Alert Monitor Actions

Products

CMDB for z/OS NetSpy Network Performance NetMaster Network Automation SOLVE NetMaster Network Management for SNA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP NetMaster File Transfer Management SOLVE:Operations Automation SOLVE:Access Session Management SOLVE:FTS

Issue/Introduction

Environment

Release:
Component: NMTIP

Resolution

The Alert Monitor is a central alerting point for Unicenter NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP and other Unicenter NetMaster products. You can monitor alerts from the Alert Monitor or elect to forward these alerts to other centralized alerting products such as the Unicenter Service Desk. To access the Alert Monitor on your Unicenter NetMaster region enter =M.A, or the shortcut /ALERTS from any command prompt, and the following panel appears.

If you are monitoring TCP/IP resources with the IP Resource Monitor, you can extend the monitoring it provides by generating an alert when a problem occurs. Suppose you are monitoring an address space which runs a critical IP application server and you want to create an alert if the listener port is not in a status of 'LISTEN'. To do this, follow these steps:

Go to the IP Resource Monitor (=M.I or the shortcut /IPMON from anywhere).
Enter the command UM (Update Monitoring) against application server ASMON resource.
Select the PortStatus attribute.
Enter a ? in the qualifier field and select the port number.
Select the update action. The following panel appears.

Here you define the severity of the alert you want to generate. You do not need to give a description as this is automatically generated for you. In our example we are generating a Severity 1 alert if listener port 3333 on TCP/IP stack TCPIP11 does not have a status of LISTEN. Port 3333 is associated with ASMON resource INETD7. We are also going to automatically clear the alert if the status of attribute PortStatus becomes LISTEN.

Automated Actions

Now that you have defined the alert you wish to create, you can also use Unicenter NetMaster products to perform an automated action in addition to generating this alert. From the above screen, you can press F5 (Actions) to display or add actions. Then press F4 (Add) to add an action, and you are presented with a list of available action types, as shown below.

The following sections discuss the automated actions that are available.

Create a Trouble Ticket

You may be interested in keeping up-to-date with alerts being generated. You can configure the Alert Monitor Trouble Ticket Interface to either send an email or send the alert to Unicenter Service Desk. To do this, you select the AUTO_TROUBLE_TICKET action from the list.

Set up the Trouble Ticket Interface

Before you can use the AUTO_TROUBLE_TICKET automated action, you need to define a Trouble Ticket interface.

In this example, we will define an EMAIL trouble ticket interface to email the alert to an interested party. To do this, follow these steps:

Go to menu option A.A.I (Define Trouble Ticket Interface) and enter EMAIL in the Interface Type field.
Then press F6 (Action).

You are then presented with the Email Trouble Ticket panel.
Enter the Host Name and SMTP Node Name. The Subject field will contain the Alert Description by default and the email text will contain Alert Creation Date and Time and the Alert Severity.

Press F1 (Help) to see a full list of available variables that you can use to construct the email subject and text.
Press F3 (File) to save and exit.

Now that you have defined the interface to use, you must define the trouble ticket data entry. This essentially tells Unicenter NetMaster products which email address to send the alert to. You are also setting up the panel of information presented to a user who enters the TT command against an alert in the Alert Monitor. Enter A.A.D (Trouble Ticket Data Entry) and fill in the details.

Now that you have defined the Trouble Ticket Interface, you can select AUTO_TROUBLE_TICKET as an automated action, as described above. Give your action a short description and you will see the email address that the alert will be automatically emailed to. Press F3 (File) to save and an automatically generated email will be delivered whenever your TCP port is no longer in a status of LISTEN.

Run an Automation Services Process

Another type of automated action is to run a process. Processes are a powerful feature of Unicenter NetMaster products that let you perform a series of actions without the need for writing code. If you want to view the processes defined to your region, or define new processes, select A.R.P (Processes).

A common use of processes as Automated Actions is to issue a WTO to be picked up by your systems automation product whenever an alert is generated. .

To do this, follow these steps:

Select AUTOMATION_SERVICES_PROCESS from the list of available actions.
Once again, give your action a brief description, and select the WTO process.

Then add the message as a keyword parameter, for example MSG="ALERT &$AMDESC".

The following variables are always available to use when constructing parameters to a process:

$AMAPPLID	Application which created the alert
$AMDESC	Alert short description
$AMDATE	Date when the alert was generated
$AMDAY	Day of the week when the alert was generated
$AMGMTOFFST	Local time difference from Greenwich Mean Time
$AMRECM*	Alert recommended action line * (1 to 4)
$AMLASTDATE	Date when the alert last occurred
$AMLASTTIME	Time when the alert last occurred
$AMOCCURRED	Number of time the alert has occurred
$AMSERIALNM	Software generated alert identifier
$AMSEVERITY	Severity of the alert
$AMSYSTEMID	System which created the alert
$AMTEXT*	Alert text line * (1 to 5)
$AMTIME	Time when the alert was generated
$AMUPDDATE	Date when the alert was last updated
$AMUPDTIME	Time when the alert was last updated

For the complete list of available variables, select F1 (Help), select Automation Services Process Details, and then select Variables.

Your resource will now automatically generate a WTO whenever a new alert is created.

Issue a Notify

Another type of automated action is to issue a notify command. This is a broadcast message to the users specified when you set up the action.

To do this, follow these steps:

From the Monitor Attribute: Value Alert Details panel, press F5 (Actions).
Press F4 (Add) to add an action and select NOTIFY.
Give your action a brief description and specify the user IDs to notify and what information you want to generate.

You can also use the available Alert Monitor variables to construct the message.

Your resource will now automatically issue a NOTIFY whenever a new alert is created.

Issue a Command

Another type of automated action is to issue a command. This could be a Unicenter NetMaster command or a system command using SYSCMD.

To do this, follow these steps:

From the Monitor Attribute: Value Alert Details panel press F5 (Actions).
Press F4 (Add) to add an action and select RUN_COMMAND.
Give your action a brief description and specify the command you want to issue.

You can also use the available Alert Monitor variables.

Your resource will now automatically generate a command whenever a new alert is created.

Run an NCL Procedure

The last type of automated action is to run an NCL procedure. You may want to do some extra processing of the alert information before you issue a WTO or other custom actions.

To do this, follow these steps:

From the Monitor Attribute: Value Alert Details panel press F5 (Actions).
Press F4 (Add) to add an action and select RUN_NCL.
Give your action a brief description and specify the command you want to generate.

You can also use the available Alert Monitor variables.

This alert runs NCL procedure ALRTSCAN. Here is some sample code to give you an idea of how the parameters are passed through, letting you perform more sophisticated processing on the alert information. A WTO is generated after the date has been converted to a more readable format.

&SETVARS PREFIX=## DATA=&ALLPARMS                              
&newDate = &DATECONV DATE8 &##Date DATE2                      
&newMSG = &STR Resource=&##Res Description=&##Desc +        
           Date Created=&newDate Time Created=&##Time         
&WTO DATA=&newMSG

IP Node Monitor

The IP Node Monitor lets you monitor IP nodes and create alerts and automated actions in the same way as the IP Resource Monitor. Use the H (History) command and issue a UA (UpdAlrt) against the attribute that you want to generate the alert for.

Conclusion

The IP Node Monitor and IP Resource Monitor are powerful monitoring tools and, when combined with the automatic actions that can be performed when alerts are triggered, can help keep you on top of your IP network.