FusionCode - EVNT: All about page lists [notifications]

Contents

• Getting Started
• Acknowledgement Process
• Page List Screen
• Backup Notification Screen
• Page List Forms
• Notification Engine

Getting Started

Email and pager addresses are organized into Page List(s) which are then used by an event assignment to notify it's members. Event trigger acknowledgement can be setup on a page list to require PRIMARY DBA/SA to acknowledge receipt of notification - if no acknowledgement is received secondary (BACKUP) notification can be send to a manager or a backup/standby DBA/SA.

Acknowledgement Process

For example lets say 24x7 page list requires acknowledgement and is assigned to DB_DOWN event which triggers at 1:00AM - the following can happen:

case scenario #1 (no acknowledgement is received):

• 1:00AM everyone on the 24x7 page list gets notified within "$mail_sleep_int" seconds
• no one acknowledges this event trigger within the next "$ack_notif_freq" minutes
• another set of notifications is sent to the members of the 24x7 page list
• notifications are being sent until number of notifications reach "$ack_notif_tres" times and "$ack_notif_freq" minutes has elapsed since last notification
• all members of 24x7 page list are examined for any BACKUP pager assignments (such as their managers or backup/standby DBA/SA)
• if BACKUP pager assignments are found they receive notifications

case scenario #2 (acknowledgement is received):

• 1:00AM everyone on the 24x7 page list gets notified within "$mail_sleep_int" seconds
• someone acknowledges this event trigger within the next "$ack_notif_freq" minutes
• no more notifications are sent even if trigger changes or gets cleared to avoid disturbing the rest of the members of the 24x7 page list since the system already knows that someone had responded to the original notification and corrective actions are on their way

Page List Screen

Page List screen is designed for maximum clarity and ease of management using "single click" control:

• "single click" to add or remove a pager or email from a page list
• "single click" to enable notification acknowledgement

Backup Notification Screen

Backup Notification Screen can be used to setup BACKUP paging for PRIMARY administrators (see Acknowledgement Process). When a PRIMARY page list member does not respond to notification it's BACKUP assignee is notified. Screen snapshot below shows that DBANUM1 BACKUP assignee is DBANUM2["BACKUP"] pager/email:

Page List Forms

New pagers, emails, administrators and page lists can be added using the following forms:

Email and pagers can be setup to either receive full output generated by an event trigger or just a short version of the attributes to avoid large messages being sent to text pagers.

No updates can be made to an email address or pager to avoid any confusion after notifications are send. If changes are required for a pager/email address new one should be added and old one disabled from the page list. This strict rule guarantees that what you see is what you get! Screen snapshot below shows notification history for an event trigger:

Notification Engine

Notifications are processed by a background job "mailbg.sh" that is started with the rest of the processes on the management server. Notifications are send using "sendmail" program which is called by a wrapper script "$SYS_TOP/bin/sendmail.sh". The following parameters can be setup in "MON.env":

• mail_sleep_int (controls how often pending queue will be checked in seconds)
• replyto (reply to email address used on all alerts)
• global_mail_prefix (prefix that will be used for subject on all alerts)
• ack_notif_freq (subsequent notification frequency on page lists requiring acknowledgments)
• ack_notif_tres (now many times PRIMARY notification is sent before SECONDARY notification is considered)

END.