Check network interface use-to-capacity trends within a moving time frame. See periods of abnormally heavy or light traffic —and a useful indicator for network interface cards running at capacity, misconfigured below nominal bandwidth, bottlenecked by obsolete hardware or cables, and more.

The default threshold is configured to alert when inbound or outbound utilization exceeds 90% for more than 60 minutes.

Configure an interface utilization threshold:

  • Name. Used in the Threshold library and the title on the Alert Center Dashboard.
  • Notification Policy. (Optional) Select the notification policy to apply to this threshold. The policy initiates notifications when an item is outside the configured threshold limits.
  • Threshold Check Interval. Enter a time interval for Alert Center to check the Network Performance Monitor database for items that are out of the threshold limits.

    Automatically resolve items no longer out of threshold. Select this option if you want Alert Center to automatically resolve items when they return to the value within the threshold limit.

Note: Notification policies are optional for most thresholds. If you do not select a notification policy, no notifications are generated for the threshold, but a dashboard report listing the out of threshold items still appears on the Alert Center Home page.

Add Condition Rules:

  • Interface utilization (average). Choose a direction (Inbound, Outbound, or both) and a trend (Exceeds, Falls-below), a value, and a unit choice for average interface bandwidth used.
  • Duration. Specify a time range or "rolling interval" for calculating an average to compare to Interface Utilization threshold.

Select Applied Devices

  • Apply to All Devices. By default, the threshold monitors all applicable hosts.

    Exclude Devices. Select to build or apply an exclusion list.

  • Click Apply this Threshold to Specific Devices to choose the hosts to which the threshold applies.
    Note: Configure the threshold check interval for a longer time than the sampling interval for thresholds relating to trends, such as percent utilization. Configure it for a time the same as (or similar to) the sampling interval when configuring a threshold for a health check.