What Custom Properties do you use?

• in_UDT (flag)
  • tells me if the device has been imported into UDT since there is no way to do this using an API.
• Sector
  • We operate several adjoint networks, this tells staff if the device is in a medical center, at a school, at the University, or somewhere between Chicago and Qatar
• assetTag
  • ties the device to our asset database; your finance department should be keeping track of switches for things like depreciation and audit purposes.

Sorry to come late to the party. here are some ideas.

First, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this video from ThwackCamp 2013: http://bcove.me/gxpt8gqm

OK, ego boost out of the way, here are some of the ways I've used custom properties:

1. using a "mute" field (yes/no) and then coding all of my relevant alerts to check it before firing
   ie: if interface_mute is NO and interface_status is DOWN and...
2. While it is now replaced with the built-in thresholds (word to the wise: UPGRADE NOW!!) using various long-int fields to set custom thresholds for bandwidth, packet errors, etc.
   ie: if FIELD bandwdith_xmit is greater than FIELD bandwidth_crit_threshold
3. using a "alert" field (yes/no) to specify whether we should alert on up/down for various interfaces. The default is "no" and therefore our alerts can say "if alert is YES and interface_mute is NO and interface_status is DOWN and...
4. Identifying cellular interfaces. We actually have the reverse alert on those. We want a message when one of those suckers comes UP. We got socked with a bill from the carrier because the cell cards were powering up even though the primary circuit was not down.
5. using a drop-down custom field to identify interfaces in a way that makes sense to us (uplink, wan, cellular, critical, customer-facing, whatever). We use it for both alerting and for report filtering.

Getting away from inerfaces and focusing on Nodes:

1. Location code (used by our HR system)
2. GeoCode (lat/long setting used in mapping)
   caveate: I haven't fully implemented this yet. don't ask me how I did it.
3. business segment
4. main_application (the application team that uses this box or uses it most.)
5. primary_role (our application may be "sales portal", but we also want to know it's a SQL box. Or Sharepoint. Or WAS. or whatever.)

Hope that helps.

Adato,

I am having so much difficulty not asking you about GeoCode.

Can you promise to provide details at a later date?

I use the following to geocode addresses using Google Docs: http://www.digital-geography.com/geocoding-google-spreadsheets-the-simpler-way/

this gives me the address info -> nodeid,lat,log

I then make use of this: Updating Orion.WorldMap.Point via the Perl SDK

To put the location information onto the node (so technically it's no-longer a custom property)

(as an idea being able to import the key => { lat , long } into the worldmap would be really good. where key could be a property (like IP address or nodeid, or a custom property like LocationCode, or AssetTag))