At the top of the Alarms display are several buttons, and status information about the alarms shown. Each row of the Alarms display corresponds to an alarm. The following is a summary of the actions you can take; more details of each action are provided below.
The interface also has Refresh, Select All, Filter and View Rules buttons. The Refresh button flashes when there are new alarms to be displayed. The Refresh button flashes when there are new alarms to be displayed. The View Rules button takes you to the Rules display, which has its own help page.
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When using either the Alarms display or SNMP alarm notifications, the EMS limits the amount of information made available at once. This limit is set high enough so that in normal usage you will not notice that it is there. However, unusual failures can alarm a very large number of objects. For example, if a global object that affected the operation of a number of objects fails for some reason, it is not useful to view hundreds of subscriber objects that have just alarmed. Each group of objects has a separate limit. If, for any reason, you need to extend these limits, talk to your MetaSwitch support engineer for assistance. After existing alarms are cleared, so that the total number of displayed alarms drops below the limit, the EMS updates the Alarms display with any previous alarms that have not yet been displayed but are still current. |
Color coding
Additionally, each row of the interface is color-coded according to its severity. These colors correspond to the value in the Sev column or, for cleared, the Status column.
Where appropriate, the shade of color varies according to the Type column. For example, a Minor Primary alarm is shown in bold yellow, whereas a Minor Secondary alarm is shown in pale yellow. The value Primary corresponds to an "Attention required" alarm, and Secondary corresponds to an "Attend to dependent" alarm.
Cleared alarms are periodically removed from the Alarms display. The time between an alarm being marked cleared and being removed from the display is configured on the Element Management System object using the Alarm monitoring at next restart - lifespan of cleared alarms field.
Details of alarms
When you double-click on a row, or press the Enter key, the following information is presented to you.
Acknowledging and unacknowledging alarms
Using the context menu available from a right-click allows you to mark an alarm as acknowledged or unacknowledged, using the Acknowledge and Unacknowledge commands. Whether a log has been acknowledged or not is shown in the Ack'd column - Y for acknowledged, N for unacknowledged.
Deleting and undeleting alarms
You can mark an entry to be deleted using the Delete command on the right-click context menu. The row color changes to gray, but is not deleted until you refresh the display using the Refresh button. This means that you can Undelete an entry that you accidentally set to be deleted.
Exporting alarms
You can export details of an alarm to the clipboard or to a file using the Export to clipboard and Export to file commands available on the context menu. (Exporting to the clipboard is similar to the "Copy" function found in many programs.) The details exported are those available when you double-click on an entry (Cause, Effect, Action and so on), and not just the details available on the row. If you export these details to a file, you are prompted for a filename.
Viewing alarms in the object tree
You can view the object causing the alarm in the EMS object tree by using the View in object tree command. This returns you to the MetaSwitch EMS Explorer window (but does not close the Alarms display) and expands the tree to the alarmed object.
Suppressing and altering the severity of alarms
You can create a rule based on an alarm by using the Create / edit rule command. Rules are used to alter the severity of specific alarms. The alarm's Fault ID and Summary will be displayed as the Match criteria, and you will be able to see the default Severity. You can then select whether to change the severity of any similar alarms raised in the future, suppress those alarms, and / or acknowledge those alarms.
Refreshing the alarms display
The Refresh button allows you to refresh the display. If you have marked an alarm for deletion, this will remove it from the Alarms display.
The Refresh button will flash when there are new Alarms to display, and the status information at the top of the alarms display will be updated to show how many new alarms there are. The colour the Refresh button flashes corresponds to the most severe new alarm that has occurred (or been cleared) since you last refreshed that matches your current filter settings. For example, if a Critical alarm has occurred since you last refreshed, it will flash red. If alarms have been cleared since you last refreshed (and no new alarms have occurred), it will flash green. It will also flash red if the alarms database is unavailable for some reason.
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The Refresh button only flashes to you alert you to new alarms that match your current filter. Because of this, you should take care that you do not accidentally leave a very selective filter on. Note that the default filter does not show secondary IAD and subscriber alarms. |
Alarms display status line
The alarms display has a status line displayed at the top right of the interface. This can show the following information.
10 alarms (7 matching filter) 4 new alarms, 2 cleared since last refreshed
(3, 1 matching filter)
The numbers break down as follows.
Details of how to filter the display follow.
Filtering the alarms display
Using the Filter button at the top of the alarms display, you can customize this view using a filter so that you only see alarms on objects you are interested in. For example, if you are a senior member of your operations team you may not want to see every subscriber alarm, and if you are an EMS operator who configures subscribers you may not want to see any details of hardware alarms. The Alarms display tells you how many objects are alarmed in the top right of the main window, and how many match the filter and are displayed. For example, you might see "30 alarms (10 matching filter)".
You can specify which groups of alarms you want to see. For example, there are groups such as Subscribers, System Hardware, Media Gateway and Caller ID Services. These groups are duplicated in Primary Alarm Groups and Secondary Alarm Groups. If a group is selected in Primary Alarm Groups, you will see the Primary (Attention required) alarms for that group. Similarly, if a group is selected in Secondary Alarm Groups, you will see the Secondary (Attend to dependent) alarms.
By default, secondary IAD and subscriber alarms are filtered out.
Additionally, there are four filters at the top of the Filter display that you can tick to enable. These are as follows.