Conference azur::mcc

5725.0. "Alarms and notification in complex domain structure" by CGOOA::DOLMAN (John of all trades - master of none) Mon Nov 08 1993 23:16

I am working with a customer who has been running DECmcc in a very limited
capacity for a long time now. They have not as yet set up any alarms and
notifications but have done extensive work in registering nodes and creating
a structure of domains. They have asked me in to set up alarms and notification,
I believe because they don't understand it themselves. The only problem is that
I too find it very confusing. Added to that is the fact that their structure of
domains is very complex. I will attempt to describe their philosphy...

The top level domain contains a series of other domains that each define a
different presentation of the same network. For instance, one domain represents
the network geographically, focusing on physically where entities are located. 
 Another domain shows the network logically, identifying LAN segments, bridging,
etc. A third domain shows the nodes grouped by application. In this case, if a 
node is used by three applications, it will appear in the domain for each.
Different individuals with different interests look use the appropriate domain 
structure as their "window" into the network. All users use the same maps but
wish to call up those maps with a different domain at the top of the heirarchy.

NOw comes the problem of how I set up alarms. As I understand it, if we enable
alarms in a batch process, everyone will get every alarm in his notification
window regardless of whether or not it is a node in the particular branch of the
heirarchy that he is viewing. This will be very confusing. Also, because any
one node appears in possible a large number of domains, every notification I 
receive comes up many times. I am very confused as how to handle this alarms
and notification in this environment. Can anyone think of a strategy for 
handling this situation? Is there any way to avoid the duplication of
notifications? What I feel that I need to make this work is to give every
person their own workstation with local MIR and then they can configure each 
one with a different strategy in mind. There must be a better way.

Also, am I correct in my assumption that Notifications, Filters and targets
are enabled and created by each user? If so, why does an alarm get handled on
 a system-wide basis (ie. Once an alarm is enabled by one person, everyone gets
notified when it fires)?. Do I need to tell my customer that what he wants to do
is beyond the capabilities of the product?

Any responses, suggestions and discussion would be greatly appreciated.

    Hi John,
    
    Having recently gone through this, perhaps I can help...
    
    >>Is there any way to avoid the duplication of notifications?
    
    Sure, simply enable notifications in *one* of the domains that contains
    all the nodes of interest...perhaps the domain depicting network
    geography is a good choice. By default, the notify requests expand to
    all the subdomains (this is what was causing the multiple
    notifications)... You can turn this off with Expand = FALSE (also a
    selection in the Notification Request window). Now, you have to realize
    that only the domain with the notification enabled will be highlighted
    on the MAP.
    
    Your multiple users (I assume they're logging into different accounts)
    should then set up specific notification requests for their needs. For
    example, the application person would only enable notifications in the
    application view domain, etc. Each user can then save their setups in
    MCC_NOTIFICATION_RESOURCE.DAT so that you can all share the same maps
    but have different notification criteria for each user.
    
    >>Also, am I correct in my assumption that Notifications, Filters and targets
    >>are enabled and created by each user?

    I believe that Notifications and Filters are process specific but
    Targets are written in the MIR (like ALARM RULES) and are system wide.
    
    >>If so, why does an alarm get handled on a system-wide basis (ie. Once
    >>an alarm is enabled by one person, everyone gets notified when it
    >>fires)?. Do I need to tell my customer that what he wants to do is
    >>beyond the capabilities of the product?
    
    Alarm rules are system-wide...this is intended behaviour. The way we
    work it here is that we have notifications disabled (Options menu on
    the map) BUT we have specific notifications enabled for each user. For
    example, we have notify requests in specific domains for Adjacency
    Up/Down and Circuit Up/Down. This is totally separate from ALARM rules
    even though they might be looking for the same sort of event.
    In a nutshell, we use notifications to alert us visually (ie on the
    map), and we use ALARMS to execute actions (ie. page us via DECalert).
    Do you really need ALARMS? If all you want is visual notification, then
    simply use notify requests, not alarms...
    
    Hope this helps,
    
    Ed