I have a request from a client that is asking how they can manage Nodes during Maintenance Windows and eliminate Alerts for the duration period.
Would I create a Custom Property to group the batch of Nodes together and then assign the Custom Property Group to the Trigger Condition of an Alert with An exclusion set against the Time & Day?
What is the best practise of doing this as I'm guessing this is fairly common in view of Maintenance Upgrades/WSUS, and such like.
My example scenario: I have Customer 1 who would like to run Windows Updates against all of their Server 2008 Nodes.
Another question; I've been tasked to review the customers entire environment and their grouping doesn't seem to be logical enough for assigning the correct Alerts easily. I would like to better group their environment and have started at the Network Layer grouping together ALL Network Devices (Switches/Routers/Network Mgmt) via Custom Properties, and will then create Interface or other related Alerts and adding the Custom Property (Network Device Group) to the 'Trigger Condition' of the Alert. Is the a logical approach, or not?
With the above in mind I have sub divided their environment up into Network, Physical Device, Virtual Hosts, Core Services, and Applications Layers. I have then placed all of the devices, servers, services, systems, and key applications into these (Custom Property Groups), and will assing these Properties to the required groups.
In advance thank you for your advice and help.