Alerting
The Alerting feature in Connexion lets you distribute event information to one or more Alert Groups, via one or more protocols: SMTP, SMS, SNMP, as well as custom targets. Additionally, alerts can be routed and filtered based on day/time and alert source (group, tab, channel). This makes it possible for different stakeholders to receive a specific alerts. By default, systems have one 'Default' alert group that receives all events. By creating new alert groups, you can route your alerts as required.
Alerts are configured via the 'System Configuration' icon (gear) and alerting tab. Alert groups are listed on the left side and configuration tabs and options are listed on the right.
By creating multiple alert groups, you can specify where, when, and from which channel(s) alerts will be sent. You may wish to send alerts from certain groups/tabs/channels to a specific person/group, or perhaps you wish to create 'office hours' and 'after hours' support groups and have alerts route depending on the day and time of day.
The Options tab lets you specify the basic behavior of the selected alert group. The Minimum Alert Interval specifies the minimum amount of time between alerts being dispatched (all alerts are aggregated for this amount of time before being sent). The Disk space alert will send alerts for each remote agent which has less than the specified free space on the data drive.
The System-level events refers to events generated by the Gateway itself (not individual remote agents). The Handle orphaned alerts specifies that this Alert Group should include any alerts not handled by other Alert Groups. You should always have one Alert Group with this enabled.
The filtering pane at the bottom of this tab lets you filter out specific alerts ("Include all events except"), or only include specific alerts ("Exclude all events except"). Find the event ID you wish to include/exclude by viewing events within the events dialog (the icon to the right of the gear icon on the main window) and enter the event ID into the include/exclude pane. Note that text after a '#' is treated as a comment.
The Email, SNMP, and SMS (text message) tabs let you configure these optional endpoints. The fields on these tabs are self-explanatory, although please note that SMS requires the use of a Twilio account.
The 'Custom' tab contains a custom code control which lets you apply custom logic to alerts, as well as to apply custom filtering. This custom code control uses an event callback OnAlertReceived (or OnAlertReceivedAsync)to let you add custom logic. The event includes an AlertReceivedEventArgs parameter which contains information about the event being generated. The object contains the following items:
Event: The full event object of the generated event. This object contains the event ID, severity, description, created date stamp, source channel key, and source device key.IsInExcludeList(True/False): Is the current event id within the include/exclude pane for this alert group.IsWithinSchedule(True/False): Are we currently within a scheduled day/time for this alert group.IsHandled(True/False): Set this to true if you don't want any other targets (SMTP/SNMP/SMS) to process this alert.
There are many potential uses for the custom alert target. If you wish to apply some complex filtering and/or routing logic, you can use the IsHandled property to mark alerts for inclusion/exclusion. You may also wish to generate a log file of a specific format for your external log ingestion software, or perhaps would like to send alerts to an edge-logging service. As this is a standard custom-code device, you can include standard and web references, resources etc., making it easy to connect to and distribute alerts to other platforms. For example, to connect to Nagios, you could implement the following:
The Scheduling tab let's you specify when your alert group will receive events. It has three options:
No Scheduling: Your alert group will receive all events regardless of day or time.Days & Hours: Choose when your alert group will receive events based on the day and hour (minimum resolution 1 hour)CRON: Specify a CRON string (which must contain an internal marker, ie ' - ')
The most common usage would be Days & Hours. You can toggle a day/hour by clicking with the mouse. Dragging the mouse let's you select multiple adjacent blocks. 'Office hours' and 'After hours' would appear as follows:
The final tab, 'Tabs & Channels', lets you specify which group(s)/tab(s)/channel(s) will be included. By default, the "All" option in each header is checked, including all items. To start filtering, uncheck the "All" checkbox and check the items you wish to include: