max() not working as expected

[smitty]

I am monitoring blocking on Microsoft SQL Server via WMI. It is working, but we only want the trigger to fire if a process has been blocking for 5 minutes or more. Here is the trigger definition that I'm using:

{Template_Microsoft_SQLServer_2005erf_counter["\SQLServer:General Statistics\Processes blocked"].max(180)}>0

This works, but it seems to send an alert AFTER 5 minutes, not if process(es) were actually blocked FOR 5 minutes. So something gets blocked for 1 minute, then becomes unblocked, and then a few minutes later the trigger fires - very annoying.

What am I doing wrong here..?

[richlv]

you didn't define what the item returns and what you want to alert on.
wild guess - did you want min() instead ?

[smitty]

Thanks Rich!

The item returns the number of SQL queries that are currently being blocked by another process. "0" is normal, values of 1 or more indicate that one or more processes are being blocked.

So min(180) will only fire if the condition (IE: > 0 blocked processes, in my case) has been true for a minimum of 180 seconds, right?

[richlv]

in "human parse-able", it would mean that for the last 3 minutes there has been at least one blocked query (using min(), that is)