Home |   help index | Screen Shot

IPSentry - Alert - Pager - General Settings

The Pager Alert provides notification via various types of pagers when  a problem has been encountered on a specific monitored item. 

The pager alert tab contains settings that apply to the alert along with a list of pagers that will be used in conjunction with these settings.

This page explains the various settings on this tab with actual pager configuration outlined in the pages to follow. 

Please see the How-To section for additional information on various configurations.

Enabled
This frame provides a tri-state selection regarding the status of the alert which allows you to enable, disable, or use the global state (default)

• Yes
  The YES option signifies that the alert is enabled for this device and should use the settings provided in the remaining configuration fields for this alert.  The settings for the alert will be unique to this specific entry.
   
• No
  The NO option signifies that this alert is disabled, regardless of the default or other configurations, this alert will NOT be generated in case of a failure of the monitored device under which it is defined.
   
• Default
  The DEFAULT option signifies that the alert should be identical to and make use of the settings outlined in the default configuration model.   Any changes made to the default configuration will be applied to all alerts marked "Default" allowing global changes to alert setting through the default configuration. 
  
  Note that if the default configuration has the enabled flag set to "NO", all alerts marked as "default" will be ignored during the triggering of alerts.

Alert Success
All alerts with the exception of paging alerts make use of this setting.  When checked, the alert will be generated both when the system fails an when the the failure is corrected. 

For example, if you are monitoring a web server and it fails, the alert would be triggered noting that there is a failure.  Additional failure notification will be sent according to the alert schedule outlined below.  Once the system is recovered and the failure corrected, another alert will be generated as an "UP" notification.

In using alerts such as Pager or Email, the IPSentry Keyword %IPS_M_STAT% will be converted to the current state of the device making it possible to recognize immediately whether the alert was triggered due to the system going "DOWN" or coming back "UP".

Escalate Time
When this options is checked, you the value entered will represent the number of minutes that must elapse during subsequent failures before the next pager in the list is notified.

After each pager in the list has been notified, IPSentry will begin notifications at the first and continue the cycle.

Keep in mind that the Alert Schedule will also be used and improper settings in this are can cause the alert to stop escalating if the schedule is configured in such a way that the maximum number of alerts is reached before the entire list has been notified. 

Page All
Checking this option causes IPSentry to send a page to every pager on the list.  If you have 20 pagers configured to be alerted, all 20 pagers, regardless of type will be attempted.

Again, the alert schedule will be used however, this will have no effect on the total number of pagers alerted, rather, the number of times that all pagers are notified.

Pager List
This list displays a line item for each pager that should be utilized during a pager alert.  By highlighting an item in this list, you can edit or delete the pager configuration.

Add (button)
Select this button add a new pager definition to the pager list.  The entry will be appended to the end of the list and can be re-ordered into the list using the sequencing arrows to the right of the list.

Del (button)
After highlighting a pager configuration in the Pager List, hit this button to remove the highlighted pager definition from the pager list.

Sequencing Arrows
After highlighting a specific pager, click on the UP or DOWN arrows to move the paging entry within the list of items.  This is most often used in conjunction with the escalation feature to notify specific individuals in a incremental fashion based on the time setting for pager escalation.

Up Code
Unlike other alerts, numeric beepers do can not make use of the words "UP" or "DOWN". Therefore, allowing a simple checkbox for "Alert Success" would provide no information to the recipient of a numeric page as to whether the page was caused by a system going down or a system being corrected.

In order to overcome this problem, the UP CODE field is used in place of the Alert Success option.  This field should contain a numeric code that will appear on a numeric beeper when the system in question is successful after first being reported down.

For alpha pagers and email pagers however, this actual contents of this field are not used for anything more than signaling the fact that you want an "Alert Success" to be sent.  For these types of pagers, you should make use of the %IPS_M_STAT% keyword (message text) in order to provide the status to the recipient of the page.  Keep in mind however that the UP CODE must still contain at least one character for this action to take place - even if you have no numeric beepers configured.

Please see the following sections for information on configuring the individual pager entries.

• DTMF Pager Configuration

• TAP/SMS Pager Configuration

• Email Pager Configuration 

Alert Schedule
The alert schedule allows you "fine tune" the alerting functions to avoid unnecessary alerting during an extended failure.  You may not want to be paged every single time a failure is detected after the first alert.  You can use this schedule to set how many failures must be detected before the first alert.  Set how many failures must be detected for each subsequent alert, and the maximum number of alerts you feel are adequate to obtain a response from specified personnel. 

• First After [n] failures
  Represents the number of sequential failures that must occur before the alert notification is processed.  You can increase this value if you notice a large amount of false alerts being processed.  On some systems, response times may not be consistent and a failure may be detected due to overhead at peak times.  If the failure continues for this number of cycles, the alert will be processed.
   
• Every [n] failures
  Once the first alert has been processed, IPSentry will only process the alert notification after this many sequential failures.  In many cases, once a failed entry has triggered an alert, notification during every IPSentry polling cycle is not usually required.
   
• Max of [n] alerts
  Enter the maximum number of times you want IPSentry to process the alert notification.  A value of -1 - infinite.  This counter is based on sequential failures without a single success.
   

Note:  Setting the first-after or every values to any value less than 1 can have unexpected results.

Load Defaults (button)
This button will load the default configuration information into the appropriate fields.  This is a quick way to use a standard configuration with minor variations between entries.

Note: You need NOT use this option when the enabled option is set to "Default" since the replacement of the alert configuration with default configuration values will be done automatically when the alert is triggered.  You need only use this button when the enabled option is set to YES and you wish to slightly modify the default configuration and make the entry specific to the monitored device to which this alert is related.

Test Alert (button)
This option will attempt to process the alert as configured. A message will be displayed regarding failure or success of the alert generation.

Related Topics

• IPSentry - Alert - Pager Notifications

SCREEN SAMPLES