Understanding the Alarm Management System

The Alarm Management System alerts you to network conditions and events. It provides you with tools and back-end services to use, distribute, and manage this information. The Alarm Management System component is also fully integrated with other Novell ZENworks Server Management components. It provides access control through the role-based services (Role-based Services) component and report generation through the reporting functions. The Alarm Management System provides a centralized location for processing and viewing the events and alarms generated by devices and systems throughout your network.

You can view tabular lists of statistical data for active and historical alarms received by Alarm Management System from Novell ConsoleOne. This makes it easy to handle alarms and track network events and recurring alarm conditions. In addition, real-time notification of alarms occurring on your network is provided by the following:

You can also assign an action, such as automatically launching a program when an alarm is received, or sending an e-mail message to notify remote users of events.


Alarm Management System Components

The Alarm Management System comprises of multiple components for processing, storing, and viewing alarms. All alarms received by Alarm Management System are processed and sent to applications that subscribe to them. The ConsoleOne, by default, subscribes to the Alarm Management System and receives updates when an alarm is processed. Hierarchical Status Notification (HSN) also subscribes to the Alarm Management System and changes the color of the atlas map icon accordingly.

The following figure illustrates the Alarm Management System components:


Alarm Management System components on the client and on the server

The main components that make up the Alarm Management System are as follows:


SNMP Trap Receiver

SNMP receives traps from network management agents and passes them to the SNMP trap forwarder and the SNMP trap injector.


SNMP Trap Forwarder

After the SNMP trap forwarder receives a trap, it checks the alarm manager database to determine whether the trap has an SNMP trap forwarding disposition. If the trap has a forwarding disposition, the SNMP trap forwarder forwards the trap. Otherwise, the SNMP trap forwarder ignores the trap.


SNMP Trap Injector

The SNMP trap injector converts the trap to an alarm and passes the alarm to the alarm injector.


Alarm Injector

The alarm injector receives alarms from the SNMP trap injector and other applications and passes them to the inbound processor.


Alarm Processors

The alarm processors includes processes for receiving, archiving, and dispatching alarms to subscribers. The inbound processor applies alarm templates to incoming alarms. After inbound processing is completed, the alarm is sent to the archive processor, which facilitates logging and storing of the processed alarm data in the alarm manager database. The archive processor sends the alarm to the outbound processor, which in turn sends the alarms to the subscription server and disposition server.


Alarm Manager Database

The alarm manager database, a repository for alarm information, includes the following:


Processed Alarms

The processed alarm data that is stored in the alarm manager database is supplied to Novell ConsoleOne through the alarm query server. The alarm data is used for alarm and alarm summary presentation and reporting.


Alarm Templates

Templates are applied to each alarm received by the inbound processor.The alarm template is based on SNMP trap definitions in the MIB or other proprietary definitions for handling the Alarm Management System management and display criteria. When you compile an MIB, the trap definitions are used to create an alarm template that provides a method for presenting and managing alarm data. Proprietary alarms templates are based on proprietary definitions. For example, when a user tries to log in to a server with an incorrect password, an alarm is generated and forwarded to the management server. The management server processes the alarm by identifying the trap object identifier (OID) and assigns the associated alarm template.

A default template is assigned to an SNMP trap sent by a device that does not have a recognizable OID and is categorized as unknown. In order for a trap OID to be recognized by Alarm Management System, you need to compile the MIB of the device into the MIB Pool on the management server. For more information, see "Management and Monitoring Services Installation" in the Novell ZENworks 6.5 Server Management Installation Guide.


Alarm Dispositions

Alarm dispositions govern the handling characteristics for each type of SNMP trap or proprietary alarm. Alarm Management System allows you to configure the automatic handling of an alarm by defining it in the alarm disposition. The automatic handling functions include specifying an application to launch when an alarm is received, sending e-mail notification, forwarding processed alarms to other Novell ZENworks Server Management management servers, and forwarding SNMP traps to other network management systems. You can also set options for alarms, such as audible beeps.


Archivers

The following three archivers add data to the alarm manager database:


Alarm Archiver

The alarm archiver stores alarm statistics and data in the alarm database. By default, all alarms are archived. If you do not want an alarm archived, you can edit the alarm disposition to disable archiving of the alarm. See Archiving Alarm Statistics for more information.


Disposition Archiver

The disposition archiver receives the alarm disposition from the Disposition Console and saves it in the alarm manager database.


Template Archiver

The template archiver receives alarm templates from a MIB compiler and saves them in the alarm manager database.


Alarm Viewers

Novell ConsoleOne displays three views of alarm data: the Active Alarm view and the Historical Alarm view and the Alarm Summary view.

The Active Alarm view displays statistics in Novell ConsoleOne for events occurring on your network. Alarms displayed in the Active Alarm view can either be owned by you or assigned to a group. The tasks that you can perform on an alarm from this view depend on the access rights allowed through the role-based services. The Active Alarm view continually appends incoming alarms to the list, providing you with the most recent alarms. After an alarm is handled, it is removed from the Active Alarm list.

The Alarm History view displays information about assignments and ownership of alarms. You can track alarms received by Alarm Management System and verify their handling status from this view.

The Alarm Summary view is a graphical representation of all the alarms that you have received.