SiteScope User's Guide

SiteScope Alerts

You can instruct SiteScope to alert you when it detects a problem in your web environment. SiteScope offers several types of alerts including e-mail, electronic pager, and SNMP Trap. An alert definition contains instructions that tell SiteScope how to respond when there is a change in state for a monitor, for example a change from normal-to-error or normal-to-warning condition. You can create an alert that includes instructions for SiteScope to notify you via your pager or send you e-mail when a specific condition is detected. You can also have SiteScope respond to problems by automatically initiating a recovery or action script with the versatile Script Alert.

This section describes:

• Using SiteScope Alerts
  • Understanding when SiteScope Alerts are sent>
• The Alert Detail page
• How to create an alert
• How to edit an alert
• How to delete an alert
• How to disable an alert
• How to view alerts logs and other logs

Using SiteScope Alerts

SiteScope alerts can be used in several ways to notify you of conditions in your web environment. Alerts can be associated with individual monitors, groups of monitors, or globally for all monitors on a particular installation of SiteScope. The table below shows the different ways alerts can be associated with monitors.

Alert Class	Description
Global Alerts	Alerts that are triggered when any monitor on a given SiteScope installation changes status.
Group Alerts	Alerts are triggered by any monitor within the specified group or within a selection of individual monitors.
Individual Monitor Alerts	Alerts are triggered when the specified monitor status changes.

Understanding when SiteScope Alerts are sent

By default, SiteScope sends one alert as soon as any monitor it is associated with detects an error condition. The options presented in the When section of the alert definition page allow you to control when alerts are actually sent in relation to when a given condition is detected. For example, you can choose to have SiteScope generate an alert only after an error condition persists for a specific interval corresponding to a given number of monitor runs. This is useful for monitors that run frequently that monitor dynamic, frequently changing environment parameters. In some cases, a single error condition may not warrant any intervention.

The options in the When section are as follows:

The following diagrams show examples of different alert configurations that send alerts after the error condition has persisted for more than one monitor run. It is important to note that the sample interval corresponds to how often the monitor is run. If a monitor runs every fifteen seconds and the alert is set to be sent after the third error reading, the alert will be sent 30 seconds after the error was detected. If the monitor run interval is once every hour with the same alert setup the alert would not be sent until 2 hours later.

Example 1a.  Alert sent for each error reading after condition persists for at least three monitor runs. Compare with Example 1b below.

Example 1b.  Alert sent for each error reading after condition persists for at least three monitor runs. Shows how the count is reset when the monitor returns one non-error reading between consecutive error readings. Compare with Example 1a above.

Example 2.   Alert sent ONLY ONCE after condition persists for at least three monitor runs, regardless of how long the error is returned thereafter.

Example 3a.  Alert sent on the fifth error reading and for ever third consecutive error reading thereafter. Compare with Example 3b below.

Example 3b.  Alert sent on the third error reading and for ever fifth consecutive error reading thereafter. Compare with Example 3a above.

Because you can create multiple alerts and associate more than one alert to a monitor, you can tell SiteScope to take more than one action for a given situation. For example, you can create one alert that tells SiteScope to page you whenever any monitor returns an error status. You can then create another alert that tells SiteScope to run a script file to delete files in the /tmp directory on your server if your Disk Space Monitor returns an error. Then if your disk ever became too full, SiteScope would page you because of the first alert definition and would run the script to delete files in the /tmp directory because of the second alert definition.

SiteScope alerts are generated when there is a change in state for a monitor reading. Thus you can set an alert for OK or warning conditions as well as error conditions. One way to take advantage of this is to add two alerts, one alert on error, and one alert on OK. Set alerts to be sent after the condition is detected 3 time. For the OK alert, check the box marked "Only allow alert if monitor was previously in error at least 3 times". This will prevent unmatched OK alerts, such as when a monitor was disabled for any reason (manually, by schedule, or by depends on) and then starts up again. This can also be used to ensure that an OK alert is only sent after a corresponding error alert was sent. With these two alerts you will get a page when a link or service goes down (monitor detects change from OK to error), and another when it comes back up (monitor detecting change from error to OK). The following diagram is an example of using two alerts with a monitor.

Example 4.   Alert on error sent once for error after condition persists for at least three monitor runs. Alert on OK sent once for good status after at least one error or warning interval.

Alert on Error setup	On Error		Once, after the condition occurs exactly times
Alert on OK setup	On Ok		Once, after the condition occurs exactly times Only allow alert if monitor was previously in error at least times
sample interval	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
status
count	c=0	c=1	c=2	c=3 alert!	c=4	c=5	c=6	c=7	c=1 alert!	c=2	c=3

Index

The Alert Detail Page

The Alert Table

The Alert Detail table gives you a summary view of the alerts currently defined. The columns of the Alert Detail table display the following information:

On

The status condition under which SiteScope should respond. For example, if this column contains error x 1, SiteScope will respond the first time a selected monitor returns a reading in the error range. It the column contains error x 5, SiteScope will only respond after the monitor returns a reading that indicates an error 5 times. If you've created an alert for several monitors, such as all monitors in a particular group, SiteScope will respond when any monitor in the group meets the indicated status condition.

