APM Insight Process Monitoring Rules

The APM Insight AutoProfiler simplifies application performance monitoring by automatically detecting applications running on the server and attaching the appropriate APM Insight agents when the Applications Manager Full Stack Observability (FSO) Agent is installed. This removes the need to manually install and manage separate agents for Java, .NET, Python, Node.js, and other supported languages.

If your server runs many applications, you may not want all of them to be monitored. APM Insight Process Monitoring Rules allow you to define the conditions that determine which applications the AutoProfiler should monitor, giving you full control over APM in your environment. Only processes that match a configured rule are attached with the required APM Insight agent for monitoring.

Note: All active rules are applied globally across all host servers where the FSO Agent is installed. There is no option to restrict a rule to specific hosts.

On this page

• Creating process monitoring rules
• Default rules
• Custom rules
• APM Insight process monitoring conditions
• Disabling a rule
• Deleting a rule
• Use cases
• Related articles

Creating process monitoring rules

To create a rule, navigate to Settings → APM Insight Configuration Profile → Process Discovery Rules.

Note: You can create any number of custom rules, but only 50 rules can be enabled at a time.

Default rules

Applications Manager provides a set of default process monitoring rules to help quickly identify common application types. The following are the default rule behaviors:

• Default rules can be enabled or disabled, but they cannot be edited.
• You can clone a default rule to create a customized version.

Custom rules

To create a new custom rule, click Add APM Process Monitoring Rule.

• Rule Name: Enter a unique name for the rule.
• Description: Provide a clear description (optional). These details help you easily identify and manage the rule later.

APM Insight process monitoring conditions

Each rule consists of one or more conditions that specify the criteria a process must match. You can add up to 10 conditions per rule. All configured conditions must be satisfied for the rule to apply (logical AND).

Condition parameters

Operators

Value: This is a mandatory field. The value you provide is evaluated against the actual running application process to determine whether the rule matches. Ensure it is entered correctly for the rule to work as intended.

You can add conditions using the + button or remove them with the × button. After entering the conditions, click Save to apply the rule. To remove a custom rule, click Delete.

Note: After making changes on this page, restart your monitored application for the rules to take effect.

Disabling a rule

You can disable a process monitoring rule by toggling the Enable Rule switch in the rules list. When a rule is disabled:

• The AutoProfiler stops applying the rule to any new application processes.
• Existing monitors that were created by the rule will continue to function, but no new processes will be matched against the disabled rule.
• Disabling a rule does not remove any existing monitors or data.

You can re-enable the rule at any time. After re-enabling, restart your application processes for the rule to take effect on new processes.

Deleting a rule

To delete a custom rule, select the rule and click Delete. Deleting a rule permanently removes it from the configuration. Existing monitors that were previously created by the rule will continue to run, but no new processes will be matched against the deleted rule.

Note: A rule must be disabled before it can be deleted. Ensure the rule is disabled first, then proceed with deletion.

Use cases

Monitoring by command line parameters

Your application engineering team runs the same Java-based service, payment-service.jar, on a server for multiple environments. While both production and development instances run simultaneously, you want to monitor only the production instances using APM Insight.

Consider the command-line strings below, which belong to two different instances of the same application - one running in the development environment and the other in the production environment.

Production environment:

java -Xms1g -Xmx2g -jar payment-service.jar -XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled -Dspring.profiles.active=prod

Development environment:

java -Xms512m -Xmx512m -jar payment-service.jar -Dspring.profiles.active=dev

Both processes use the same Java command and application JAR (payment-service.jar), but are differentiated by the Spring profile specified in the command line.

To ensure that only the production instances are monitored, you can create a custom process monitoring rule with the following conditions:

Rule name: Payment service prod monitoring rule

Conditions configured:

• Command isjava
• Command Line contains-jar payment-service.jar
• Command Line does not contain-Dspring.profiles.active=dev

When this rule is enabled, the APM Insight AutoProfiler attaches the Java agent only to the production processes and ignores the development instances. In this way, you can easily control which application processes are monitored, ensuring precise visibility while reducing overhead.

Monitoring applications by working directory

If your applications are deployed in specific directories, you can use the Working Directory condition to target them. For example, to monitor only applications running from the /opt/production/apps directory:

Rule name: Production directory monitoring

Conditions configured:

• Working Directory begins with/opt/production/apps

This rule ensures that only applications deployed in the production directory are monitored, excluding applications running from other locations such as staging or development directories.

Monitoring specific IIS application pools

On Windows servers with IIS, you can use the IIS App Pool Name condition to monitor only specific application pools. For example, to monitor only the production application pool:

Rule name: Production IIS pool monitoring

Conditions configured:

• IIS App Pool Name isProductionAppPool

This rule targets only the .NET applications running under the specified IIS application pool, ignoring applications in other pools.

Related articles

• APM Insight AutoProfiler overview
• How to install APM Insight AutoProfiler
• APM Insight AutoProfiler agent security