What paging solutions do you use?

Currently we use a home grown paging solution that runs on a Unix box using Pearl scripts. We just open SMTP connection direct to various cell phone mail servers and send pages that way. This was fine when we were a smaller company. Changes over the past year or so have almost trippled our Orion licensing and instead of paging me and two others I need to set up paging and alerts to 10+ admins around the world. We have started having issues with pages coming out garbled adn occasionally we get blacklisted by cell phone provider main servers due to the large number of alerts that sometimes go out.

We used to use Telalert, but went to this home solution due to the cost of the service. I am looking for suggestions on what paging solutions are out there that works well with Orion. What is everyone else using?

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seigniory

Two quick thoughts:

1. We use email to "page" the SMS alerts on admins' phones (i.e. 5556564432@vtext.com to alert a Verizon phone). A quick email via SMS to alert them that a critical message is waiting in their inbox where they can find more info.

2. Ten admins across the world sounds like you have a fairly complex alerting need. I'm not familiar with the actual costs of TelAlert, but I can't imagine a situation where its costs would outweigh the need for 10 admins... kinda like buying a Ferrari and complaining that you have no money for gas. :-)

freak523

We have been using PageGate to help manage our paging, it allows us to use both SMTP as well as TAP for our paging. It also made it easier to manage groups of pager recipients as well as managing the possible failure of SMTP communication and failover to TAP over a couple USB modems. Since Orion can run a simple script it integrates well with pagegate and so far with the 16 recipients that we use we haven't had any issues.

-David

lchance

we're using a product named Automation Point from CA (Computer Associates). this is a product i used in production prior to having Solarwinds. i figured out how to interface it to Solarwinds and it has been extremely reliable and stable so far...this Automation Point has additional features used for mainframe operations (TN3270 sessions, IPL, .etc). i mainly needed it to cover TAP through modems, which we use for failover in case email is down.

here's a diagram of what i've done with it and our Solarwinds SLX releases...

pguenther

I have looking at the PageGate solution since you mentinoed it. Going over their forums I see references to Solarwinds only working with NotePage, however that sounds like a much simpliar solution. It sounds like I need the PageGate functionality. What modules did you have to purchase with PageGate to get it to work? Was it a difficult setup?

freak523

When we purchased PageGate we purchased the commandline/ASCI interface (for integration with alerting), 4 connectors (modems) and then 30 pager licenses. Setup wise it is pretty easy for example for one of our alerts we execute this program from solarwinds alerts:

\PageGateData\GetAscii\sendpage32.exe all_oncall ALERT CRITICAL ALERT! - The Volume ${Caption} on ${NodeName} is ${VolumePercentUsed}% Full

It goes out and sends to our all_oncall group from ALERT with the message following that. As for setup it is pretty simple, you configure your carriers then you configure your recipients and what carriers they use, you can also specify another contact as a failover. There is a lot of functionality in the program but for direct interfacing you just need the GetAscii module configured then have as many pager licenses as you will need to cover your contacts.

-David