Monitor control plane resources

The following sections explain the of memory and CPU monitoring from the perspective of the Cisco IOS process and the overall control plane:

Avoid problems through regular monitoring

Processes should provide monitoring and notification of their status/health to ensure correct operation. When a process fails, a syslog error message is displayed and either the process is restarted or the device is rebooted. A syslog error message is displayed when a monitor detects that a process is stuck or has crashed. If the process can be restarted, it is restarted; else, the device is restarted.

Monitoring system resources enables you to detect potential problems before they occur, thus avoiding outages. The advantages of regular monitoring:

  • Lack of memory on line cards that are in operation for a few years can lead to major outages. Monitoring memory usage helps to identify memory issues in the line cards and enables you to prevent an outage.

  • Regular monitoring establishes a baseline for a normal system load. You can use this information as a basis for comparison when you upgrade hardware or software—to see if the upgrade has affected resource usage.

Cisco IOS process resources

You can view CPU utilization statistics on active processes and see the amount of memory being used in these processes using the show memory command and the show process cpu command. These commands provide a representation of memory and CPU utilization from the perspective of only the Cisco IOS process; they do not include information for resources on the entire platform. For example, when the show memory command is used in a system with 8 GB RAM running a single Cisco IOS process, the memory usage is example shows:

Router# show memory
Tracekey : 1#cb0b8989b15e46da15c7630297789582                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Head    Total(b)     Used(b)     Free(b)   Lowest(b)  Largest(b)                                        
Processor  FFFF59A6B048   20578847040   289787696   20289059344   655646464   19922943908
reserve P  FFFF59A6B0A0      102404          92      102312      102312      102312 
lsmpi_io  FFFF434FA1A8     6295128     6294304         824         824         412 
Dynamic heap limit(MB) 19000     Use(MB) 0                                                                                                                                    

The show process cpu command displays Cisco IOS CPU utilization average:

Router# show process cpu
CPU utilization for five seconds: 1%/0%; one minute: 1%; five minutes: 1%
 PID Runtime(ms)     Invoked      uSecs   5Sec   1Min   5Min TTY Process
   1           1          14         71  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Chunk Manager
   2         127         872        145  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Load Meter
   3           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Policy bind Proc
   4           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Retransmission o
   5           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC ISSU Dispatc
   6          11          13        846  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 RF Slave Main Th
   7           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 EDDRI_MAIN
   8           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 RO Notify Timers
   9        1092         597       1829  0.00%  0.01%  0.00%   0 Check heaps
  10           8          73        109  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Pool Manager
  11           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 DiscardQ Backgro
  12           0           2          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Timers
  13           0          32          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 WATCH_AFS
  14           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 MEMLEAK PROCESS
  15        1227       40758         30  0.00%  0.02%  0.00%   0 ARP Input
  16          41        4568          8  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 ARP Background
  17           0           2          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 ATM Idle Timer
  18           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 ATM ASYNC PROC
  19           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 CEF MIB API
  20           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 AAA_SERVER_DEADT
  21           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Policy Manager
  22           0           2          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 DDR Timers
  23          60          23       2608  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Entity MIB API
  24          43          45        955  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 PrstVbl
  25           0           2          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Serial Backgroun
  26           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 RMI RM Notify Wa
  27           0           2          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 ATM AutoVC Perio
  28           0           2          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 ATM VC Auto Crea
  29          30        2181         13  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IOSXE heartbeat
  30           1           9        111  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Btrace time base
  31           5         182         27  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 DB Lock Manager
  32          16        4356          3  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 GraphIt
  33           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 DB Notification
  34           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Apps Task
  35           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 ifIndex Receive
  36           4         873          4  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Event Notifi
  37          49        4259         11  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Mcast Pendin
  38           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Platform appsess
  39           2          73         27  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Dynamic Cach
  40           5         873          5  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Service NonC
  41           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Zone Manager
  42          38        4259          8  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Periodic Tim
  43          18        4259          4  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Deferred Por
  44           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Process leve
  45           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Seat Manager
  46           3         250         12  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Check Queue
  47           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Seat RX Cont
  48           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Seat TX Cont
  49          22         437         50  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Keep Alive M
  50          25         873         28  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Loadometer
  51           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 IPC Session Deta
  52           0           1          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 SENSOR-MGR event
  53           2         437          4  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Compute SRP rate

