How to set "Do not disturb" hours for Technical Monitoring alerts ?

[symon_braunbaer]

Dear Experts,

I configured more or less working technical monitoring in Solution Manager 7.1 SPS 12.

Our SLA times are from 7 to 18h. Everywhere I had the possibility, I have put these

hours, like in Global recipients and recipients lists and notification variants...

BUT all this in vain - alerts keep coming around the clock.

PLEASE kindly let me know how to tell Solution Manager to NOT send alerts to a defined

e-mail address from 18h till 7 AM at the next morning!

Many thanks in advance!

[bxiv · Accepted solution]

Why not do this at the template level?  Flip on expert mode/Edit/and last the Change Settings to be able to hit the Advanced checkbox.

[symon_braunbaer · Accepted solution]

Hi Billy,

many thanks for helping me again and providing the only reply to my question.

As far as I can see from your screenshot, this would prevent any data for alerts

to be gathered. It may solve the problem, but it is not quite the approach that

would best suit the problem.

Because I would like the data to be collected and the errors be appended to

the Alert Inbox, I would just like not to be disturbed by e-mail (which triggers

SMS messages) out of the SLA hours.

In worst case, I could possibly implement this using work modes, but there

should be a simple way to say just to not trigger alerts between X and Y o'clock...

Just for clarity, here is where I am specifying the settings, there are 2 or 3

menus from where it is possible to get this, here I went to it through 'Maintain

Global Recipients':

[MichaelFoley · Accepted solution]

Hi Symon,

I had looked into this issue recently & unfortunately the facility to differentiate is not available at present.

It can be done via workmodes as you pint out, but not in any other way. Of course, you could select email only & not get the SMS, but this would again be at all times.

Thanks

Michael

[symon_braunbaer · Accepted solution]

Thank you Michael,

then I'm gonna try workmodes, probably tomorrow...

The thing is, that SMS directly doesn't work. I had an OSS message with SAP, they showed

me where to supply the SMS server in the Solution manager. We tried 2 servers and it simply

didn't work. So, I spoke to our e-mail guys, they created a new mailbox for SMS alerts and they

forward the e-mail as SMS. So, basically the SMS notification is by e-mail...

[MichaelFoley · Accepted solution]

Hi Symon,

For the SMS have you both notification by email & SMS selected for all template settings or just email only?

Thanks

Michael

[symon_braunbaer · Accepted solution]

Hi Michael,

I have E-Mail and SMS set.

I have checked the possibilities of using work modes, but it either doesn't work, as I have anticipated, or I can't get the right way of doing it.

I went from here:

Planning a Work Mode - SAP Solution Manager - SAP Library

but it looks, that I need to manually define a work mode for each system, which is much more cumbersome. Because I thought that it is possible to just create one working mode with its hours and then apply it to all the systems...

Please kindly advise on this!

[bxiv · Accepted solution]

Work modes would do this, but they are meant for other things within SolMan.

Notification management has a Send From To and a Off-Duty section, would this not also suffice?

[symon_braunbaer · Accepted solution]

Hello Billy,

many thanks for replying. Can I please kindly ask you to check my post above from Feb 9, 2015 2:31 PM ? There I have provided a screenshot as well. I have specified the time range, as you can see there, and it still doesn't work as expected.

But perhaps this has to be set in some other place. Can you please kindly give me exact description (and perhaps a screenshot) where (else) this has to be set, in order to get it working.

Also I would really appreciate, if you could throw a little light on the differences between 'Maintain Recipient Lists', 'Maintain Global Recipients' and 'My notification settings' in the Recipients and Recipient Lists area. They made me quite confused... Many thanks in advance!

[bxiv · Accepted solution]

Looking at your screenshot you have 2 AND statements and the time is set to 00:00 to 23:59; have you tried just using the first entry as a test before adding additional conditions?

