Email notifications and Cirrus

Question

It's been commented on before that the way configuration change notifications are displayed are not ideal.  I wanted to share some screenshots on a competing configuration management product and how its email notifications are formatted.  I would love to see Cirrus implemented in a fashion similiar to this.  I'm not going to name the competing product because I don't want to advertise for them, nor tread upon Solarwind's own stomping grounds - if you're familiar with this product and can identify it from the screenshots, I'd kindly ask you refrain from mentioning it.

The two screenshots are part of the same, single email notification.  I just broke them up into two images.

FYI

emailnotif1.jpg

Haley · Answer

Thank you both for your comments and suggestions regarding the configuration change email notification.  Please keep the suggestions coming.

bleearg13 · Answer

I'm not sure I like that second image.  I don't see how this is any different or more useful than what Cirrus currently offers.  For the width, remember that not everyone is working on a 1920x1200 widescreen display.  In addition, showing at least a few lines of config above and below the changes will much better assist when trying to identify what was actually changed.  For instance, if you have a router with 1000 interfaces and suddenly three of them were disabled and the emails only show you:

>   shutdown;
                                                    >   shutdown;
                                                    >   shutdown;

it's too difficult to really tell what was changed without having to go through the extra several steps of logging into the server, starting Cirrus, waiting several minutes for node status polling to complete, finding the device in your list, opening it, and comparing the two configs.  I am a huge proponent for having not only one *text* email for all changes, but also in a format similar to this, so horizontal scrolling is unnecessary:

Index: configs/router.foo.com
===================================================================
retrieving revision 1.999
diff -U4 -r1.999 router.foo.com

!
 interface ATM0/0/0.566 point-to-point
  description customer-b
  ip address x.x.x.x 255.255.255.252
+  shutdown
  pvc 4/616
   encapsulation aal5snap
  !
 !
  interface ATM0/0/0.574 point-to-point
   description customer-c
   ip address x.x.x.x 255.255.255.252

The above is extremely easy to read, does not require expanding the email to full size only to still have problems deciphering the config due to linewrap, and provides a frame of reference for the changes made.

chris.schear · Answer

emailnotif2.jpg