Starting point is an interesting customer requirement, which can be classified as "I can't believe that this is so complicated to solve...".
Task:
Nodes are organized via Group Feature - one group per customer site.
Some groups are more critical than others (e.g. Datacenter Group vs. small remote office)
Alerts based on Group Information should be created - only critical group members should trigger an alert.
Not only Node but also interface (and possibly any other monitoring entity) down states should trigger an alert!
Problem:
The Solarwinds Advanced Alert Manager currently does not work well with Group Member Alerts in conjunction with members and their child stats.
In the meantime (only) Node members of groups trigger correctly.
But it is afaik impossible to trigger interface (or other entity) alerts based on group membership...?
My solution:
Automatically copy the group information into a customer property field for node and interfaces as well.
I would create a T-SQL job in SQL Studio which runs e.g. twice a day to copy the information between columns.
I created followin update statements to do this.
Since I am no SQL expert feedback is highly appreciated - maybe there is a more efficient way to do this:
(The Group name must contain "_AlertGroup" to differentiate between important and unimportant groups...)
UPDATE Nodes
SET Nodes.NodeGroupMember = Containers_AlertsAndReportsData.GroupName
FROM Nodes
JOIN Containers_AlertsAndReportsData ON Nodes.Caption = Containers_AlertsAndReportsData.GroupMemberName
WHERE Containers_AlertsAndReportsData.GroupName LIKE '%_AlertGroup'
UPDATE Interfaces
SET Interfaces.InterfaceGroupMember = Containers_AlertsAndReportsData.GroupName
FROM Interfaces
JOIN Nodes ON Nodes.NodeID = Interfaces.NodeID
JOIN Containers_AlertsAndReportsData ON Nodes.Caption = Containers_AlertsAndReportsData.GroupMemberName
WHERE Containers_AlertsAndReportsData.GroupName LIKE '%_AlertGroup'
Doing so, I have my group information in Custom Property fields and can easily create alerts based on that.
One major advantage is, that you can use the "Dynamic Query" feature of groups together with alert and reporting flexibility of Custom Properties!
As said, any input is very appreciated!