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Help with Advanced Alert

I currently have a basic alert configured that alerts when one of my branch routers is unreachable (basically a Node Down alert).

I want to create an advanced alert to do the same thing since that allows me to add deferred actions. I have the alert configured except for being able to select the specific nodes that I want monitored. In the basic alert, I could go to the Monitored Network Objects and then simply select which nodes I wanted to monitor. However, in the advanced alert the only way I have found is to add each node individually by node ID (I believe that is what the basic alert uses) as a separate condition. Since there are about 50 of these hosts I want to have monitored, that is a whole lot of conditions to put in.

Is there an easy way to do this or a better way?

Thanks, Gene

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vhcato

Gene

The beauty of the advanced alerts is the ability to tie them to multiple conditions; those inherent within Orion, and especially custom properties. Have you already created and associated some custom properties with these nodes for the purpose of classifying them by location, function, etc? If so, you can use those custom properties as conditions for the alerts. If not, you can create some, populate them with appropriate data, and use them in your alerts. Also, you could use your device naming or IP address standards, as well as device type, vendor, or any other characteristics that make them unique.

We use custom properties for associating devices with alerts, view filters, and many other purposes. Now, when we add a new device, or otherwise need to change how Orion handles a particular device, we can go to Custom Property Editor to associate them with all these functions without the need to do such things as going to each alert to click a check box.

Make sense???

FormerMember

Yep. I found I could use Machine Type in this case since my routers are all the same. Now I am working on how to get the actions to fire correctly.

I have polling for the nodes set to 1 minute. I have my alert trigger condition to be the status is down then trigger action is send a message if still down after two minutes (I would hope to only get the one message saying it is down). My reset trigger is same as alert trigger except status is up and the reset action is send a message immediately. However, this isn't working exactly as I expect. I haven't had a chance to see what the alerty trigger does since I haven't had anything actually go down, but the reset trigger is firing every minute coinciding with the polling.

I really appreciate your help with this. Can you give me an idea on how to do this. The basic alert for send a page when node is down really seems to do what I want except I can not put the put escalation into the mix with the basic.

Gene

vhcato

Gene,

First of all, what version of Orion are you running? If it's 8.1, do you have all the hot fixes installed? There are some known issues with advanced alerts prior to v8.1, and from what I understand, they have been resolved in 8.1.

As for the alert itself, it sounds like you have it configured correctly. Feel free to attach the Report Writer file to this post, and I'll take a look at it, if you'd like. Also, keep in mind that the "Node Warning Interval" also plays a role in the timing of the trigger. The default value is 120 seconds, so with a poll rate of 60 seconds, the device could actually be down for anywhere between 120 and 180 seconds before Orion flags the device as "Down", and then it would be another 120 seconds before the alert triggers based on your delayed trigger. Just something to think about.

FormerMember

Thanks, I did some tweaking on the alert and it has started working correctly, just giving the resets after the alert has triggered and only once.

It would be nice in the advanced alerts to have a Nodes to Monitor lists right there like in the basic alerts. Also, I noticed in the Basic alert, I could check a box that said on Status Change, but could not figure out how to do that in Advanced Alerts. That way, I would get the alert when it went from Up to Warning to Down.

Once again, thatks for your help.

Gene