Create Alerts Targeted at Groups of Entities

shocko

Guys, probably a noob question but I have my nodes monitored with agents and assigned to groups based on roles/functions e.g. Web Nodes, WSUS Nodes, Docker Nodes etc. I wish to create say a volume disk space alert for each group. How to target an alert to just the group ? I could add the individual nodes to the alert filter but that does not scale well as nodes are added to the groups.

brscott

A couple of things here.  

a) You can alert on the group, such that if anything in the group goes "red" then it generates an alert, but on the group, not the individual node.  Generally this is not what people want.

b) There is an alert category called "group member" that you can alert on, but when you try this you'll learn quick that while it will work, it's a mess.  It's at best an OK solution is you have the group membership automated through scripting or maybe dynamic groups.  But you have to add everything into the group.  The node, the volumes, memory, or whatever you want to alert on.  Worth a try I guess, but I didn't like it.

c) Custom SWQL alert.  Now you can take a normal volume alert (or whatever) make it a CUSTOM SWQL where you can add the "inner join" for the group membership.  See this thread if you understand the terms SWQL and inner join, otherwise I don't suggest it.  https://thwack.solarwinds.com/t5/NPM-Discussions/Creating-Alerts-for-nodes-within-a-group/m-p/582925

d) Custom Properties.  This is my actual recommendation, even for advanced orion admins.  Instead of making a group, make a custom property called whatever you want, lets call it "alert_group" for this example. Now you can create an create a normal alert and filter on "NODE  - ALERT_GROUP - is equal to - WSUS".  (Note: I says node on the trigger condition field even if it's an alert on volumes, because that is where your custom property is at).  Now once you have the custom property created, assign the values to each node.  Then go back to your groups and remove all of the nodes, add a dynamic query based on the custom property.  Now you have both groups which look good in orion, and custom properties which work well in alerts.

Let me know if you need more guidance on the custom properties option.  It can be a bit weird at first, then later you won't be able to live without it.