Summary

This Knowledgebase article provides information about how to configure alerts and set reporting levels using the Neverfail Advanced Client.

More Information

The Neverfail Advanced Client allows you to configure alerts and customize the actions taken by Neverfail Engine when the alert is triggered.

Procedure

How to Configure Alerts

1. Configure alerts by navigating to the Logs page of the Neverfail Advanced Client.  Do this by selecting the Logs tab and clicking the Configure Alerts button.
   
2. The Alert Triggers tab displays the status of all alerts with the current alert level. The alerts are preconfigured with the recommended alerting levels.  Reconfigure alerts to red, yellow, or green, by selecting the Trigger Red Alert, Trigger Yellow Alert, or Trigger Green Alert column and selecting the appropriate check boxes.
   
3. Once you are finished, click the OK button to save the new configuration.
   

1. Once you are satisfied with the trigger levels, select the appropriate tab to configure the recipients of emailed alerts for Red Alerts, Yellow Alerts, and Green Alerts. Emails can be sent for all three alerting levels.
   
2. In order to configure alerts, the check box Send mail must be selected for each alert level on each tab and the frequency of the email must be selected. The default is to send the email Always .
   
3. Add each recipient's fully qualified email addresses to the Mail Recipients list for the trigger level alert.
   

• Add a recipient by clicking the Add button.
  
• Delete an email address by selecting the recipient and clicking the Remove button.
  

Although you can configure alerts to suit your requirements, it is recommended that the preconfigured content remains the same and any adjustments are made in addition.

An alternative method of issuing e-mail alerts is to run a command, by selecting the Run Command check box. A Run Command can be either a script or a command line argument to run on the alert trigger.

Once the alert recipients and or actions to be run have been defined, the OK button must be selected to save the changes and apply the notification rules defined.

How to Test Alerts

Alert reporting may be tested without the need to trigger an alert (and therefore jeopardize the operation of the active Server), by clicking the Test Alert Reporting button on the Logs page.

1. Configure the mail host, send mail address and authentication configuration via Neverfail Advanced Client Logs > Mail Settings dialog. Once complete, click on OK .
   
2. Via the Logs page, press the Test Alert Reporting button.
   
3. Check the mail accounts for appropriate messages.
   

A mis-configured or unreachable mail system will prevent email alerts from being sent and a warning event will be generated in the Neverfail Advanced Client Log panel as shown below:

Importance: Warning
Type: Sending mail failed
Source: Primary (while active)

Unable to mail alert message Could not connect to SMTP host: 192.168.27.27, port: 25;
nested exception is:
java.net.NoRouteToHostException: No route to host: connect

Alerts and Escalations

In V6.[n], alerts are sent from the server on which they originated. The most critical case is presumably a pending failover, so the alert cannot be passed to the active server in order to have it sent, as the passive server cannot communicate with the active server. To prevent this, configure a management IP address which allows the passive to see the mail server.

Escalations are a mechanism for handling error conditions, such as problems with replication which require restarting replication and therefore a Full System Check. They can get passed from server to server, but this is because of the internal mechanism for controlling Neverfail Engine groups, where one server is designated as the leader. This is not necessarily the active server, but the lowest numbered server in the Neverfail Engine cluster partition, as there is no ambiguity in this choice. Typically, this will be the Primary server, and typically the Primary server will be active, so the administrator may see the effect of, for example a replication restart because of a problem between secondary and tertiary being alerted by the Primary.

Applies To

Neverfail IT Continuity Engine

Related Information

None

KBID-2829