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Orion Alert Scheduling

Perhaps I am missing something, but I do not see a way to turn off a selected list of alerts or all alerts *as a group* for maintenance windows. Most companies have scheduled maintenance windows (ours are Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5 AM to 7 AM). Two of our much less expensive programs (Kiwi syslog and PageGate) enable this kind of scheduling. I don't want to turn off the polling engine, just the alert actions during these times (and preferably a selected list of alerts). I do not want to turn off alerting every day from 5-7, just *two days a week*. I hope that either I am missing this, or that the scheduling of alerts can be improved in future. We have had Orion since it's inception for our enterprise. -Debbi

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mjhamilton

unforntunetly this is a manul process and there are 2 quite long winded ways to do it

1 - goto the device in question just before the maintenance period and set it to 'unmanage' until the date and time the maint window closes.

2 - in the alterts window put your devices into logical groups or 'buckets' and untick the relevant bucket when the maint window is active and tick it alive when it has past...

... there is another way but I am far to stupid to do it... I guess you could write some vbscript code and use Windows scheduling service to execute and set the maint flags in the sql database to on and then on again once it has passed.....

food for thought??.. let me know what you think!?!?

PS.. I think you need 7.4 or above for the 'unmanage' button in the system colsole?!?.. [:D]

Martin J. Hamilton... lost in a sea of snmp...

clisser

This is a glaring omission on the part of SolarWinds and a feature that should be added ASAP. We are currently developing our own app to do this, but we haven't finished it yet.

It makes one wonder what they were thinking when they added an UnManage button with a scheduling option to restart management, but no option to schedule Orion to stop management at a future date and time. Who wants to get up at 3 am to stop management for a maintenance window?[xx(]

It is issues like this (plus custom MIBs and time based thresholds) that SolarWinds seems unwilling address in a timely fashion. Instead they spend a bunch of time adding a syslog engine (nice but there are plenty of syslogs out there). Meanwhile we are forced to cobble together custom built solutions to address things that should come with Orion out of the box. [:(!]

DonYonce

Chris,
I'm sorry about your frustration.

There are a many features that could be added to the current polling engine. Maintenance windows, custom MIBs, etc.
With the current polling engine architecture it is a trade off of performance vs features. The "Scheduled UnManage" for a maintenance feature window is exactly one of those features that was compromised to maintain scalability and performance.

I agree completely with you. Orion should include many of these features. But, instead of adding many new features to the existing polling engine architecture (which would degrade performance and scalability), we are changing the underlying architecture. These changes should allow us to add many new features without impacting performance. We also hope these changes will allow customers or third parties to add new features without sacrificing performance.

If you would like to more details about this, you can contact me directly via SolarWinds support.

Also, here is a script that may help you with the UnManage issue.
You should save it as "UnManage.vbs" or place it in a VB or .Net application.


'
'
'	This script unmanages a Network Performance Monitor Node
'	Modify the script to include the IP address you would like to unmanage instead of 10.0.0.1
'	
'

Option Explicit

    Dim Service
    Dim Application
    Dim NetPerfMon 
    Dim NetworkNode

    On Error Resume Next
    Err.Clear

    '
    ' Connect to the SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
    ' Service and get a handle to the running NetPerfMon Engine
    ' The Network Performance Montior Service should already 
    ' be running
    '
    ' This method only works with the Orion version of Network 
    ' Performance Monitor
    '

    Err.Clear
    ' Get link to the Running Service
    Set Service = CreateObject("NetPerfMonService.RunningService") 
    ' Get a Link to the Application Object
    Set Application = Service.GetAppObject                         
    ' Get a Link to the Polling Engine
    Set NetPerfMon = Application.NetPerfMonEngine           

    If Err <> 0 Then
        Wscript.Echo "Cannot attach to Network Performance Monitor." & vbCrLf & _
            Err.Description
    Else
	' UnManage a Node 
	Set NetworkNode = NetPerfMon.NetObjects.FindNodeByIP("10.0.0.1")
        NetworkNode.Unmanaged = True
        NetworkNode.UnManageUntil = #5/1/2005#
    End If

    Set NetworkNode = Nothing
    Set NetPerfMon = Nothing
End Sub

This does not schedule the UnManage, it switches a Node into UnManage mode. You could have Windows Task Scheduler run the script at the appropriate time.
Hope this helps,
Don

mgibson

I tried this script and I get an error at line 48 char 1, this is the space just before the set networknode = nothing. has anyone has success with this script??

lopezjo49

I'm also interested in scripting nodes as unmanaged via a script. Orion seems to roll it back to managed after about 1 minute or two. So, My problem isn't exactly getting it to set to unmanaged but setting to unmanaged it having it stay. Can someone please verify my fields and especially the "UnmanagedUntil" field. thanks in advance.

