Netmaster / SOLVE Alerts and elapsed time

Products

• NetMaster Network Automation
• NetMaster Network Management for SNA
• NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP
• NetMaster File Transfer Management
• SOLVE

Issue/Introduction

I have notice that several alerts in the Alert monitor either don't have an Alert elapsed time or if the field is present it is zero when it should be non-zero.

Example 1

This one I would expect the Elapsed time to be 7 mins not 0

Example 2


This one doesn't even have the Elapsed Time line present - I would expected this to be there as 1 hr 33 mins


Are these bugs?

Environment

Release : 12.2

Component : CA NetMaster Network Automation

Resolution

Neither of the alerts indicate a problem.

In the first example

The time Netmaster calculates is the difference between Created and Last Occurred.
The help panel (PF1 from the screen) states

Elapsed time is the approximate amount of time that a    
recurring alert has been active. The value is            
calculated when an alert occurs more than once. This     
field is not applicable to alerts that have happened     
once.     
                                                         
The value displays the amount of time between when the   
alert was created and when it last occurred.             
                                                       
Those times are the same here.

Also from the related help panels in the product:

Last Updated at is the date and time the alert was last 
updated. An update refers to an operation such as       
tracking, annotating, or changing the severity of an    
alert. It does not refer to a recurrence of the alert.  

 

The Closed time is also not used for time calculation.

 

An example where you would see a time difference is something like this where the last occurred is later than the Created date.

In Example 2

There was only 1 occurrence, so no elapsed time has been calculated.

Again, the help screen in the product shows:
Elapsed time is the approximate amount of time that a    
recurring alert has been active. The value is            
calculated when an alert occurs more than once. This     
field is not applicable to alerts that have happened     
once.                                                    
         

 

The current design and architecture is about recurring alerts, as those are going to be alerts that will span across multiple monitoring intervals.  Recurring alerts are those alerts that have potential to last hours and days and it would be nice to know exactly how long it took for the alert to be closed (and yes, by 'closed' it is referring to the last occurrence, not the actual close time).

A regular alert that hasn't recurred means it was a one shot deal, and at the next interval it was closed, so most likely the elapsed time will always be the monitoring interval.