Overall control plane resources

Control plane memory and CPU utilization on each control processor allows you to keep a tab on the overall control plane resources. You can use the show platform resources command to monitor the overall system health and resource usage for the IOS XE platforms. Also, you can use the show platform software status control-processor brief command (summary view) or the show platform software status control-processor command (detailed view) to view control plane memory and CPU utilization information.

All control processors should show status, Healthy. Other possible status values are Warning and Critical. Warning indicates that the device is operational, but that the operating level should be reviewed. Critical implies that the device is nearing failure.

If you see a Warning or Critical status, take the following actions:

  • Reduce the static and dynamic loads on the system by reducing the number of elements in the configuration or by limiting the capacity for dynamic services.

  • Reduce the number of routes and adjacencies, limit the number of ACLs and other rules, reduce the number of VLANs, and so on.

The following sections describe the fields in the show platform software status control-processor command output.

Load Average

Load average represents the process queue or process contention for CPU resources. For example, on a single-core processor, an instantaneous load of 7 would mean that seven processes are ready to run, one of which is currently running. On a dual-core processor, a load of 7 would mean that seven processes are ready to run, two of which are currently running.

Memory Utilization

Memory utilization is represented by the following fields:

  • Total—Total line card memory

  • Used—Consumed memory

  • Free—Available memory

  • Committed—Virtual memory committed to processes

CPU Utilization

CPU utilization is an indication of the percentage of time the CPU is busy, and is represented by the following fields:

  • CPU—Allocated processor

  • User—Non-Linux kernel processes

  • System—Linux kernel process

  • Nice—Low-priority processes

  • Idle—Percentage of time the CPU was inactive

  • IRQ—Interrupts

  • SIRQ—System Interrupts

  • IOwait—Percentage of time CPU was waiting for I/O

Example: show platform software status control-processor Command

The following are some examples of using the show platform software status control-processor command:

Router# show platform software status control-processor
RP0: online, statistics updated 3 seconds ago
RP0: online, statistics updated 5 seconds ago
Load Average: healthy
  1-Min: 1.35, status: healthy, under 9.30
  5-Min: 1.06, status: healthy, under 9.30
  15-Min: 1.02, status: healthy, under 9.30
Memory (kb): healthy
  Total: 7768456
  Used: 2572568 (33%), status: healthy
  Free: 5195888 (67%)
  Committed: 3112968 (40%), under 90%
Per-core Statistics
CPU0: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  3.00, System:  2.40, Nice:  0.00, Idle: 94.60
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU1: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  0.00, System:  0.00, Nice:  0.00, Idle:100.00
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU2: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  0.00, System:  0.00, Nice:  0.00, Idle:100.00
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU3: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  0.00, System:  0.00, Nice:  0.00, Idle:100.00
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU4: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  7.30, System:  1.70, Nice:  0.00, Idle: 91.00
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU5: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  3.30, System:  1.50, Nice:  0.00, Idle: 95.20
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU6: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User: 17.91, System: 11.81, Nice:  0.00, Idle: 70.27
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU7: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User: 11.91, System: 13.31, Nice:  0.00, Idle: 74.77
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU8: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  2.70, System:  2.00, Nice:  0.00, Idle: 95.30
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU9: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  0.00, System:  0.00, Nice:  0.00, Idle:100.00
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU10: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  0.00, System:  0.00, Nice:  0.00, Idle:100.00
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00
CPU11: CPU Utilization (percentage of time spent)
  User:  0.00, System:  0.00, Nice:  0.00, Idle:100.00
  IRQ:  0.00, SIRQ:  0.00, IOwait:  0.00



Router# show platform software status control-processor brief
Load Average
 Slot  Status  1-Min  5-Min 15-Min
  RP0 Healthy   1.14   1.07   1.02

Memory (kB)
 Slot  Status    Total     Used (Pct)     Free (Pct) Committed (Pct)
  RP0 Healthy  7768456  2573416 (33%)  5195040 (67%)   3115096 (40%)

CPU Utilization
 Slot  CPU   User System   Nice   Idle    IRQ   SIRQ IOwait
  RP0    0   2.80   1.80   0.00  95.39   0.00   0.00   0.00
         1   0.00   0.00   0.00 100.00   0.00   0.00   0.00
         2   0.00   0.00   0.00 100.00   0.00   0.00   0.00
         3   0.00   0.00   0.00 100.00   0.00   0.00   0.00
         4   6.80   1.80   0.00  91.39   0.00   0.00   0.00
         5   3.20   1.60   0.00  95.19   0.00   0.00   0.00
         6  16.30  12.60   0.00  71.10   0.00   0.00   0.00
         7  12.40  13.70   0.00  73.90   0.00   0.00   0.00
         8   2.40   2.40   0.00  95.19   0.00   0.00   0.00
         9   0.00   0.00   0.00 100.00   0.00   0.00   0.00
        10   0.00   0.00   0.00 100.00   0.00   0.00   0.00
        11   0.00   0.00   0.00 100.00   0.00   0.00   0.00


Monitoring hardware using alarms

Router design and monitoring hardware

The router sends alarm notifications when problems are detected, allowing you to monitor the network remotely. You do not need to use show commands to poll devices on a routine basis; however, you can perform onsite monitoring if you choose.

BootFlash disk monitoring

The bootflash disk must have enough free space to store two core dumps. This condition is monitored, and if the bootflash disk is too small to store two core dumps, a syslog alarm is generated, as shown in the following example:

Oct  6 14:10:56.292: %FLASH_CHECK-3-DISK_QUOTA: R0/0: flash_check: Flash disk quota exceeded 
[free space is 1429020 kB] - Please clean up files on bootflash.


Approaches for monitoring hardware alarms

Viewing the console or syslog for alarm messages

The network administrator can monitor alarm messages by reviewing alarm messages sent to the system console or to a system message log (syslog).

Enabling the logging alarm command

The logging alarm command must be enabled for the system to send alarm messages to a logging device, such as the console or a syslog. This command is not enabled by default.

You can specify the severity level of the alarms to be logged. All the alarms at and above the specified threshold generate alarm messages. For example, the following command sends only critical alarm messages to logging devices:

Router(config)# logging alarm critical

If alarm severity is not specified, alarm messages for all severity levels are sent to logging devices.

Examples of alarm messages

The following are examples of alarm messages that are sent to the console.

Alarms

To view alarms, use the show facility-alarm status command. The following example shows a critical alarm for the power supply:

Device# show facility-alarm status
System Totals  Critical: 8  Major: 0  Minor: 0

Source                     Time                   Severity      Description [Index]
------                     ------                 --------      -------------------

xcvr container 0/0/0       Sep 11 2025 09:50:51   INFO          Transceiver Missing [0]

xcvr container 0/0/1       Sep 11 2025 09:50:51   INFO          Transceiver Missing [0]

GigabitEthernet0/1/0       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

GigabitEthernet0/1/1       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

GigabitEthernet0/1/2       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

GigabitEthernet0/1/3       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]
          
GigabitEthernet0/1/4       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]
          
GigabitEthernet0/1/5       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]
          
GigabitEthernet0/1/6       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]
          
GigabitEthernet0/1/7       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

To view critical alarms, use the show facility-alarm status critical command, as shown in the following example:

Device# show facility-alarm status critical
System Totals  Critical: 8  Major: 0  Minor: 0

Source                     Time                   Severity      Description [Index]
------                     ------                 --------      -------------------

