Alerting resources for Orion Platform products

10/12/2018 8:13 PM

12/6/2022 2:16 PM

This article provides resources to help you make the best use of alerts in the Orion Platform. Below are links to topics on basic alerting, advanced alerting, examples, reducing noise, and alert integration.

Orion Platform

See the following links for details. 

• Adding a New Alert - Video
• All About Alerts - SolarWinds Lab #42 - Video
• Use alerts to monitor your environment  - An introduction to alerts in the Orion Platform.
• Best practices and tips for alerting
• Navigate to the Alert Manager  - How to find the Alert Manager.
• Creating alerts  - How to create an alert.
• Alert preconfiguration tasks  - Some alert actions require additional setup.
• Set Alert properties  - Basic properties of alerts.
• Define the conditions that must exist to trigger an alert  - Introduction to alert trigger conditions.
• Define the conditions that must exist to reset an alert  - Introduction to alert reset conditions.
• Define what happens when an alert is triggered  - Introduction to alert actions.
• Define what happens when the alert is reset  - Introduction to alert reset actions
• Schedule when an alert monitors your environment  - Turn alerts on/off for specific times (during scheduled maintenance, for example.)
• SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Training - A YouTube playlist with several alerting-related videos.

Advanced Alerting 

• SWQL Functions  - Documentation of the SolarWinds Query Language (SWQL) functions. Useful for creating advanced alerts. (© 2019 GitHub, Inc, available at https://github.com, obtained on April 18, 2019)
• Alert Lab on THWACK - A good place to get your specific alerting questions answered.

Examples  

Here are some cool alerts other people have put out there for you to take and use!

• Alert me when a server goes down  
• The Ultimate CPU Alert
• Alert Engine Automation - Automatic Custom Property Assignment
• Send an alert when a group status changes

Reducing Noise 

• SolarWinds Lab Episode #42: All About Alerts - An excellent discussion of alerting best practices and how to reduce noise. Here are some key takeaways:
  • Understand the polling cycle so you don't create triggers that are impossible to reach.
  • Don't use alerts as an FYI, make them actionable. If you want an FYI, try integrating with Slack.
  • Have a clear picture of what the problem looks like, and what 'better' looks like. They are not always opposites.
  • Alert only the person whose job it is  to take action, then use escalation as necessary.
• Reduce alerting noise  - A collection of documentation links about reducing noise. Includes:
  • The 'Do Not Alert' alert
  • Send alerts to specific contacts
  • Event correlation alerts (Y after X) 
  • Define object dependencies
  • Complex trigger conditions
  • Alerts with multi-element triggers
  • Use duration in an alert trigger
  • Alerts with device-specific thresholds 
  • Single alert when multiple devices go
• Cutting Down on Alerting Noise: Guest Post from Support on the THWACK Product Blog - Three tips from a long-time support rep.
• Repetitive Email Alerts Report - A report for finding problematic alerts.
• Stop the madness! How to set alert thresholds per-device.
• Stop the madness! Avoiding alerts but continuing to pull statistics.

Alert Integration 

• Share alerts with other SolarWinds products  (AlertCentral, WebHelpDesk, ServiceNow)

• SolarWinds Lab Episode #40: Awesome Alert Integration: Slack, Service Desk, and More - Making webhook calls to REST APIs, calling services from alerts, plus advanced customization and PowerShell examples.

• Integrating with Slack - eBook with some of the information in the above Labs episode.

• PowerShell scripts for common alerts to speed up your Slack integration.

• Phone Call Alerting - Solved - Escalate your alerts and place a phone call if a downed node is not acknowledged or recovered within a defined period.

Instructor Led Training 

Move beyond the default settings and discover how to use dependencies, custom properties, customized reports and alerts to tailor your Orion Platform to your environment. See Configuring Orion Alerts and Reports in SolarWinds Academy.