Group

The name of the monitor group this alert has been associated with. Global alerts are indicated by "all groups".

For

This column lists the monitor or monitors for which the alert status condition must be true. For global alerts this will be any monitor defined on this installation of SiteScope. Group alerts will be for any monitor in the group. Individual alerts will list the name of the specific monitor.

Do

The action that SiteScope should take when the condition is met for the specified monitor(s). For example, this column may contain something like Send Mail to "sysadmin@thiscompany.com" which indicates that e-mail should be sent to this address if the appropriate status condition exists.

History

click this link to display a table showing the alerts that were sent during the last day or 24-hour period.

Edit

Selecting this link will take you to the Edit Alert page. This will allow you to make changes in the alert criteria.

Test

Use this link to test an alert with a selected monitor. The Alert Test page is displayed. If the alert is assigned to more than one monitor, the Alert test page allows you to select an individual monitor from a drop-down list. Selecting the "Test Alert" button completes the action

Del

Click the X to delete this alert. A confirmation screen is displayed. Selecting the "Delete Alert" button completes the action

Alert Action Links

In addition to the alert table, the following Alert Action links are also available on the alert detail page.

Add

Choose this link to create a new alert definition.

Disable

Choose this link to disable all defined alerts. This is useful in the event of a major failure that you are already aware of and want to suppress an "Alert Storm".

Enable

Choose this link to enable previously disabled alerts.

Test E-mail

Choose this link to send a test message using e-mail. This allows you to verify that SiteScope will be able to reach you via e-mail in the event of an error or warning. Use the E-mail Preferences link to specify e-mail addresses and servers that SiteScope should use for e-mail alerts .

Test Pager

Choose this link to send a test message to your pager. This allows you to verify that SiteScope will be able to reach you via pager in the event of an error or warning. Use the Pager Preferences link to configure pager settings for SiteScope.

Test SNMP Trap

Choose this link to send a test message using SNMP. This allows you to verify that SiteScope will be able to contact the SNMP console in the event of an error or warning. Use the SNMP Preferences link to configure SiteScope to send messages to SNMP consoles.

Alert Report

Choose this link to view a report of alerts that were sent.

Alert Log

Choose this link to view Logs page. The Logs page includes a link to the Alert Log which is a tab delimited log file for the alerts that have been sent. Other log files accessible via this link include the log of any errors encountered in sending the alerts, and date coded log files of SiteScope monitor readings.

Index

Creating Alerts

 To create a new alert:

1. On the SiteScope Panel, click the Alerts button on the navigation bar. The alert detail page appears.
2. Click the "Add a new alert" link. The Add Alert form appears.
3. Choose the category of monitor status that activates this alert - error, warning, or OK.
4. Click the radio button for the kind of alert you would like to add - e-mail, pager, script, etc..
5. Click that "Define Alert" button. The Define Alert form for the kind of alert that you selected will appear.
6. Complete the form for the specific alert you are creating. Each Define Alert page asks you to select the monitor or monitors that will trigger the alert, details of how and where the alert will be sent, and criteria defining when or how often the alert should be sent. Use the Help button on the navigation bar to see help specific to that kind of alert.
7. Click the "Add this alert" link. The new alert is created and the alert detail page is updated.

Editing Alerts

 To edit an alert:

1. On the SiteScope Panel, click the Alerts button on the navigation bar. The alert detail page appears.
2. Click the Edit link in the Alert Detail Table for the alert that you want to edit. The Edit Alert form appears.
3. Make the desired changes to the form.
4. Click the "Update this alert" link. The alert is updated and the alert detail page appears again.

Deleting Alerts

To delete an alert:

1. On the SiteScope Panel, click the Alerts button on the navigation bar. The alert detail page appears.
2. Click the X in the Del column of the Alert Detail Table.
3. A confirmation screen is displayed. click the Delete Alert button to confirm the action
4. The alert detail page is updated.

Disabling Alerts

You may disable alerts whenever you don't want SiteScope to notify you of an error.

To disable an alert:

1. On the SiteScope Panel, click the Alerts button on the navigation bar. The alert detail page appears.
2. Click the Edit link in the Alert Detail Table for the alert that you want to disable. The Edit Alert form appears.
3. Check the disable box located under Advanced Options.
4. Click the "Update this alert" link. The alert detail page appears again.

Viewing Sent Alerts and Logs

You may view a log of all the alerts that have been sent for the last day, a log of failed alert attempts, and date coded monitor logs.

To view the alert logs:

1. On the SiteScope Panel, click the Alerts button on the navigation bar. The alert detail page appears.
2. Click the View the log of alerts sent link near the bottom of the Alert Detail page. The Alert Log page appears.
3. Click the Alert log link to view the details of alerts that were sent. If SiteScope encountered problems executing an alert, a Failed alerts link will be displayed. Click this link to view the details of alerts for which an error was encountered. An example may be that SiteScope was unable to reach a paging service.

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