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Parent And Child Nodes In a Nodes Tree View

Is there a way to view devices in a tree with A node listed, and when you expand it the devices connected to that node are listed and so on and so forth? I know you can group the items, but is there a way to make a node a child of another node within that view?

Thanks in advance.

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jtimes

Isn't that the same question we where talking about in this thread?

Juggernaut

It is related, but what I found was that I wasn't putting device "under" another device, I was just grouping them by type. I can't find a functionality to make one device a parent and the rest children. Im just trying to approach the same problem from a different angle. I am not familiar with the map program so I do not know if it would serve my purpose.

Like I said, I was set to work with solar winds about a week or two ago and the guy who had done it before me left months ago.

Thanks in advance.

jtimes

Your looking for a topology overview aren't you? Mapmaker would be the best option to do this...Unfourtunetly it's currently 100% manual process. Do you by chance have LANsurveyor or LANsurveyor Express for Microsoft Visio in your shop? If not you should check them out, they do what I'm talking about in regards to mapping your network topology.

Juggernaut

I don't have LANsurveyor at my disposal and I doubt I could get it. Fortunately, time is something I have. I could do manual entry. basically what I need is a list, map w/e, that is simple and can be easily navigated that tells me if a node is down. here is my network in a nutshell.

C15454 Catalyst >> C2950 >> C2955 >> "End Devices" and I have 25 of the C15454's. what do you suggest?

Thanks in advance

MagnAxiom

I too keep looking for this functionality, but I've been told it isn't supported in Orion.

True parent / child relationships would allow you to properly suppress alerts.

For instance, if a switch (Parent) goes down, all the servers (children) hanging off that switch are going to be down, and being informed about the 20+ servers along with being notified the switch is down makes for a very full email box. If the system truly had parent/child relationships, it would know that because the servers have the switch set as their parent, that they are down because of the parent outage.

You would also want this kind of logic. Anytime Orion notices a server outage, it should immediately test to see if the parent is Up. If it is, do notification based on just that server outage.... If the parent/switch is down... then notify about the switch outage, and suppress all the server notices. (Maybe include a list of all children affected in the switch outage message).

Miron

Hi,

As discussed the ability to have some kind of Parent/Child relationship would greatly enhance the reporting and alerting functionality within Orion. Also as discussed there is the potential for a workaround of adding child objects to maps however this does not fit into the alerting logic.

Now I havent tried this but I would assume it may help.(this by all means does not solve the issue and would need testing)

Create a custom property for all your nodes called Parent-A ; Parent-B. Parent-B assumes that you have resiliency for servers and switches in which case it would be connected to two upstream devices .

Then when configuring alerts potentially you can state that when a server for instance is down, to check if the node specified in the custom property is down and alert accordingly. Now i say i havent tested this at all and would have if i wasnt on the train. However this would depend on the use of variables if it works.

If it doesnt work and if your environment is similar to the following:

Building Distribution----> Building Access Device----->

Building Access Device-----> Server

then if you have a manageable number of buildings/distributions then you essentially create an alert for each distribution or aggregation point.

If I get time I will test and let you know although im sure someone will confirm/dispute before then:-)

Miron

Hi,

Sorry i didnt fully read all the posts associated with this topic, so apologies if I repeated something.

Kind Regards

Miron

thebastidge

True parent / child relationships would allow you to properly suppress alerts.
For instance, if a switch (Parent) goes down, all the servers (children) hanging off that switch are going to be down, and being informed about the 20+ servers along with being notified the switch is down makes for a very full email box. If the system truly had parent/child relationships, it would know that because the servers have the switch set as their parent, that they are down because of the parent outage.
You would also want this kind of logic. Anytime Orion notices a server outage, it should immediately test to see if the parent is Up. If it is, do notification based on just that server outage.... If the parent/switch is down... then notify about the switch outage, and suppress all the server notices. (Maybe include a list of all children affected in the switch outage message).

+1 on this. We have quite a few sites, and we monitor all the network devices at each site. However, getting an email/page for each one when the MDF interface takes down connectivity to IDFs is a major pain in the Blackberry.

We're looking for a way to slave dependencies so that if a router at the site goes down, all switches and servers below that will be suppressed until the router interface is back up.

MagnAxiom

Miron, I can find NO way to get the status of another node inside an advanced alert.

Am I missing something?

From what I can tell I can only access the status and custom properties of the node that generated the triggered event. I've thought about custom properties for the uplink, but can not find a way to reference another node.

qle

As it is right now (I'm assuming this feature hasn't improved much, if at all, in NPM 9.5), you can suppress an alert based on the status of another node(s). That is, the conditions in the Alert Suppression tab will query against all nodes. You could have an alert that fires when any server goes down but is suppressed when any router is down as well. Not a very intelligent design but it will work.

MagnAxiom

Juggernaut, This kind of functionality is very closely tied to the exact problem I have brought up.

The "short" answer as I have been told is no. There are some allusions that if you do a bunch of custom SQL imbedded code in the SQL database itself, that you can increase the functionality of these kinds of things. Honestly not being a SQL guy, I see this as a hack for what should be a feature that should have been addressed some time ago.

You CAN group items nested in the MAP view, which can be useful for at a glance status of your networks, but it has nothing to do with actual system alerting.