[symon_braunbaer · Accepted solution]

Hi Billy, just to give you the full picture - the first line contains the e-mail address used for SMS notifications (which is then being forwarded as SMS) and other 2 entries are used for e-mail notification. I will delete the lower 2 items and give it a try. It may take a while, until a situation occurs that will show whether it works or not...

[bxiv · Accepted solution]

Ahhh, I see what you are going for now with the multiple entries; I'm not entirely sure of the logic/order of operations when it comes to multiple entries...now I want to test this out! 

Perhaps a faster way would be to set a temp metric up that will result in a false positive to trigger the alert, first changing your send from and to times in the notification mgmt.  I have also setup a restriction on my account/email and am trying to back track metrics that might of triggered.

Global recipient pool is where you set your various users, SolMan users/External/Managed System.  Basically various ways to pull SMS or Email information for the user( s ).  The Recipients list is for pulling information from Exchange/Lotus Notes, something I have never found a use for as in my environment I can setup an external email to a group distribution email just as easily...however I have found that some groups can't be sent email notifications as the SolMan ID that is in the "From" field doesn't exist and Exchange blocks it, until a check mark is checked by the mail admin.

[symon_braunbaer · Accepted solution]

Hi Billy,

many thanks for your answer, it helped me understand a lot.

I also have been thinking to configure some test metric, but I was quickly discouraged.

I tried once before to make something like this, in order to test if monitoring works at

all, without the need to restart SAP systems. So I created an RFC destination, enabled

RFC monitoring and then just typed some dummy non-existing hostname in the destination,

so that it would no longer pass a connection test. I did not receive any notification about

an error. I am not sure, but I guess that in the alert inbox there was nothing either.

So, I would be thankful, if you could suggest a test scenario.

Many many thanks and have a nice day!

[bxiv · Accepted solution]

You could configure number of files for your hosts, create a temp folder to monitor and have a script create empty text files to fill the directory.  If a script/job is frowned upon you could manually put the files in place to test the alert for success and then copy them outside your alerting window.

Another one could be setting a CPU metric (System, User, or both) with the threshold to 10% or lower depending on what system you are testing against.

[symon_braunbaer · Accepted solution]

Hi Billy,

many thanks!! It seems that it has worked !!! Last night we had again some strange and unexplained events - only alerts per e-mail were sent out! In the morning I saw that I had no SMS and now I saw the e-mails.

So, 2 things:

1) I am not sure why I have put all the addresses under this global recipients entry. Perhaps my perception at this time has been wrong.

2) Maybe there is a little bug in the Solution Manager - for a global recipients entry, it takes the longest defined time interval, as it kept ignoring the 7-18h setting for the SMS address and it acted according the 0-23:59 setting for the other 2 e-mail addresses. Or perhaps it's not a bug, but a feature ? 😛

I would just like to hear your opinion on that, as you seem to be really experienced with Solman !!

Many many thanks in advance! I really appreciate your help!

[bxiv · Accepted solution]

Sorry for the delay, I was tasked with learning Information Steward...and I can't say I'm enjoying the product, I'm up to 3 different install files all with different requirements looking for specific software (so installs have to be in order) and SAP IPS that requires a license key that you can't generate on the market...FTW SAP!

I believe by Global, its SAP's way of leveraging that same information for other parts within SolMan (ITSM comes to mind); currently my company has not setup SolMan for full functionality.

I would also try OR with the multiple schedule as it could be odd logic behind the condition settings.  Perhaps to get around the and/or setup you set up a duplicate communication user in SolMan's and the only purpose of the account is to hold the SMS information and your alerted users have to maintain 2 IDs in notification mgmt.

My experiences with SolMan are only about 3 years in the making; prior to SAP I was working with Cisco networking and ran the monitoring software for the network, so I guess my brain is already preconfigured for the alerting architecture of SolMan. 

[symon_braunbaer · Accepted solution]

OK, Billy, many thanks! I've marked your answer as correct and I think this thread can be closed. Thanks again and all the best!