add description or remediation steps to application alerts

Question

If this belongs in APM, feel free to bounce it over there!

My goal in this question is to include information inside my APM-driven alerts that will give an admin information on what the monitor checks or how to fix it. For instance, if application X goes down, then the email will include steps on how to restart X. Or some other description on what that check does and what it means.

1. Should I do this by pulling the "Description" field in an Application monitor? If so, what is that variable name? In that case, I can just put all my information in there. Keep in mind this is the Description field for the APM app monitor, and not the Node in the NPM.

2. Am I missing a field where I should put this? I've seen how someone can make a custom property in the NPM Node, but I don't think I see that ability in the APM.

3. Should I do this by making individual alerts that have conditions that will match only when specific applications go down, and then basically hardcode it into the Message field for that alert? This is the least desirable from a maintenance standpoint, but if it's my only real option, then so be it! :)

qle · Answer

I'm leaning towards option 3/4. I don't believe that there is an alert variable that correlates to an application monitor's description field. Utilizing a custom property actually sounds like too much maintenance to me and what happens if you have multiple applications that should be monitored on the same server?

I'm having trouble understanding why there needs to be an option 4 though. How does this reduce the long-term maintenance of the alerts as opposed to option 3?

FormerMember · Answer

A fourth option may be similar to #3 up above. Sorry to answer myself; I'm still just mulling this over as I get used to alerting capabilities!

4. Keep any component and application alerts I already have, and make a new alert for each item I want additional remediation steps for. For instance if ComponentA goes down, a second alert can fire whose Trigger includes the name "ComponentA." This can then have a custom message field.

The downside is I will get an additional alert for anything with remediation steps (assuming that works as expected). The upside is in long-term maintenance of my alerts.