How to Add Parent Status in Alert Message

Question

I want to be able to put the status of a parent in a dependency when the child goes down.  For example, we have a GPS devices that the group in charge of them needs to know when they go down.  However, they don't know if they're down because of a unit failure or the connection to them is down.  So, I would like to create a dependency with the switch as a parent, and GPS as a child.  When the GPS goes down for whatever reason, the GPS techs can easily see that the switch it is connected to is up or down, so they'll know if they need to start troubleshooting the GPS, or just wait for the connection to come back up.

I would think this can be down inside the HTML message of the alert, but I do not understand the message variables well enough to know how to make this work.

Thanks, 
Ken Barnes

Missouri Dept. of Transportation

d09h · Answer

Perhaps you could leverage groups and do this (note the 'group member root cause'...and also note that this solution is a group solution rather than a dependency solution...also note step 6, and lastly this would require a group to be defined and configured with status rollup set to worst case):

https://support.solarwinds.com/Success_Center/Network_Performance_Monitor_(NPM)/How_to_create_a_SolarWinds_NPM_alert_to_trigger_when_a_Group_Member_is_Down

Overview

This article lists the steps for creating an alert to trigger when a member of a group is down.

Environment

* NPM 11.5 and later

Steps

1. Log into the Orion Web Console.

2. Click Settings > All Settings > Manage Alerts.

3. Locate the out of the box alert "Group is down" & Click Duplicate and Edit.

4. Give the alert a name and complete the required details.

5. Under the trigger condition, replicate the following screen shot.

6. Under the Trigger Actions tab, edit the Send an Email option:

a. Click Insert Variable.

b. Find and Select the variable "Group Member Root Cause".

This variable identifies the node that caused the group to have a down status.

7. Click Save Changes and test accordingly.

yaquaholic · Answer

Only trying to help, maybe you should have been clearer, first time around then

I think you need to look at your alert then. Get it so that only the parent device can raise the alert for the GPS unit, and no other devices.

As your description is a little "high level", if we could see what alert you are using (trigger conditions - screenshot of triggers or the SQL/SWQL export) and some examples of when it doesn't work, then it might give us a little more to go on (help you with).

modot · Answer

I am well aware of how dependencies work.  I know that you can suppress the child alert when the parent is down.  However, that is not what I am wanting to do.  The GPS tech also gets other alerts that the GPS is down from other systems.  However, our system is the only one that can tell him if it's a GPS problem or a network problem.  That is why I want to create a custom alert for him that tells him that the parent is either up or down so he can be certain of what action he needs to take on his end.