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mom: all notifications for a server

pretty quick and easy. didn't even believe that it would work since it seems to defy logic (at least mine). apparently it does. once i set it up, i realized why. here's the steps:
  1. create a new rule group.
  2. create a computer group (or use an existing one).
  3. populate the computer group with the computers you want alerts for.
  4. associate the computer group to the rule group.
  5. create an alert rule.
    • only match alerts generated by rules... should be unchecked.
    • add a severity criteria if you want.
    • setup a notification response.
i've no doubt you're smarter than me, but entertain me for a bit and let me explain. the alert rule in this case, is not bound to work for rules of any given rule group. therefore, the alert rule is generic and applies to anything that matches its criteria.

Comments

  1. Nice post Marcus! I played around with this yesterday and found out it for me is more convenient to use this approach rather than installing notification workflow management pack. For those who might be interested can continue reading... :)

    I wanted to have all alerts e-mailed during nights and weekends from all servers. I used the same approach with a some tweaks:

    * Created a computer group with formula to include all my Windows 2000 and 2003 servers:

    AttributeValue(Windows Current Version) = “5.0″ OR AttributeValue(Windows Current Version) = “5.2″

    By using formula, this group should be dynamic and I don't have to manually add new servers.

    * In the alert rule, on Schedule tab “Process data except during the specified time” with Mon-Fri 8-5 was checked.

    Now all alerts are e-mailed during off hours. You could tweak this even further and specify on what severity should trigger notification. But then it might be worth installing Notification Workflow. Speaking of it, as I have understood, Notification Workflow can only process e-mail. This approach can trigger pager, script, snmp etc. which can be a deal breaker for some of you.

    Cheers!

    BR

    Björn Johansson

    ReplyDelete
  2. great stuff bjorn. thanks for the follow on... :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Marcus,

    Thank you for this information. Unfortunately, it is not working for me. Did I miss anything?

    I created a new computer group - Notification Testing

    I created a new Notification group - same name

    I created a new rule group - assigned the computer group to the rule group

    I created an alert rule with severity > error. In the alert rule I added a notification to the newly created notification group.

    I tested by disabling the NIC on one of my test servers (in the computer group) and no email...

    Any suggestions on how to trouble-shoot this?

    Thanks again for posting this - its the simplest suggestion I have seen for this type of notification.

    -don

    ReplyDelete
  4. yooo don. your configuration seems correct. my only suggestion is to make sure that the alert rule you created does not have "match alert generated by rule group..." checked. if it is, it'll be bound to that rule group. that's not the desired effect. what you're doing is creating an alert rule that kind of sits unbound... waiting for anything of severity > error. hope that helps! if not, i will be more than happy to post a sample akm.

    ReplyDelete
  5. still not working. I would love a sample AKM file. I posted a screen-cap on my blog (of the alert rule).

    http://donmann.blogspot.com/2006/08/mom-notifications-via-specific.html


    -don

    ReplyDelete
  6. Figured it out!

    It was working all along. Just not for the "heartbeat" alerts. Reason being, that Management Pack wasn't written very well, and the "event" rules are generating the notification, and not relying on "alert" rules.

    When I started stopping services on the box, my test contacts started getting alerts immediately!

    It does bring up another question... how would one effectively alert on "event" based rules, as they are all specific to their particular events.

    Marcus - thank you for this excellent post!

    ReplyDelete
  7. "It does bring up another question... how would one effectively alert on "event" based rules, as they are all specific to their particular events."

    Ever find a solution for this?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you Marcus for this hint.
    It works fine ... except one thing.
    If I create such a rule for a computer group that includes the MOM Server itself, I get the alerts for all servers, that a monitored by this MOM Server. Excluding the MOM Server from the group helped, but I'm not really sure why this happens.

    BR
    Oliver

    ReplyDelete

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