How Alerts Work

Alerts help you to detect problems with monitored hosts quickly and easily. An alert is real-time entity that is created by the program when host monitoring characteristics don’t satisfy specified criteria. You can see the actual list of alerts in the program – it shows alerts for hosts that have monitoring problems at the current moment. The program can also notify you by sending e-mail messages, playing sounds and showing Windows Tray balloons when alerts are started and ended.

The program has two preconfigured alert types. It creates alerts when a host is down or when a host connection quality is unsatisfactory, i.e. when the quality is Bad or Critical. To review the actual state of monitoring system you can open Overview on the right side of the main screen. The Alerts section shows you how many alerts are in the monitoring system at the current moment. You can open the Alerts Summary page by clicking the corresponding button on the navigation panel to see the list of alerts for all hosts Pic 1.

A list of alerts

Pic 1. A list of alerts

The alerts list shows the name of alert, host name for which this alert is reported, alert severity, duration of the alert and alert state. Each alert displayed in the list represents a problem with the host, because host monitoring parameters don’t satisfy criteria configured for the alert. Alerts can be configured on the Alerts and Notification page of the preferences dialog. You can configure as many alerts as you need and each alert has its own condition. If this condition is satisfied, a problem is detected and an alert is reported by the program.

You can use simple or complex logical conditions for alerts. For example, one of the preconfigured alerts is reported when a host state is Down. You can create more complicated conditions and use any real-time characteristics detected for a host. For example, you can report an alert when packet loss or latency is over a specific value. You can combine criteria using logical operators to create complex conditions Pic 2.

Alert configuration

Pic 2. Alert configuration

The program allows you to create multiple alerts, if you need to check different monitoring characteristics. In this case multiple alerts can be reported for the same host. Set different severity for alerts to be able to filter and sort alerts. You can navigate to a host level by clicking the host name on the Alerts Summary page. In this case you can see alerts reported for the selected hosts only.

Alerts can be used for indication of the problems. If there are alerts reported, it means that there are some problems with the hosts for which the alerts are reported. You can acknowledge alerts when you work on a problem. To acknowledge an alert right-click it and select Acknowledge and a time period during with an alert will be acknowledged. Acknowledged alerts are displayed with the corresponding status in the list, so you can review active and acknowledged alerts separately. If an acknowledgment period is passed, but the alert condition is still satisfied, the program will change the alert state to active.

The program can automatically notify you by e-mail, sound or System Tray balloons when an alert is started and ended if notifications are configured for the alert in the program preferences. You can learn how notifications work in the Managing Notifications chapter.