(Note: I have interfaces ready to be set as unmanaged but I'm just trying to get the nodes to stay first)

use strict;
use DBI;
use Date::EzDate;

my $nodeid = shift or die "NodeID?\n";
chomp($nodeid);
my $days_suppressed = 2;

#Nodes
my $unman="
UPDATE Nodes
set Unmanaged=1,
UnManageUntil=DATEADD(day,$days_suppressed,GETDATE()),
Status=9,
StatusLED='UnManaged.gif',
StatusDescription='Node status is Unmanaged',
Severity=0,
GroupStatus='UnManaged.gif'
where NodeID=$nodeid
";

=pod
# Interface
my $unman_int="
UPDATE Interfaces
set AdminStatus=9,
OperStatus=9,
Status=9,
StatusLED='UnManaged.gif',
AdminStatusLED='UnManaged.gif',
OperStatusLED='UnManaged.gif'
where NodeID=$nodeid
";
=cut
#'5/4/2007 12:51:07 PM'

my ($sth, $sth2);
if ($nodeid) {
   my $db = "NetPerfMon";
   my $dbh = DBI->connect('DBI:ODBC:DSN', 'user', 'password') || die "Can't connect\n$!\n";
   $dbh->do("use $db");
   $sth = $dbh->prepare($unman) || die "Can't Prepare " . $dbh->errstr();
#   $sth2 = $dbh->prepare($unman_int) || die "Can't Prepare " . $dbh->errstr();
       $sth->execute() or die "Can't Execute " . $sth->errstr();
#       $sth2->execute() or die "Can't Execute " . $sth2->errstr();
           $sth->finish;
#           $sth2->finish;
   $dbh->disconnect;
} else {
   print "Bye\n";
}
exit;

mrobson

If anyone else is looking here is a script I put together that will unmanage a text file list of servers (by IP) for a designated time frame based on when the schedule is executed. It is currently set to unmange for 15 minutes, but can easily be changed to hours, or days as well on line 48. The top script on this thread had an error with the time formatting so the servers would unmanage, but then remanage within minutes. This script fixed that as well.

'
' Script Name: unmanage.vbs
' Author:  Matthew Robson
' Desciption: This script unmanages Orion Network Performance Monitor Nodes from a txt list for a specified time
'   Time is specified in line 48
' Date:  01/20/10
'
'
Option Explicit
Dim Service
Dim Application
Dim NetPerfMon
Dim Fso
Dim InputFile
Dim NetworkNode
Dim HostIP
Dim Status
Dim Counter
Dim CurrentDateTime
Dim UnmanageDateTime
Dim DateFormat
Dim TimeFormat
Dim OrionDateTime

' Get link to the Running Service
Set Service = CreateObject("NetPerfMonService.RunningService")
' Get a Link to the Application Object
Set Application = Service.GetAppObject
' Get a Link to the Polling Engine
Set NetPerfMon = Application.NetPerfMonEngine
' Configure Input File
Set Fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set InputFile = fso.OpenTextFile("c:\test\ServerIP.txt")
' Complete the following for each server in the text file
Do While InputFile.AtEndOfStream <> True
  Status = 0
  HostIP = InputFile.ReadLine
  CStr(HostIP)
  Counter = 1
  ' Try to unmange server 10 times
  Do While Status <> 9
   If Counter = 10 Then
    exit Do
   End If
   ' Collect current date time and configure time to remange
   CurrentDateTime = Now
   ' DateAdd (n = minutes, h = hours, d = days)
   UnmanageDateTime = DateAdd("n", 15, CurrentDateTime)
   DateFormat = FormatDateTime(UnmanageDateTime, 2)
   TimeFormat = FormatDateTime(UnmanageDateTime, 4)
   OrionDateTime = DateFormat &" " &TimeFormat
   ' Unmange Node
   Set NetworkNode = NetPerfMon.NetObjects.FindNodeByIP(HostIP)
   NetworkNode.Unmanaged = True
   NetworkNode.UnManageUntil = OrionDateTime
   Status = NetworkNode.Status
   Counter = Counter + 1
  Loop
Loop
Set NetworkNode = Nothing
Set NetPerfMon = Nothing