System Configuration, under Administration, is where the settings that apply platform-wide live — most of it set once during Initial Configuration, but worth revisiting periodically as your environment grows.
Settings covered here
- Time zone — affects how every timestamp in the system is displayed, from graphs to alert history.
- SMTP configuration — the outbound email settings covered in Email Notifications.
- Default check intervals — the baseline polling frequency new checks use unless overridden, covered in more depth in Performance Metrics.
- Data retention — how long historical performance data is kept at full resolution before being rolled up into coarser aggregates, also covered in Performance Metrics.
Why it's worth revisiting, not just setting once
Settings that made sense at initial setup don't always stay right as an environment grows. A default check interval that was fine for twenty hosts can generate meaningfully more load once you're monitoring several hundred; data retention configured generously on day one can quietly consume far more storage a year later than anyone expected once historical data has accumulated. Reviewing System Configuration every so often — particularly after a significant expansion in what you're monitoring — is worth the ten minutes it takes.
Who should have access
System Configuration affects the entire platform for every user, so access to it should be limited to Administrators (see Roles & Permissions) rather than opened up broadly. A change here isn't scoped to one host or one person's view — it's felt by everyone using iPM at once.