Suggestion for interface to be "normally" down...

Question

Suggestion for a new option in Orion:

Suggestion is to allow for an interface to be DOWN in it's NORMAL state (not red when it's down). We have some automatic backup interfaces that come live during an outage. We can alert on the status properly, but in the UI it shows as if it's an error in that state, when in fact DOWN is normal.

vhcato · Answer

You're welcome, and I agree it would be nice to have. Perhaps there could be a check-box in the interface detail within System Manager to denote the special handling of these interfaces..?

BigRic · Answer

Great idea - thanks for the response.  It would still be nice to see this natively in the product, as you could then report more intelligently on availability stats and the like based on the proper status of each interface.  I'm going to give your idea a try - appreciate the quick response!

Eric

vhcato · Answer

In the meantime, you might want to think about creating a report with the appropriate logic and add it to the web as a resource instead of using the ones out of the box. For example, we have a report as a resource on various summary views showing all interface "issues". Included in the logic of the report is a mechanism to suppress displaying our backup links as "down" (which is a normal condition), while also doing the reverse; displaying backup interfaces that are "up" as being an issue.

Naturally, it would be a real pain in the keister to try to mask this everywhere on the website, but it works for a quick view of what's going on, and our front-line Ops folks rely on it extensively.