GigabitEthernet0/1/0       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

GigabitEthernet0/1/1       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

GigabitEthernet0/1/2       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

GigabitEthernet0/1/3       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

GigabitEthernet0/1/4       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

GigabitEthernet0/1/5       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]
          
GigabitEthernet0/1/6       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]
          
GigabitEthernet0/1/7       Sep 11 2025 09:50:54   CRITICAL      Physical Port Link Down [1]

To view the operational state of the major hardware components on the Device, use the show platform diag command. This example shows that power supply P0 has failed:

Device# show platform diag

Chassis type: C8161-G2

Slot: 0, C8161-G2
  Running state               : ok
  Internal state              : online
  Internal operational state  : ok
  Physical insert detect time : 00:00:31 (02:34:51 ago)
  Software declared up time   : 00:01:03 (02:34:19 ago)
  CPLD version                : 2508050E
  Firmware version            : 17.18(1r)

Sub-slot: 0/0, C8161-2S
  Operational status          : ok
  Internal state              : inserted
  Physical insert detect time : 00:01:08 (02:34:13 ago)
  Logical insert detect time  : 00:01:08 (02:34:13 ago)

Sub-slot: 0/1, C8161-ES-8
  Operational status          : ok
  Internal state              : inserted
  Physical insert detect time : 00:01:09 (02:34:13 ago)
  Logical insert detect time  : 00:01:09 (02:34:13 ago)

Sub-slot: 0/2, P-LTEA7-NA
  Operational status          : ok
  Internal state              : inserted
  Physical insert detect time : 00:14:34 (02:20:48 ago)
  Logical insert detect time  : 00:14:34 (02:20:48 ago)
          
Slot: R0, C8161-G2
  Running state               : ok, active
  Internal state              : online
  Internal operational state  : ok
  Physical insert detect time : 00:00:31 (02:34:51 ago)
  Software declared up time   : 00:00:31 (02:34:51 ago)
  CPLD version                : 2508050E
  Firmware version            : 17.18(1r)
          
Slot: F0, C8161-G2
  Running state               : ok, active
  Internal state              : online
  Internal operational state  : ok
  Physical insert detect time : 00:00:31 (02:34:51 ago)
  Software declared up time   : 00:00:59 (02:34:23 ago)
  Hardware ready signal time  : 00:00:55 (02:34:26 ago)
  Packet ready signal time    : 00:01:04 (02:34:18 ago)
  CPLD version                : 2508050E
  Firmware version            : 17.18(1r)
          
Slot: P0, PWR-12V
  State                       : ok
  Physical insert detect time : 00:00:07 (02:34:26 ago)
          
Slot: GE-POE, Unknown
  State                       : NA
  Physical insert detect time : 00:00:00 (55y38w ago)


Reviewing and analyzing alarm messages

To facilitate the review of alarm messages, you can write scripts to analyze alarm messages sent to the console or syslog. Scripts can provide reports on events such as alarms, security alerts, and interface status.

Syslog messages can also be accessed through Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) using the history table defined in the CISCO-SYSLOG-MIB.

Network management system alerts a network administrator when an alarm is reported through SNMP

The SNMP is an application-layer protocol that provides a standardized framework and a common language used for monitoring and managing devices in a network.

SNMP provides notification of faults, alarms, and conditions that might affect services. It allows a network administrator to access router information through a network management system (NMS) instead of reviewing logs, polling devices, or reviewing log reports.

To use SNMP to get alarm notification, use the following MIBs:

  • ENTITY-MIB, RFC4133(required for the CISCO-ENTITY-ALARM-MIB, ENTITY-STATE-MIB and CISCO-ENTITY-SENSOR-MIB to work)

  • CISCO-ENTITY-ALARM-MIB

  • ENTITY-STATE-MIB

  • CISCO-ENTITY-SENSOR-MIB(for transceiver environmental alarm information, which is not provided through the CISCO-ENTITY-ALARM-MIB)