP 5 list during the query time will be displayed. For example, if a process stayed in the TOP 5 for only one minute, it will still be displayed in the TOP list. A maximum of 20 entries are displayed.

If a process does not continuously appear in the TOP 5 during the query time range, the data points will be sparse and discontinuous. At a time with data points displayed, the process was among the TOP 5 processes with the highest CPU consumption. The density of the data points reflects the activity level of the process on the server.

If you need to view the "username" of a process, we recommend that you refer to the White-screen installation guide or the Manual plugin installation guide to upgrade the plugin.

Click the name of the target process to view information of this process, such as CPU utilization and disk read/write count. For metric details, see the process monitoring metrics.

Process Count Monitoring: Click the collapsed pane "Process Count Monitoring", you can view the process count, including the total number of system processes and the number of custom processes.

tip

After you install or upgrade the O11yAgent collection plugin, the instance will display the total number of all running system processes by default. Refer to the White-screen installation of O11yAgent collection plugin or the Manual installation of O11yAgent collection plugin.

The O11yAgent white-screen installation and upgraded features are currently in Beta. If you need a trial, please contact your account manager to apply.

If you want to focus on one or multiple key processes, you can set custom processes.

Total system processes: the total number of all system processes currently running in the instance.

Number of custom processes ($custom process name$): the number of processes added by the user.

Related operation

You can also create an alert policy for process monitoring in order to obtain whether the relevant processes of the Elastic Compute Service (ECS) are alive.

Set custom process

Add critical or key processes to the console based on process names for easy viewing of their status at any time.

Limits

By default, the "set custom process" feature is not displayed. If you need to use it, please install the O11yAgent collection plugin. Refer to White-screen installation of O11yAgent collection plugin or Manual installation of O11yAgent collection plugin for details.

tip

The O11yAgent white-screen installation and upgraded plugin features are currently in Beta. If you need a trial, please contact your account manager to apply.

If you uninstall the O11yAgent plugin, the processes you added are also cleared. Please proceed with caution.

Up to 10 custom processes can be added.

Procedure

In the top navigation bar, select the project and region of the target instance.

In the left-side navigation pane, select "Instances & Images > Instances".

Click the name of the target instance.

Select "Monitoring > Process monitor".

Click the "Settings Custom Process" button to add or delete custom processes.

In the "Process name" text box, enter the name of the process to be added, such as "systemd".

tip

Fuzzy matching of process names is supported. Valid values:

Only letters, numbers, underscores (_), hyphens (-), and periods (.) are allowed.

Empty characters (\0), equal sign (=), and English comma (,) are not allowed.

The name can be 1 to 255 characters in length.

(Optional) Click the "Add process" button and follow the above steps to add more processes.

tip

Up to 10 processes can be added.

Click the "OK" button to complete the operation.

After you add processes, wait for 30 seconds and check the number of processes. For details, refer to Viewing process monitor.

tip

If the added process has no data, it may be because the instance does not have the process. We recommend that you re-add it following the above steps.

Delete: Click the "delete" button to remove custom processes that no longer need attention.

tip

Deleting processes does not affect your regular business but prevents you from viewing them through the console.

Process monitoring metrics

tip

The monitoring frequency for process statistics is 1 minute, which means that the relevant monitoring data of processes is collected every minute.

Metric	Operating systems supported	Explanation	Unit	Description
ProcessCPUPct	Windows, Linux	CPU utilization of the process	%	When the process lifetime is not less than 30 seconds, it will generate a relatively accurate result. Otherwise, there might be a certain margin of error. tip The CPU utilization result reflects the total utilization of multi-core CPUs. If a process uses multiple CPUs, the CPU utilization may exceed 100%.
ProcessMemPct	Windows, Linux	Memory usage percentage of the process	%	-
ProcessIOWriteCount	Windows, Linux	The number of writes to the disk by the process	Count	-
ProcessIOReadCount	Windows, Linux	The number of reads from the disk by the process	Count	-
ProcessIOWriteBytes	Windows, Linux	The number of bytes written to the disk by the process	Bytes	-
ProcessIOReadBytes	Windows, Linux	The number of bytes the process reads from the disk	Bytes	-
ProcessVoluntaryCtxSwitches	Linux	The number of context switches voluntarily executed by the process	Count	-
ProcessInvoluntaryCtxSwitches	Linux	Number of context switches involuntarily executed by the process	Count	-
ProcessOpenFds	Windows, Linux	The number of file descriptors opened by the process	Count	-
ProcessThreads	Windows, Linux	Number of threads used by the process	Count	-

Last updated: 2026.06.18 17:49:50