70-246 Monitoring and Operating a Private Cloud: Configuring alert notifications

You can configure Operations Manager to automatically send an email, instant message, send an SMS, or run a command when an alert is raised. Of course, you learned in Chapter 1 that if you integrate Orchestrator with Operations Manager, you can trigger runbook automation when an Operations Manager alert is raised, however this chapter is focused on Operations Manager.

To configure alert notifications, you must have prepared the following elements:

Configure the Notification Account Run As Profile with a Run As account.
Prepare a notification channel. The notification channel defines the notification format and method of transmission.
Configure notification subscribers. Subscribers define the notification recipients and notification schedule.
Prepare a notification subscription. This specifies the conditions for sending a notification, which notification is used, and which subscribers receive the notification.

Notification action accounts

Operations Manager uses the Notification Account Run As profile to send notifications. The Notification Account Run As profile requires a Run As account that has the necessary credentials for sending notifications. To create a notification action account, perform the following steps:

1. Right-click the Security node in the Administration workspace of the Operations Manager console, and click Create Run As Account.

2. On the General Properties page of the Create Run As Account Wizard, ensure that Windows is selected as the Run As account type. In the Display Name text box, type Notification Action Account, as shown in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1 Notification action account

3. On the Credentials page, provide the username, password, and domain of the user account that will be used to send notifications.

4. On the Distribution Security options page, click More Secure, and then click Create, and then click Close.

5. Under Run As Configuration in the Administration workspace, click Accounts.

6. Double-click Notification Action Account.

7. On the Distribution tab, click Add. On the Computer Search page, click Search. In the list of available items, specify the computers to which you want the Action account distributed, and click Add, as shown in Figure 2, and then click OK. Click OK again to close the Run As Account Properties dialog box.

FIGURE 2 Computer Search

8. In the Administration workspace of the Operations Manager console, click Profiles under Run As Configuration. Double-click the Notification Account profile.

9. On the Run As Accounts page of the Run As Profile Wizard, click Add.

10. On the Add A Run As Account dialog box, use the drop-down menu to select the Notification Action Account created earlier, as shown in Figure 3, and then click OK.

FIGURE 3 Add a Run As Account

11. Verify that the Run As account is listed, as shown in Figure 4, and then click Save.

FIGURE 4 Run As Profile Wizard

Email notification channel

The most common method of notification is through email. This is especially true now that smartphones have email capability, and the cost of sending an email to a smartphone is an order of magnitude lower than the cost of sending an SMS. Prior to configuring an email notification channel, you’ll need to have access to an SMTP server and have configured a mailbox to be used for return email addresses, should it be necessary to provide an email response to a notification.

To enable an email notification channel, perform the following steps:

1. In the Administration workspace of the Operations Manager console, right-click the Channels node under Notifications, click New Channel, and then click E-Mail (SMTP).

2. On the Settings page of the E-Mail Notification Channel Wizard, click Add.

3. On the Add SMTP Server dialog box, enter the FQDN of the SMTP server. Figure 5 shows this set to Smtp.tailspintoys.internal, and click OK.

FIGURE 5 Add SMTP Server

4. On the Settings page, enter the return address. Figure 6 shows this set to alerts@tailspintoys.internal.

FIGURE 6 E-mail Notification Channel

5. On the Format page, review the default email format, as shown in Figure 7. You can modify this as necessary for your own environment. Click Finish to complete the wizard.

FIGURE 7 E-Mail Notification Channel

Notification subscribers

Notification subscribers are the people who you want to receive notifications about an alert. You can only create notification subscribers after you’ve created a notification channel. To create a notification subscriber, perform the following steps:

1. In the Administration workspace of the Operations Manager console, click Subscribers under the Notifications node. In the Tasks menu, click New.

2. On the Description page of the Notification Subscriber Wizard, specify a name for the subscriber.

3. On the Schedule page, select whether you want to send notifications at any time, or whether subscribers should only receive notifications at specific times. For example, Figure 8 shows a configuration where notifications will only be sent between 9:00 A.M. and 5:30 P.M. on weekdays. This is the master schedule. It is possible to configure schedules for individual subscribers when adding those individual subscribers.

