Defining application alerts for attribute and capacity changes

You can define alerts that are triggered when the attributes or capacity of the hosts, volumes, filesets, or shares in an application change.

About this task

Attributes represent the key properties and configuration of a resource, such as status, removals, discoveries, and data collection status. Capacity represents storage statistics such as available and used file system capacity, drive capacity, and volume used capacity.

Procedure

To define an application alert for attribute and capacity changes, complete these steps:

  1. In the menu bar, select Groups > Applications.
  2. Right-click an application in the list and click View Alert Definitions.
  3. Click Edit Alert Definitions.
  4. Click the type of resource that you want to set an alert for. You can set an alert for one or more of the attributes of hosts, volumes, filesets, or shares.
  5. Click the category of the attributes that you want to set an alert for.
    Category Description
    General Attributes for the key properties of a resource, such as status, removals, discoveries, and data collection status.
    Capacity Attributes for capacity statistics of a resource, such as used capacity, available file system capacity, drive capacity, and volume used capacity.
  6. To enable the alert for an attribute, click the check mark for the attribute.
  7. Specify the conditions for generating an alert for an attribute.
    Conditions can include operators such as greater than or equal to, or less than or equal to. Conditions can also include storage values and time values.
    For example, for a capacity attribute such as Available Capacity, you can be alerted when the amount of available capacity on a volume is less than or equal to 50 GiB.
    Available Capacity alert
    Tip: Not all attributes require conditions to generate an alert. For example, you can enable an alert for the New Fileset attribute for an IBM Storage Scale, but you don't need to specify any conditions.
  8. Assign a severity to an alert to help you more quickly identify and address the critical conditions that are detected on resources.
    The severity that you assign depends on the guidelines and procedures within your organization. Default assignments are provided for each alert.
    Option Description
    Critical alert icon
    Critical
    Assign this severity to alerts that are critical and must be resolved. For example, assign a critical severity to alerts that notify you when the amount of available capacity on a file system falls below a specified threshold.
    Warning alert icon
    Warning
    Assign this severity to alerts that are not critical, but represent potential problems. For example, assign a warning severity to alerts that notify you when the status of a data collection job is not normal.
    Informational alert icon
    Informational
    Assign this severity to alerts that might not require any action to resolve and are primarily for informational purposes. For example, assign an informational severity to alerts that are generated when a new fileset is added to a storage system.
  9. Optional: Click View History to view a chart of the capacity of the resource. Use the chart to evaluate the current and historical capacity trend of a resource to help determine the threshold value for an alert.
    The chart uses colored lines to represent the different threshold values and severities that can be defined for an alert:
    • Critical alert: red
    • Warning alert: orange
    • Information alert: blue
    To customize the chart, click Top 10 or Bottom 10 to show resources according to their capacity, click a time period, and change the start and end dates for the data that is displayed.
  10. Optional: If you want to send email notifications of alert violations to contacts other than the policy contacts or global alert notification addresses, enter the email addresses in the Email Override field.
    Tip: If you enter an email address in the Email Override field, only that email address receives notifications for the alert. The following contacts do not receive notifications:
    • Any email addresses that are specified as policy contacts, if the alert is in an alert policy.
    • Any global email addresses that are specified for alert notifications. To view the global alert notification addresses, go to Configuration > Settings .
  11. Optional: Click View Additional Options to specify how frequently you are notified of alerts.
    Use these settings to avoid triggering too many alerts for some conditions.
  12. Optional: Click the icon Duplicate alert icon to duplicate an alert.
    Use this action when you want to define another alert for the same attribute but with different criteria and settings.
    Duplicating alerts can be helpful in the following situations:
    • When you want to generate separate warning alerts and critical alerts for different conditions on the same attribute.
      For example, for a capacity attribute such as Available Capacity, you might want to define the following alerts:
      • Define a warning alert Warning alert icon to be generated when the amount of available capacity on a resource's disks is less than or equal to 50 GiB.
      • Duplicate the alert, but this time, specify a critical severity Critical alert icon when the amount of available capacity on a resource's disks is less than or equal to 10 GiB.
    • When you want to send alert notifications to different people based on the severity of an alert.

      In the previous example for the Available Capacity attribute, you can configure the notification settings so that warning alerts are sent to junior administrators, while critical alerts are sent to more senior administrators to resolve.

  13. Click Save Changes.