How do I alert based on parent/child relationship?

UnkeptBedroom

I searched around a bit for this question, so I hope this isn't a duplicate:

Characters:

Node 1 - Primary Internet Connection

Node 2 - Secondary Internet Connection

Stage:

Dozens of remote locations with this exact setup.

Scenario:

We were raised the question of automating some reminders to be sent out to certain people if were to fail over from Node 1 to Node 2; specifically that a resource will be made unavailable until Node 1 becomes the primary again. Me being the savvy SolarWinds administrator (best one this company has, and not just because I'm its only admin ), I suggested we use SolarWinds; parent/child relationship, should be no problem, right?

I've severly over-estimated my capability as a SolarWinds admin it seems.

In setting up the alert, I did the following:

But this failed to do what I thought it would. In digging around, I believe Child Status does not, in fact, refer to the node's child, but rather to sub-resources of said node. That's as far as I understand it, anyway, I could be wrong. So - Is this possible? I'm probably just going to automate this in a batch script with some pings, or maybe there are other tools that people are using that makes this a moot point, but it got me curious. I know that doing parent/child relationships can suppress alerts the child would otherwise trigger should the parent die, but is that the extent of the parent/child relationship in SolarWinds?

Thank you much for reading, I'll try to get back to comments as quickly as I can.

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sja

I have 2 alerts

1.“site down alert” this a simple ICMP ping that monitor internal devices or vrrp that are inside the site…

you use that when the site is not reachable anymore..

2.”router bgp down alert”

We use BGP but any other protocol that will let you know that the one line is down is good.

3.You can make it more fancy with dependence “that if the ICMP ping fails mark all the site as down “

stuartd

[quote userid="278670" url="~/product-forums/network-performance-monitor-npm/f/forum/94931/how-do-i-alert-based-on-parent-child-relationship"]In digging around, I believe Child Status does not, in fact, refer to the node's child, but rather to sub-resources of said node. T[/quote]

This has always been my understanding.

I'd have to go and seriously scratch my head to achieve your aims, but right now I can't wrap my head around a how. To be clear though: you want a site with two routers, where one of them fails, to then alert yourself / a set of folks?

UnkeptBedroom

You got it. If this was a one off deal, it'd be super easy because then I just hardcode the nodes in, but I need to do this over several sites.

stuartd

OK - let me ponder on it a day or two, and in the meantime hope a fellow THWACKster will save me some brain ache!

adam.beedell

I started writing the answer to this as if you wanted an alert only if both the primary and secondary were down, on reread I think you just want an alert for the primary?

If the primaries have a name format, or perhaps a lower IP of the two, or something like that i'd just add a custom property (perhaps even auto-populate one) to say if they're primary or secondary. Then have an alert for the primaries only (and perhaps another for the secondaries)

If i understood right the first time:

Possible pathways
- 1) Groups
- Set router pairs in groups
- Alert if group down with name format or as part of parent group "Site connections" etc
- Set groups to "Show Best"
- 2) Clever SWQL alert
- Something with a GROUP BY and probably a TOP 1 and a Subquery and a trustworthy location custom property
- Goal being to group into the twos without an actual group, and alert only if both are down

Aside from that Parent/Child in solarwinds usually refers to going up or down tables. Like Nodes -> interfaces, or Nodes -> Applications -> Components

UnkeptBedroom

Thanks for the input! So yea, I'm trying to get an alert on the primary IF the secondary is up. If the secondary isn't up, pfft well there are bigger problems at hand lol and no resources are available. I'll try to give your solution a try soon, this is definitely a Friday project for me, so hope nobody here feels like I'm brushing them off

stuartd

This was my initial thinking but my head then said ...

"how do I identify that the specific secondary IP is up if it's just in a group with others" - at which point I deleted my response which had taken your tack.