01 Process identity and runtime context
Inspect current PID, parent PID, executable path, owning user, service and container identity where the operating system and permissions expose them. Stable selectors keep monitoring attached to the intended service or executable when a process restarts.
02 CPU, memory and I/O together
Compare process CPU and memory use with disk throughput, IOPS, queue pressure and the surrounding host state. Track sustained growth and contention so a high value can be interpreted in its operating context.
03 Threads and file-descriptor pressure
Inspect available thread counts and states, open file-descriptor use and resource limits. Connect blocked activity, exhausted descriptors and runaway thread growth with the service symptoms they can produce.
04 TCP and UDP socket attribution
Relate local and remote IP addresses, ports, protocol and available connection state to the current process or workload. Compare network TX/RX, TCP RTT, retransmissions and failures with the process resource timeline.
05 Service health through restarts
Track systemd and Windows service state, expected instance counts, exits, restart frequency and recovery. Monitoring uses the service or executable selector, while PID changes remain part of the history.
06 Memory leaks and process anomalies
Evaluate sustained memory growth, unexpected process disappearance, restart loops and unusual resource patterns. Where exposed by the OS, zombie or blocked states add diagnostic context rather than automatically becoming a service-wide outage.
07 Unexpected executable detection
Compare discovered process and executable identity with the configured expected operating profile. Review the owner, path, first observation and associated sockets to prioritize unfamiliar or unauthorized activity under your policy.
08 Permission-aware execution arguments
Inspect permitted command-line fields when the investigation needs them. Explicit collection policy, field minimization, secret redaction and scoped access protect credentials or customer data that can appear in arguments.
09 Triggered diagnostic snapshots
Use a qualified monitoring condition or an authorized investigation request to capture bounded extra evidence. Duration, item limits, cooldown and resource controls keep deeper diagnosis proportionate to the workload.
10 One handover across operating teams
Attach the process, socket, path, database and change evidence to the same incident. The next engineer receives the affected service, observed facts, current hypothesis and remaining checks instead of repeating disconnected searches.