The heartbeat monitor is reporting an "Unknown Agent Status (-1)". What do unknown and -1 mean?

Article ID: 23
Category: Heartbeat Monitoring
Applies to: 2.50 and higher
Created: 2005-01-08

An unknown status means that the service control manager on the remote host did not return any valid service status.

This usually happens under the following circumstances:

  • The remote computer is running an operating system other than Windows.
  • The remote computer is unreachable (e.g. turned off, firewall etc.).
  • The network connection to the remote computer is too slow

The message being logged is:

Host MYHOST.COMPANY.COM (THE GROUP) changed its Agent status from OK to ERROR. The reason for the status change was: "Unknown Agent Status (-1)".