Implemented

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/wpm/content/orionwpmagusingmanagedependencies.htm

True Parent/Children Relationship and easier UI to manage

Make it easier to create and manage Parent/Child relationships.  Use an easier UI such as a file directory hierarchy along with drag & drop, to display and manage the relationships. Setup "one-click" rules to manage alerts for children of a parent.  If Parent x goes down, one check in a box will silence all alerts on the children. The groups function right now is OK, but it doesn't allow for true relationships, multiple levels down.

  • even m looking for same explanation.

  • I'd even by somewhat satisfied if I better understood how NPM determines the auto-dependency's parent-child relationship. 

    Most of the time the Auto-generated dependencies are good.  Sometimes they're silly.

    For example, a UPS is dependent on the switch it's plugged into. and the switch is dependent on the router that gets it across the WAN to NPM.  But sometimes NPM says the UPS is the Parent, and the switch & router are the dependents.

    There's actually a sort of human-thinking logic to that:  The switch and the router get their power from the UPS, therefore from a power-perspective, the UPS is the parent.  But I don't think NPM is any kind of a wry-humor-based AI who would tell me "This is how your dependencies REALLY look!"

    Where can we find an explanation for how NPM generates auto dependencies, parents, and child groups?

  • I like this.

    But I'm not picky--I'd even be happy with a way to edit auto-discovered dependencies.  I've had NPM correctly discover devices reliant on each other, but then put the cart in front of the horse.  For example, auto-dependency discovery has found several of my sites with a router, some switches, and some UPS's.  But instead of making the router the Parent, the UPS becomes the Parent.

    True, the router might be dependent on the UPS for power--except that I buy dual power supplies, and only plug one into the UPS.  In fact, any given UPS appears down more often due to a WAN failure than a bad battery or running out of power.

    Instead of having to build new Parent and Child/Group relationships, I'd rather just edit the auto discovered dependency and make the router the Parent and put the switch & the UPS in the Child Group.

  • I currently have nodes that make up a 'site' group (Firewall and router), if both go down then the site is down and an group down alert is triggered.  It would be great if the alerts for the individual nodes could be suppressed.  IE if a group is down, then all members of the group should not be alerted on.

  • This is a great request. Dependency management is clunky right now at best. We're about to expand somewhat dramatically on our needs for dependencies and I dread having to go in and add all of them. The automatic dependency discovery could use some work too as it doesn't always work very well at all.