Grouping servers for Automatic Event Handling Tasks

[Ed Bruce_1]

I'm finally working on transitioning from Compaq Insight Manager 5.5 to HP Systems Insight Manager.

We have different groups that are responsible for responding to alerts for different servers (each group has about 100 servers). What is the easiest way to group these servers for the Automatic Event Handling Tasks. It seems like the security groups or systems lists do not carry over to the selection box when selecting servers for a particular Automatic Event Handling Task.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Ed

[Rob Buxton · Accepted solution]

I'm hoping that the Systems Lists will become available to Event Handling.

I asked a similar question a while back and it does seem to have been picked up by HP. Not sure when or even if it will be available though.

So, the only way is to individually select the Servers in each Automatic Handling task.

[David Claypool]

The use of a custom list for event handling was a topic of hot debate among the developers during the creation of hpSIM. The prevailing thought was that event handling was a "system" task and should not be tied to customized lists of a user.

While I think there is considerable momentum towards allowing custom lists to be used in event handling, this is a non-trivial change to the application. Do not expect to see the change in the 4.1 version expected this Spring.

[Rob Buxton]

David,
Perhaps because we might think of the Customised lists as System wide rather than just a User.
Allowing me, as an Administrator to tailor a Server List for a User Group and target Alerts from that same List saves me duplicating work and maintenance. Not a trivial task in some of the more changeable environments.

[Mike Kanakos]

I have setup tasks that mimic my group in the old insight mgr that you refer to. Here's how I did it..

NEW TASK
- TASK NAME equals group name (i.e. programmers alerts)
- I then set severity to all except informational
- then I pick the servers I want (lenghty process at times)
- I then created groups on my mail server of the people i want alerted

- last piece was to enter the email addy of new group in sight mgr task details.

Anyone needs help; feel free to email me.

Mike Kanakos

[Rob Buxton]

Mike,
I knew it could be done, but the advantage of being able to use the System Lists is that you only need to select the Servers once.
e.g. A number of Servers make up your Finance System. You Group those in a System List and from there you could tailor User Views Event Notifications etc. to that System List. Then if the Servers changed, added or removed you just need to change the list and not all of the Notification Tasks.

[bonnie_12]

When I choose Options/events/automatic handling/new task.. I am not able to select events. I get the "name" step (first step) but do not see any events to choose from.

What am I doing wrong?

thanks

[Mike Kanakos]

Bonnie,

You need to give the task a name. The name will show in the tasks window. I named my tasks similar to the groups I wanted alerted.

Also, see Rob's post before yours about system lists. I am new to the system lists coincept and am exploring my options with that..

[Pat Wilson]

I agree with Rob Buxton. Being able to specify affected systems via custom system lists would greatly simplify setting up event handling (exactly the way Mike Kanakos setup distribution lists on his email server as the notification destination). Modify one list, and thereby modify many notification tasks.

HPSIM uses its own custom lists (check out the 'targets' on the scheduled tasks - are they not specialized lists of systems?) so why can't we use them for our own Automatic Event Handling tasks? Would it really be that hard to add one additional selection criteria - "Is_Member_Of "?

[Reed Savory]

Allow me to add my vote to those arguing for Automatic Event Handling based on System List membership. I am also just now upgrading off of Compaq Insight Manager, and the loss of this ability is quite frankly, a real pain in the neck.

-Reed

[Alan Russell_1]

I can not belive that HP made this decision.

In an enterprise environment, many different groups can be responsible for many different systems. Having no easy way to group the systems for alert handling is pretty short sighted.

[Dan Forsyth]

I am implementing HPSIM 4.2 in a 200+ server environment. I am discouraged to find out that I am unable to create "groupings" of servers (i.e. Development, Production, et. al.). I do not need to receive late night pages for certain servers groupings and do not wish to create an inclusion list that would represent hundreds of servers.

Why would you not want to carry over functionality from a previous product? Very confusing. I wonder if Dell OpenManager or IBM Director have this same issue. It may be worth investigating my options.

[Kevin_130]

Add my vote to those wanting to use my customized System Lists.

One thing that might help for some of you is the use of the Contact and Location fields in your Select Systems sections.

Since we don't use them any other way in our environment, we do a check on the Contact field in our paging task. If it contains "no page", we do not send the page, useful for our test lab where we want monitoring (i.e. not Disabled), but we don't want to get anyone out of bed.

Basically you could execute tasks based on the contents of that field i.e. Group1, Group2, etc. Since this field is easily configured in many OS' during server deployment, it can have the added benefit of making your customized lists and tasks dynamic so that new servers are dynamically added to the right groups.

Thanks,
Kevin

[OlivierV]

I personnaly see a benefit in not grouping an event task to a system list. In IM7, we created site lists based on the system names. Then we found more simple to base it on an IP range : a new server would be listed automatically according to it's IP address. But when carying out such changes, the eMail task that was linked to the event list re-send all the previously sent messages because I think the event list was "different" in it's settings, even if the servers in it were the same. This is not the case with SIM and the new way to defined the event handling. If the previous way of settings the event handling comes back, the problem of changing the Event lists settings must be taken in consideration not to flood the site admins with the messages they already received.

[NewKidd2]

In our environment, we have a team of 6 network guys supporting 26 separate offices (that is, 26 different IP ranges). We monitor all the servers, LAN switches and UPS systems for all of them. I have struggled, while creating pager alerts for the different systems each of us is responsible for.

It is truly a nightmare, especially, since there is no quick way to duplicate another event task.

I add my vote for the system list-based event task. And, if they throw in a quick way to duplicate event tasks, all the merrier.

[NewKidd2]

Another feature that I would welcome is the ability to drag and drop. This would be great, especially for those that are against "System List-based event tasks".

Basically, we should be able to place a check mark some or all the systems you want to add to your event task (or the system list, for that matter). This would be a great time-saver indeed!!!