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Create an Alert Configuration

Create an Alert Configuration¶

Overview¶

An alert configuration defines the conditions that trigger an alert and defines the notifications to be sent.

You can create an alert configuration from scratch or clone it from an existing alert.

Considerations¶

Costs¶

Costs to send alerts depend on your telephone service contract. Many factors may affect alert delivery, including do not call lists, caps for messages sent or delivered, delivery time of day, and message caching.

Alert Intervals¶

To implement alert escalation, you can create multiple alert configurations with different minimum frequencies. MMS processes alerts on a 5-minute interval. Therefore, the minimum frequency for an alert is 5 minutes. The time between re-notifications increases by the frequency amount every alert cycle (e.g. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, etc.) up to a maximum of 24 hours. The default frequency for a new alert configuration is 60 minutes.

When an alert state triggers, you can set a time to elapse before MMS will send alert messages at the specified interval. This helps eliminate false positives. Type in the after waiting field the number of minutes to wait before sending the alert at the specified interval for each recipient.

Procedures¶

You can create a new alert configuration or clone an existing one. This section provides both procedures.

Create an Alert Configuration¶

1

Select the Activity tab and then select Alert Settings.¶

2

Click the Add Alert button.¶

3

Select the component to monitor and the condition that triggers the alert.¶

In Alert if, select the target component. If you select Host, you must also select the type of host.

Next, select the condition and, if applicable, specify the threshold for the metric. For explanations of alert conditions and metrics, see Alert Conditions.

In For, you can optionally filter the alert to apply only to a subset of the monitored targets. This option is available only if the targets are hosts or replica sets.

4

Select the alert recipients and choose how they receive the alerts.¶

In Send to, specify the alert interval and distribution method for each alert recipient. Click Add to add more recipients.

For a user to receive an SMS alert, the user must have correctly entered their telephone number in their Alerts window. MMS removes all punctuation and letters and only uses the digits for the telephone number.

If you are outside of the United States or Canada, you will need to include ‘011’ and your country code. For instance, for New Zealand (country code 64), you would need to enter ‘01164’, followed by your phone number. Alternately, you can sign up for a Google Voice number, and use that number for your authentication.

For HipChat alerts, enter the HipChat room name and API token. Alerts will appear in the HipChat room message stream. See the Settings page to define default group alerts settings for HipChat.

For PagerDuty alerts, enter only the service key. Define escalation rules and alert assignments in PagerDuty. See the Settings page to define default group alerts settings for PagerDuty.

For SNMP alerts, specify the hostname that will receive the v2c trap on standard port 162.

The MIB file for SNMP is available for download here.

Users must ensure that they have entered the correct number into the Alerts window. MMS removes all punctuation and letters and only uses the digits for the telephone number.

If you are outside of the United States or Canada, you will need to include ‘011’ and your country code. For instance, for New Zealand (country code 64), you would need to enter ‘01164’, followed by your phone number. Alternately, you can sign up for a Google Voice number, and use that number for your authentication.

5

Click Save.¶

Clone an Alert Configuration¶

You can create new alert configurations by cloning an existing one then editing it.

1

Select the Activity tab and then select Alert Settings.¶

2

Click the gear icon to the right of an alert and then select Clone.¶

3

Select the component to monitor and the condition that triggers the alert.¶

In Alert if, select the target component. If you select Host, you must also select the type of host.

Next, select the condition and, if applicable, specify the threshold for the metric. For explanations of alert conditions and metrics, see Alert Conditions.

In For, you can optionally filter the alert to apply only to a subset of the monitored targets. This option is available only if the targets are hosts or replica sets.

4

Select the alert recipients and choose how they receive the alerts.¶

In Send to, specify the alert interval and distribution method for each alert recipient. Click Add to add more recipients.

For a user to receive an SMS alert, the user must have correctly entered their telephone number in their Alerts window. MMS removes all punctuation and letters and only uses the digits for the telephone number.

If you are outside of the United States or Canada, you will need to include ‘011’ and your country code. For instance, for New Zealand (country code 64), you would need to enter ‘01164’, followed by your phone number. Alternately, you can sign up for a Google Voice number, and use that number for your authentication.

5

Click Save.¶

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