FIGURE 8 Notification subscriber schedule

4. On the Addresses page, click Add. This will launch the Subscriber Address Wizard, allowing you to specify the notification.

5. On the General page, specify the name of the address. This does not need to be the email address, but instead needs to be descriptive. For example, Figure 9 shows this set as Administrator Email Address.

FIGURE 9 Subscriber Address

6. On the Channel page, use the drop-down menu to select the E-Mail (SMTP) Channel Type, and then specify the email address that will be used with this channel. Figure 10 shows the delivery address set toadministrator@tailspintoys.internal.

FIGURE 10 Subscriber address channel

7. On the Schedule page, you can specify when notifications can be sent to this particular subscriber. If you want to use the master schedule configured earlier, you don’t have to configure a schedule here.

8. On the Addresses page, shown in Figure 11, verify that all of the individual subscribers that you want to add are listed, and then click Finish.

FIGURE 11 Notification subscriber addresses

Notification subscriptions

Notification subscriptions allow you to define the criteria for when a notification should be sent, whom it should be sent to, and the method that should be used to send that notification. You can create notification subscriptions based on the following criteria, shown in Figure 12:

Raised By Any Instance In A Specific Group
Raised By Any Instance Of A Specific Class
Created By Specific Rules Or Monitors
Raised By An Instance With A Specific Name
Of A Specific Severity
Of A Specific Priority
With A Specific Resolution State
With A Specific Name
With Specific Text In The Description
Created In A Specific Time Period
Assigned To A Specific Owner
Last Modified By A Specific User
That Was Modified In A Specific Time Period
Had Its Resolution State Changed In A Specific Time Period
That Was Resolved In A Specific Time Period
Resolved By Specific User
With A Specific Ticked ID
Was Added To The Database In A Specific Time Period
From A Specific Site
With Specific Text In Custom Field (1-10)
With A Specific TFS Work Item ID
With A Specific TFS Work Item owner

FIGURE 12 Notification subscription criteria

To create a notification subscription, perform the following steps:

1. In the Administration workspace of the Operations Manager console, click the Subscriptions node under the Notifications node. In the Tasks pane, click New.

2. On the Description page of the Notification Subscription Wizard, provide a meaningful subscription name.

3. On the Criteria page, specify the criteria that should trigger the notification. For example, Figure 13 shows a notification subscription that uses the criteria that an alert must have a critical severity and a high priority.

FIGURE 13 Notification subscription criteria

4. On the Subscribers page, click Add. On the Subscriber Search page, click Search. The list of subscribers that you have configured will be displayed. Select the ones that you wish to add to the notification subscription, and click OK. Figure 14 shows the subscriber named TAILSPINTOYS\Administrator being added as a selected subscriber.

FIGURE 14 Subscriber Search

5. On the Channels page, click Add. On the Channel Search page, click Search. Select the channel that you want to use, click Add, and click OK. Figure 15 shows the Channels page with the SMTP Channel selected. Complete the wizard.

FIGURE 15 Notification subscription channels

Subscribe to an alert notification

While you can configure a notification subscription by setting up the conditions under which you should be notified, you can also use the Alerts view in the Monitoring workspace to locate a specific alert and use that as the basis of creating a new notification subscription.

To create a notification subscription from an existing alert, perform the following steps:

1. In the Monitoring workspace of the Operations Manager console, select the alert for which you want to create the notification subscription.

2. In the Tasks pane, under Subscription, click Create. This will launch the Notification Subscription Wizard. The Description and Criteria pages of this wizard will already be populated with description and criteria information about the alert from which you are creating the notification subscription.

3. On the Subscribers page, click Add to select the subscriber who will be notified by the notification subscription.

4. On the Channels page, click Add to specify the method through which the subscriber will be notified. Figure 16 shows that the SMTP Channel is selected.