May 4

Written by: Quest Field Team
5/4/2009 8:09 PM

 Golan Shem-Tov here with the Solutions Architects team at Quest.

Many customers have asked us about using a project or an application diagram in foglight and adding alerts to that image, in this blog entry we will learn how to add alerts with drill down to an image or a diagram for a dashboard that is meaningful to your application monitoring. Before following the flow of this blog you need to create a system module and import to foglight an image or a diagram of your application according to fun with foglight part 1 - adding and using image

http://www.foglight.org/Blog/tabid/55/EntryID/98/Default.aspx

 

Prep work -

With Foglight you can get the aggregate state from anything, applications, databases, hosts, services, end user, pretty much anything that it monitored or is define as a service has an aggregate state. For this example we will use the following picture that shows the variety of areas that Foglight monitors. 

Add your diagram image to an image view in your new system module, according to the instructions from "Fun with Foglight part 1", but choose "Monitor" and "Pagelet" for purpose.

 

 

Step 1 - Creating a dashboard and adding the image as its background. 

Now that we have the image view we will add it as a background to a new dashboard.

Verify you are in the “views” tab and click “add”, from the list in the blank view choose "Containers > Fixed layout".

 

 

 

Give the dashboard a name, set its size, make it a high priority, set the purpose to “dashboard, page” and add the relevant roles that will use it (in this case we chose anyone that has operator or advanced operator role).

 

 

 

Switch to the “layout” tab and click on the “add” button.

 

 

From the pop up window choose “select exiting view” and click on the “next” button.

Locate you image view under your new module and click next.

 

 

 

 

Depending on your screen size and resolution you can choose to add scrollbars.

 

 

 

Select the image and click on the “send to back button” and press save.

You can also test the results by clicking on the “test” button”, the dashboard will require a time range that is set by clicking on the “value not set” area and then choosing time range.

 

 

 

Step 2 - Creating a label to be used as alarm icon.

 

The result at this point will just be a dashboard with an image used as a background but now we can work on adding some content to it.

From the views tab click add and then choose “label” from the blank views.

 

Give the label name, make it public, set its size (typically 30X30) and a purpose of monitor/pagelet and then switch to the context tab.

 

In the context tab click on “add additional context entry.

Under value click the “edit” icon” and choose “data”.

Choose the data type that you want to point to. You can point to hosts, services, java application, databases, virtual components and others. Please note that with Foglight’s capability of building services with different components you can group hosts, applications, databases and or other components under one service and use that service as the data. For the sake of this example we chose a specific host, gave the key a meaningful name (QA_host) and save.

We now switch to the “configuration tab” and give the label a value by clicking on the edit icon in the value column and choosing “context selection” from the list. This will give us access to the data that we chose for context.

Choose the input key to be the name you gave for the context.

Choose “aggregateState (integer) for path.

What you chose here is to put in the label the aggregate state of the object (host, services, db, application etc.) that you want to display.

Now we have to tell Foglight how to display the state. As its label suggested aggregate state is an integer and to display it as an icon symbol we need to choose a renderer for it from the renderers list. My favorite is   “TopologyObject State Renderer – Title” under the Foglight commons list. The renderer will tell Foglight what to display when getting an aggregate state that typically has a value of 1 to 4 (normal , warning, critical, fatal).

 

 

After selecting the renderer we can press save.

Now we need to choose the flow of this label from the “flow” tab and then clicking on the “not specified” next to selection or dwell.

For Dwell I typically use these settings.

For selection I typically choose these settings.

For selection you can also use all the flow types (next page, pop-up and external URL) that were used in Fun with Foglight Part 1.

Step 3 - Adding the label to the dashboard.

Select the Foglight dashboard you created earlier and click “edit”, go to the layout tab and click “add”. From the list of existing views add the label you just created.

 

 

Drag your new label in the layout until it is located in the right place, you can use the test button to see how it fits in the dashboard. Once you are happy with the result press save. In the navigation tree navigate to your new dashboard; you hover on top of the alert to see the dwell window or click on it to navigate to the drill down.

You can now create more labels and add them to the dashboard that is meaningful for you in your day to day work.

In Fun with Foglight part 3 we will learn how to use images as state renderers giving you the ability to choose your own images for normal/warning/fatal/critical states.

I hope you find this blog useful, contact me with any questions at gshemtov@quest.com

Golan Shem-Tov

 

 

 

 

 

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