How to separate alerts and contacts for different servers?

Hey all,

I'm sure this is a very common thing however I was unable to find a specific answer that I was looking for. We have ~25ish servers on one of our Solarwinds consoles that I am tracking. Of these 25ish servers, these are broken down by 5 or 6 sites, and each server has the same site code in the server name (ex: ###SERVER1, ###SERVER2, etc).

I want to break down each site into its own alert groups, where they will alert me and then specific individuals related to that group.

1) Do I have to create alerts for each site?

2) Is it possible to edit the existing alert that says something like, "If server contains 111, also email this group"?

Thanks!

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d09h

Customize your alert based on node/ interface/ volume properties. https://support.solarwinds.com/Success_Center/Network_Performance_Monitor_(NPM)/Adding_alert_specific_variables_into_email_generated_by_an_alert

It's generally easier to manipulate custom properties than to go back and touch numerous alerts. Custom properties can help you so that you don't reinvent the wheel too much. Experiment a little and see for yourself.

Back when you couldn't use more than about 254 characters in the To/ Cc/ Bcc fields, I created a custom property of that size and filled it with email addresses separated by commas. I don't believe the size limitation applies any longer.

mesverrum

The alert engine doesnn't do IF logic.

Like d09h mentioned, the most scalable way to do this is to set up a single alert, but create a node custom property (I'll call it ContactEmail for this example) that includes the appropriate email contacts for each node. Something like nodes at site1 would have their ContactEmail as yourname@yourcompany.com, site1contact@company.com

Then for your email alert insteasd of hardcoding in the email addresses you just insert the variable for the node's ContactEmail.

Using the Manage custom properties screen it should be pretty painless to identify all the nodes at a site and set their contact in bulk, which is a lot faster and easier to manage than setting up 6 different alerts with the only difference between them being the To: line of the email.

Whenever addressing a scalability issue with Orion the solution is almost always going to involve custom properties of some kind.