You could also check something else "on" the firewall....or on the router... PING isn't the only option...
dirk. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Brent Ozar Sent: Thu Sep 04 4:32 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [5] RE: [SA-list] change in state This is really easy to do, actually. You just add a check for a "known good" internet service, like the first hop on your internet router, and set all of the internet-based checks to depend on that one. So for example, if you've got an outsourced firewall, you can't ping that, but you can ping the first step past that. Go to a dos prompt on one of the machines behind the hosted firewall, and type "tracert www.yahoo.com". That will show you each step from that machine to Yahoo. Look at the second and third entries in the list, which are the steps between the hosted firewall and the "real world", and you'll likely see several IP's at your internet provider. Another thing you can do is ping a known-good internet site, like www.yahoo.com, and use that for a dependency. Yahoo's DNS is hosted by Akamai, so they're incredibly reliable, and they always respond to pings. I've done that for a few years and I've never gotten a single false-down from Yahoo. Brent -------------------------------- Brent Ozar - UniFocus -------------------------------- "I could be a rambler from the Seven Dials I don't pay taxes 'cuz I never file I don't do bidness that don't make me smile I like my aeroplane 'cuz she's got style...." Jimmy Buffett, Treetop Flyer -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thu Sep 04 4:08 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [5] RE: [SA-list] change in state I hear ya... But who said you would be "suppressing alerts"?? I'm not asking for that, I'm asking that duplicate alerts, based on SA being stopped for whatever reason (good, bad, ugly, or indifferent), shouldn't re-generate alerts that have already been sent. Here was my situation... Maybe my lack of product experience with SA causes some trouble.. A customer of mine is running SA with over 100 alerts. They have 20-30 Internet based checks all of which failed during an internet outage. Their firewall is outsourced, so we cannot ping it to check its availability so therefore perform bunches of direct internet based checks.... When the internet line failed, we got all the alerts for Internet checks. No problem. In the mean time, I had to change some SQL passwords, and add a bunch of new monitors... Since we run as a service, I like to stop the service, run the app, and make my changes.. I find that if the app starts running, I need to stop it immediately cause the interface is too slow... I like making changes via the app since the interface is very pleasant to work with. Once I made my changes, and restarted the services, I was treated to 20-30 "duplicate" alerts I had already received... If SA tracked state change/alert status in a file, it would have know that it already alerted for the problem, and not sent out a duplicate alert... See my point? Troy --- Troy Bruder, Manager - Hosting and Microsoft Services APT Information Technology Consultants 7540 Windsor Dr. STE 204 Allentown, PA 18195 Phone 610.366.1100 -or- 888.2.GET.APT http://www.aptconsulting.com "Brent Ozar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> .com> cc: Sent by: Subject: RE: [5] RE: [SA-list] change in state [EMAIL PROTECTED] stone.nu 09/04/2003 09:51 AM Please respond to salive You hit the nail on the head: you wouldn't stop a "big boy" product just to make configuration changes, so why stop SA? I don't understand why people are restarting SA all the time. The only time a user should stop SA is when: - The machine is rebooted - SA is upgraded Other than that, restarting SA is like restarting my SQL server. Anybody does it, I'm going to break their fingers. I'll give you a real-world example: last weekend, we had a power outage in the office. One by one, the UPS's gracefully shut down the servers, and as I hoped, the SA machine was one of the last ones to die. When we brought the machines back up, I brought the SA machine up last, because I needed to know which boxes weren't responding correctly. If SA suppressed alerts, I wouldn't have known which boxes were down - because SA would have thought everything was supposed to be down, and that it was okay. A down box is NOT okay. I know this sounds like a dodgy answer, but the day I suppress 20-30 alerts is the day I get a pink slip from my boss. The last thing I want is SA suppressing alerts. Brent -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 8:28 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [5] RE: [SA-list] change in state That's a good idea, but I don't think the "right" way to fix the problem... I'm just trying to suggest "big boy" features for the SA product.... Imaging if a Tivoli or Network Node Manager from HP ran like this.... I know SA wasn't designed as a competitor to the big guns... but, I think it's such a great tool I can't help but offer suggestions to make it better! Troy --- Troy Bruder, Manager - Hosting and Microsoft Services APT Information Technology Consultants 7540 Windsor Dr. STE 204 Allentown, PA 18195 Phone 610.366.1100 -or- 888.2.GET.APT http://www.aptconsulting.com "Brent Ozar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> .com> cc: Sent by: Subject: RE: [5] RE: [SA-list] change in state [EMAIL PROTECTED] stone.nu 09/04/2003 09:20 AM Please respond to salive Let me toss out an alternate suggestion: how about a command line switch that will disregard all errors for the first check cycle? So if you ran it with salive /skipfirst, let's say, it wouldn't send any alerts during the first run of checks? Would that make people happy? Then, have an option where you can start ServersAlive as a service that way by default? -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 8:09 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [5] RE: [SA-list] change in state But your suggestion is almost impossible when you run as a service.... If an alert has been generated, the app should assume it was received.. --- Troy Bruder, Manager - Hosting and Microsoft Services APT Information Technology Consultants 7540 Windsor Dr. STE 204 Allentown, PA 18195 Phone 610.366.1100 -or- 888.2.GET.APT http://www.aptconsulting.com "Jason Passow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > cc: Sent by: Subject: RE: [5] RE: [SA-list] change in state [EMAIL PROTECTED] stone.nu 09/03/2003 04:56 PM Please respond to salive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive
