Dynamic Alarm Title Configuration for Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Alarms in Spectrum

Products

Spectrum Network Observability

Issue/Introduction

You get BGP transition / established alarms on the device models when the wan link goes down. As these alarms are asserted on the device models, you may not know the port details of the wan link from the alarm title. The provided solution uses the dynamic alarm title concept to insert the port IP address with some relevant text in the BGP transition alarm title to identify the link details.

Environment

DX NetOps Spectrum all currently supported releases

Resolution

Here are the steps which help to identify which link has gone down for a BGP alarm:

Identify the event code for the BGP transition alarm. Default it is 0x220011
The event message for this alert looks like this:

"A bgpBackwardTransition trap has been received for this device. The peer router is {S 5}, the current state is {T bgpPeerState 3}, and the LastError is {O 1}"

The event variable "5" here gives the value of the Interface IP address on which the link went down. This is not reflected in the alarm title. we are going to use "Dynamic Alarm Title" concept to forward this IP address to the alarm title.
Remove the default critical alarm from the default BGP transition event and create a new event which will carry all the event variables of the default event into its event message. You can't use the default event because the value for event variable "5" is generated from code and not from the alert map file. This is the reason you cannot use the dynamic alarm title on the default event.
Create a new event from the Event Configuration Editor. In this case assume the new event code is 0xfff00000. Map this event to a critical alarm.
The text for the event message and Pcause on the new event can be similar to the default event or different according to your requirement. But the event variables position should be same as the default event.

For example:

"A new bgpBackwardTransition trap has been received for this model. The router interface ip is {S 5}, the current state is {T bgpPeerState 3}, and theLastError is {O 1}"
Save the new event from the Event Configuration Editor. No need to update the event configuration on the VNM icon for these changes in the latest versions of Spectrum. The changes are reflected automatically once they are saved in the Event Configuration Editor.
The event code for BGP established event is 0x00220010 . By default this will clear the default BGP transition alarm. As we removed the default alarm and asserted the same on the new event 0xfff00000, we need to reconfigure the BGP established event to clear the alarm for 0xfff00000 and remove the default mapping to clear the 0x00220011 alarm.
Logon to the Event Configuration Event -> Filter for the event 0x00220010 -> In the right panel at the bottom under cleared alarm list -> Remove the default BGP alarm and insert the new alarm 0xfff00000. Now the BGP Established Trap will clear the 0xfff00000 alarm.
Save the changes using the file tab in the ECE.
Now we need to write an event procedure which will copy the event variables from 0x00220011 to 0xfff00000 and copies the value of event variable "5" to the dynamic alarm title attribute which is 0x00012b4. This event procedure will also append dome text the alarm title of the new event along with the interface IP of the port.
Open the EventDisp file present in the $SPECROOT/custom/Events directory and insert the following code (in blue) into it. NOTE: Leave out the green explanatory comments starting with ------------------>

0x220011 P " \ ------------------> Default BGP Transition Alarm , P stands for starting of the even Procedure.
CreateEventWithVariables( \ --------------------> Function helps in creating a new event.
{ C CURRENT_MODEL }, \ -------------------> On which model the new event should be created.
{ H 0xfff00000 },\ -------------------> New event code to be created from the default event.
SetEventVariable(\ --------------------> Set the event variables in the new event.
GetEventVariableList(),\ ---------------------> Get the value of the event variable "5" from the new event.
{ H 0x00012b4c },\ -------------------> Insert the value from above step into the Dynamic alarm title attribute. This will pull the interface IP from event to the alarm title.
Append( \ --------------------> Function to append some text to the alarm title.
{ S \"BGP backward transition. Peer router: \" },\ ------------------> Insert the text "BGP backward transition. Peer router" to the alarm title for the event 0xfff00000.
GetEventVariable( { U 5 } ) ) ) )" -------------------> Function used to get the value of the default variable "5" from the event 0xfff00000 to pass onto the dynamic alarm title attribute.
Once the above code is inserted save the file.
In the OC console -> VNM icon -> Component detail panel -> SpectroServer control tab -> Click on "Update event configuration". This will help us reflect the above changes in the Event Disp onto the OneClick alarms console.
This is how the new BGP alarm looks like