Test Disaster email

[Jeff Tangen]

I have my network set-up with 9 Proliant server. I logon to the Main server and see a green check next to each servers Hardware. So I know I am good. I want to do 2 things:

1. Get emailed every morning saying "all is well with Servers Hardware"

2. Test a disaster on one server like a harddrive going out in the array. A simulated disaster to prove that an email will be sent. So I know that it works.

NO NEWS IS NOT ALWAYS GOOD NEWS.

Thanks.

[Scott Shaffer]

The first thing you want to do can't be done with the built-in email support in HP SIM (you are using HP SIM, right?) It could be done in IM7, but honestly it was a side-effect rather than an intent (you can configure an Email task in IM7 to send you a list of all Normal systems every morning at 8am.)

The second can be done though pretty easily - just pull out a drive from a mirrored pair or RAID 5 set and watch the system respond. I'd do this with a test server, of course. We don't have any other way of simulating a drive failure though.

[Jeff Tangen]

Could I setup a task to run on SIM that would say everything is green?

[Rob Buxton]

I've not tried this, but you may be able to achieve it by writing something to directly query the IM database and run it as a Batch file.

To test an e-mail query, if the Event Handling is pretty generic, i.e. e-mail on any major or critical event, then you can generate a generic trap using the HP Agents GUI on a Server.
The trap is processed by HPSIM as a Major Event, so you should see a corresponding e-mail.
The other issues to consider, if your e-mail server is one of the ones monitored, what happens when it goes down?
What happens if all servers go down or are unavailable?