Configuring automatic updates and monitoring alerts

While notifier lists are used to facilitate automatic updates from a monitoring job to the corresponding answer metadata, you can also add external notifiers (email, Slack, PagerDuty, or a custom webhook) to the attached notifier list to alert you when the status of a monitored endpoint changes (up or down).

Attention: When you create a monitoring job, you have the option to attach an existing notifier list to it and adjust the settings of the notification as they relate to the specific monitoring job. The notifier list you attach to a monitoring job must contain the data feed notifier. Attaching a notifier list with the monitoring data feed notifier is critical to facilitating automatic updates to answer metadata.

How it works

When creating a monitoring job, you can attach a notifier list containing the data feed notifier and any external notifiers to which you want to send alerts. If a monitoring job detects the endpoint is down, IBM® NS1 Connect® waits for the notify delay time specified in the monitoring notification settings before sending alerts to all the notifiers in the notifier list. NS1 Connect continues to send repeat alerts indicating that the monitored endpoint is still down at a frequency defined by the notify repeat setting until the monitor status returns to up. If enabled in the monitor job’s notification settings, NS1 Connect sends a final alert to all notifiers indicating that the monitored endpoint is back up.

Before you begin

  • You must have the Create monitoring jobs or Edit monitoring jobs permission enabled.
  • You must have the Manage notifier lists permission enabled.

Step 1: Create a notifier list

Notifier lists are used to facilitate automatic updates from a monitoring job to its corresponding answers as well as to send external notifications related to monitoring events or other types of alerts.
  • To enable automatic updates from a monitoring job to a DNS answer, the notifier list must contain the data feed notifier.
  • To enable external updates to an email address, Slack user or channel, PagerDuty, or a custom webhook URL, you must add those notifier details to the notifier list.
Refer to Creating a notifier list for instructions.
Note: Alternatively, if you have an existing notifier list you want to use, refer to Editing a notifier list for instructions to modify the associated notifiers.

Step 2: Create a monitoring job

When you create a monitoring job, you can attach the notifier list and adjust the notification settings. Refer to Create a monitoring job for instructions.

Note: Alternatively, if you have an existing monitoring job to which you want to attach the notifier list, refer to Edit a monitoring job for instructions.

Step 3: Connect the monitoring job feed to the corresponding answers

If you want to set up automatic updates from the monitoring job to the associated DNS answers corresponding to the monitored endpoint, you can do so by attaching the job feed to the Up field in the answer metadata.

  1. Click Zones in the main navigation.
  2. Click the name of the zone to view details.
  3. Scroll down to view a list of records in the zone, and click the name of the record containing the answer you want to automatically update.
  4. Click the overflow menu next to the answer corresponding to the monitoring job and select Edit answer metadata.
  5. In the Setting column, click the Up/down metadata field.
  6. Click the Feed icon next to the Up/down metadata field to show a list of available monitoring jobs.
  7. Select the monitoring job associated with this answer. Once selected, a summary label appears indicating the Up/down field is associated with the selected monitoring job.
  8. Click Ok.
  9. Repeat steps 4-8 for all answers in the record for which there is a corresponding monitoring job.
  10. Click Save record.

Now, when the status of the monitored endpoint changes, the Up/down answer metadata field is automatically updated.

Next steps

Create a Filter Chain in the same record containing the Up filter to ensure any answers marked as "down" are removed from the answer pool when making traffic steering decisions.