Now that servers are being built in Azure/AWS, customers can shutdown servers manually and/or servers are automatically powered down if idle. What are some options for addressing node down/up server monitoring for these scenerios?
Custom Properties and even Alert Schedules. You can mix properties that you create like - AWS_AlwaysOn: Yes/No - that could be used to determine if a cloud based server should always be available/on and have the alert scope look at that property. In other cases, alerts may ONLY be desirable during a certain timeframe or specific days - then you can setup an alert schedule. I had a similar situation come up, and it spawned several properties and one or two scheduled alerts. It was a great experience in thinking through exactly what the customer requested/needed and how to meet those needs with custom properties that can be reused/applied to other cloud nodes as needed. That last bit was an attempt to future proof these these types of requests. BUT communication with the customer will need to be good as they may change their needs over time. It is up to them to also talk to you. Beyond that, good luck, and feel free to share the joys and pains.
Thanks for the info! Good to know we're not the only ones with the same challenges. Yeah we're already offering 24/7, 6am-6pm M-F, and "No Alerts" options for customers but this still doesn't address the unscheduled/automated shutdowns that will be more common as everyone heads to the clouds and want to see subscription and energy savings. The journey continues...
I think I smell a bigger thread and a feature request. I have been concerned about systems that automatically spin up servers and shut them down too. Makes discovery very interesting. At least containers are handled by the container monitoring - besides an ouchy involving perfstack non support (not sure if that is fixed in 2023.1).
