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TIME TO ASK FOR HELP!!!

I need someone to help me brainstorm. I set up custom alerts with Solarwinds and I have to take a few I've created a step further. Here's the objective - Create a subscription service that will tell a GM for a city in the Asia Pacific Region they are having network performance issues. Tools: Solarwinds and Alarmpoint.

CURRENTLY THIS WORKS: Each "City" within the Region has a router or routers that provide a function. There are 3 router functions - Primary, Backup, Only. I have created 3 alerts that tell a subscriber if the Primary goes down:

1.) Primary Status = Down - They have degraded performance because network is now switched to the back-up internet link.

2.) Backup Status = Down - They have no network redundancy until the backup link is restored.

3.) Only Status = Down - This site has only one router so they have a total network outage.

ISSUE I'M HAVING: Each city is within a region, a person can subscribe to the entire region, or select cities within that region to be notified of issues local to their City. This works. However, each city is also connected to a "RIG" (Regional Internet Gateway) within that Region which provides back up Internet Access and Remote Access through DMVPN Tunnels. The RIGs also have redundancy. If the RIG within their Region goes down, another RIG which is located across the world provides the Internet and RAS. Example: Asia Pacific's RIG is located in Hong Kong, the Backup RIG is in the US. Should the router within the RIG that provides internet and RAS service go down, each city will experience degraded Internet and RAS performance because traffic is routed to the other RIG much farther away. If a RIG goes down, it will not affect the local City Router status which is the trigger for a city alert so a person subscribed to that city will not ne notified why they are having degraded performance. While it would seem simple to have them just subscribe the that RIG, it's not a realistic expectation that the subscriber will know to subscribe to that RIG because they can't idenitfy with it like they can identify to the city name they are subscribing to. Can anyone relate to this and provide some guidance?

Thanks!

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cfry

Another note to this, it would be IDEAL if when a person subscribes to the city, they are automatically subscribed to the RIG for that city, I'm being told by our Alarmpoint Administrator that this cannot happen.

jeff.stewart

Could you use a custom field to subscribe your cities to the RIG they belong to? Then write an alert that notifies notifies city subscriptions based upon the RIG they belong to? I'm still trying to grasp your overall process here...

cfry

Yeah, the process is a complex one. So lets call the RIG a 3845 that sits somewhere other than any of the cities being subscribed to. 14 cities use this one 3845 for backup internet service and remote access. Even if I added a custom field to each city - call it RIG, how can I tie that custom field to the actual RIG 3845? Does that make any sense? I keep over thinking this and hoping there is an embarassingly easy solution that I'm missing.

City Subscription = a person subscribed to a city will receive an alert if the router for that city goes down. Since each city has routers unique to it, it was easy to name the routers "city xyz". Here's an example for a city that has a custom field "Router_Funtion" applied.

Alert - The ${Router_Function} network connection at ${Node.City}, ${Region} is ${Status}. The Bio-Rad IT Network Group is already aware of this issue and is currently working to resolve it. This site may experience network performance degradation until this issue is resolved as network services are now being supported by a smaller back-up network connection. For any questions, please contact the Global IT Service Desk at 510-741-XXXX.

Received As - The primary network connection at Shanghai - PUXI, Asia Pacific is Down. The Bio-Rad IT Network Group is already aware of this issue and is currently working to resolve it. This site may experience network performance degradation until this issue is resolved as network services are now being supported by a smaller back-up network connection. For any questions, please contact the Global IT Service Desk at 510-741-XXXX.

jeff.stewart

cfry,

This sounds similar to an alert we wrote while doing some consulting last year. Let me dig up the paperwork and see if it applies. I'll try and send you something tomorrow.

Cheers.

smartd

Won't the city router see a BGP neighbor change if the RIG goes down. I simply monitor for a BGP neighbor change, and alert on it. With NPM 10, you can create actions based on trap details. That's how I monitor my WAN connections.

Note: Syslog in NPM has a little more functionality, and KiwiSyslog even more.