Health Monitoring & Alerts

UnboundBytes provides built-in health monitoring to help you stay informed about your applications. This guide explains how to monitor your apps and set up alerts.

Why Monitoring Matters

Monitoring helps you:

• Know when problems happen - Before users complain
• Detect issues early - When they’re easier to fix
• Track performance trends - See if your system is slowing down
• Verify backups work - Confirm your data is protected

Application Health Status

Each application in the portal displays its current health status:

Status Indicators

• Running (green) - Application is healthy and responding normally
• Degraded (yellow) - Application is running but experiencing issues
• Stopped (gray) - Application is not currently running
• Error (red) - Application encountered a critical error and needs attention

Click on any application card to see detailed health information.

Health Checks

UnboundBytes automatically checks your applications:

• Web accessibility - Can we reach your application’s web interface?
• Response time - Is it responding quickly or slowly?
• Resource usage - How much CPU and memory is it using?
• Connectivity - Is your device connected and online?

Health checks run every few minutes. You’ll see:

• Last check time
• Current status
• Response time
• Error details (if any)

Application Metrics

View real-time metrics for each application:

1. Go to your application’s page
2. Click “Health & Metrics” or “Monitoring”
3. You’ll see:
   • CPU usage - How much processing power it’s using
   • Memory usage - How much RAM it’s consuming
   • Disk usage - How much storage it’s using
   • Network activity - Data being sent and received
   • Request rate - How many requests per second
   • Error rate - Percentage of requests that failed

Metrics are displayed as:

• Current value - Right now
• 24-hour trend - How it’s been doing today
• Performance alerts - Warnings if usage is too high

Setting Up Alerts

Email Notifications

Get notified when problems happen:

1. Go to Settings → Notifications
2. Under Application Alerts, choose what to alert on:
   • Application stops unexpectedly
   • Application becomes unresponsive
   • CPU usage stays above 80% for 5 minutes
   • Memory usage stays above 85% for 5 minutes
   • Disk space below 5%
   • Backup fails
3. Choose how to be notified:
   • Email - Sent to your account email
   • Browser push - Notification in the portal (if enabled)
4. Click Save

Alert Frequency

You can control how often you’re alerted:

• Immediate - Get notified the moment a problem is detected
• Digest - Get notified once per hour if problems exist
• Daily summary - Get one email per day with all issues
• Critical only - Only alert for critical problems

Quiet Hours

Disable alerts during off-hours:

1. Go to Settings → Notifications
2. Under Quiet Hours, set when alerts should pause
3. Only critical alerts will break through quiet hours
4. Example: Pause alerts from 10 PM to 8 AM

Device Monitoring

Monitor the health of your entire device:

1. Go to Devices in the portal
2. Click your device to see:
   • Overall device health status
   • All applications running on it
   • System resource usage
   • Connection status and latency
   • Last communication time
   • Device uptime

Device Health Indicators

• Connected (green) - Device is online and communicating
• Degraded (yellow) - Device is slow to respond
• Offline (red) - Device is not responding (check your connection)

Performance Optimization

Understanding Your Metrics

High CPU Usage (>80%):

• An application is doing heavy processing
• Multiple apps competing for resources
• Possible misconfiguration in the app

High Memory Usage (>85%):

• Application has a memory leak
• App is processing a large task
• Device doesn’t have enough RAM for this workload

High Disk Usage (>90%):

• Application data is growing
• Old backups or logs need cleaning
• Database needs maintenance

Slow Response Time (>3 seconds):

• Network latency issue
• Device is under heavy load
• Application has a performance problem

When to Upgrade Your Device

Consider upgrading if:

• CPU usage regularly exceeds 80%
• Memory usage regularly exceeds 85%
• Applications are frequently slow or timing out
• Disk space is consistently above 85%

Upgrading means moving your applications to a device with more resources.

Common Monitoring Scenarios

Monitoring a Production App

1. Set up email alerts for critical issues
2. Check the portal daily to spot trends
3. Create a manual backup before making changes
4. Test backups monthly to ensure recovery works
5. Monitor metrics for a few days after updates

Monitoring Multiple Apps

1. Use the device health view for overall status
2. Set up alerts only for critical issues
3. Check the dashboard weekly for trends
4. Prioritize alerts for revenue-critical apps
5. Group related apps for easier monitoring

Monitoring During Backups

Backups may temporarily increase:

• Disk I/O (reading files for backup)
• Network activity (uploading to storage)
• CPU usage (compression)

This is normal. Backups are optimized to minimize impact.

Troubleshooting Monitoring Issues

Not Receiving Alerts

Check:

1. Confirm alerts are enabled in Settings → Notifications
2. Check your email’s spam folder
3. Verify the email address is correct
4. Make sure the app that’s having problems matches your alert criteria

Fix:

• Disable and re-enable the alert rule
• Update your email address if needed
• Create a test alert to verify notifications work

Inaccurate Health Status

Check:

1. The application is actually running and accessible
2. Your device has a stable internet connection
3. No firewall rules are blocking health checks

Fix:

• Manually refresh the health check by clicking “Check Now”
• Restart the application
• Check device logs for connection issues

Missing Metrics

Check:

1. Application has been running for at least 5 minutes
2. Device is connected and online
3. Application is visible in the portal

Fix:

• Wait a few minutes for metrics to populate
• Restart the application to generate new metrics
• Check if device is collecting data properly

Advanced Monitoring

Custom Dashboards (Coming Soon)

Create custom dashboards with:

• Charts showing trends over time
• Multiple applications side-by-side
• Custom date ranges for analysis
• Export data for reporting

Integration with External Tools

Connect UnboundBytes monitoring to:

• Grafana - Create custom dashboards
• Prometheus - Export metrics for analysis
• PagerDuty - Escalate critical alerts
• Slack - Send notifications to channels

Contact support for integration help.

Monitoring Best Practices

Regular Health Checks

• Daily: Glance at application status in the portal
• Weekly: Review metrics and performance trends
• Monthly: Test a backup restore process
• Quarterly: Review alert rules and update as needed

Documentation

Keep notes about:

• What’s normal for your applications
• Performance baselines for comparison
• Alert thresholds you’ve set
• Known issues and workarounds

Response Plans

Have a plan for common issues:

• Application becomes unresponsive → Restart it
• High CPU usage → Check running processes
• Storage full → Clean up old backups or data
• Device offline → Restart device and check network

See Also

• Troubleshooting Guide - Fix common problems
• Backups & Recovery - How backups are monitored
• Quick Start Guide - Deploy your first app