Oracle Management Cloud — Notification Channels and Interpreting the Alert Rules
Authors: Monowar Mukul (OCM), Nassyam Basha (Oracle ACE Director, OCM)
Introduction
In this article, we will set up alert rules to receive notifications on any failures or warnings of the targets. Monitoring of the database systems or servers is a key role in IT to ensure the systems are up and running 24/7 as per the business requirements. We will focus on how to create email and mobile channels to receive notifications. Next, we will create sample alerts, and we will interpret the targets to receive the notifications to email and the mobile app, and it will be a very interesting part of this article.
OMC Notification Channel
Before creating an alert rule, it is a good idea to set up the desired notification channel to receive notifications upon any outages or alerts of the targets (database, server, listener, application related, etc.). The primary notification channel we will consider as email and secondary notification channel as Mobile. Mobile notification channel applicable for the IT Managers, IT heads, and email notification channel preferred to IT Administrators such as DBA, System Admins, Network Admins, etc.
Setup email notification channel
Email notification channel considered to be a primary channel, because in 24/7 service delivery operation upon any faults or outages alerts should send to distribution lists such as (DBA team, Network Team, SA Team, etc.) additionally other lists.
Navigate to the “Hamburger menu → Administration → Notification Channels” as below.
From the Notification channels console, we can see the option “Create Notification channel.” Notification channels allow us to configure various types of channels such as email, mobile, and another vendor-specific ticketing/messaging system. In this section, our goal is to create an email notification channel and hence click on “email.” And provide two fields as below.
- Channel Name: An intuitive name for this notification channel.
- Email Addresses: A comma-separated list of recipient email addresses.
It’s very simple, and there are no other tasks to be performed to configure email notification channel.
Setup Mobile Notification Channel
Mobile notification channel will push the notifications to the mobile phone application and helps Managers to track any fatal/critical alerts from the infrastructure. Mobile notification channels heavily reduce escalations in IT. Now we will see how to create a mobile channel from OMC with the navigation Navigate to the “Hamburger menu à Administration à Notification Channels” as below.
Note: To receive mobile notification channel we should install the application and available only with “Apple Store.” To receive the notification user should be login to the app with the user credentials.
Provide below fields to complete the channel details.
- Channel name
- OMC user names
Before submitting the channel, check for the Oracle Management Cloud Mobile application in App store, download the app and install. After installation login with the user credentials.
After submitting the request(s), we can see the list of channels we have created so far from Oracle Management Cloud console.
Creating Alert Rules
We have completed creating the notification channels, and now we will create sample alert rules. Our goal is to create an alert rule, and upon breaking the threshold limits, the user(s) should receive related notifications.
Connect to the OMC as Oracle Infrastructure Monitoring Administrator user and follow the navigation “Hamburger menu → Administration →Alert Rules.”
Select the service as “Monitoring” and then create alert rules.
The below image is the heart of the Alert Rules, and in this example, we will create alerts for the “Oracle Database,” one of the alerts we are going to interpret the alert rule for the Database Availability. Upon database outage, we are expecting to receive the notification to email and the Mobile application.
In the below screen, we will enter the following fields.
- Sample: Drop down the list and select “Oracle Database.”
- Enter the Rule Name
- Optionally rule description for the new alert rule.
- Choose option either Entity Types or Individual Entities.
- Entities: Oracle Database
- Specify the alert conditions. (ex: Availability, Maximum Sessions)
- Specify the recipients for the alert notifications and indicate when an alert should be sent
Save the details for the alert rule and ensure the rule was enabled like highlighted below.
Modifying Alert Rules
For the already created alert rules, we can modify the thresholds at any point of time for the metrics such as modifying the warning threshold from 75 to 80. To do so, navigate to “Hamburger Menu →Management Cloud → Monitoring → Alerts.”
In Edit Alert Rule console we can see all the list of metrics for the entities and click on the edit button for the specific metric.
Change the required values as per the demand and save the changes.
Before testing the Alert rules ensure Log Collection enabled from Entity Configuration, then only agents from the targets can push the data periodically to the OMC.
Interpreting Alert Rules
We will stop the database “testdb” and we will see how the alerts are working and whether able to receive the notifications to email and Mobile app.
Assuming the database was killed or performed a shutdown of the database without any intimation to the OMC server and we can immediately we received the Fatal Alert as the database is down.
Now we will restart the database from the target, and then we have received the acknowledgment that alert got cleared upon the database availability.
Similarly, and simultaneously we will receive the notifications to the Mobile application of Oracle management cloud with the beautiful graphs and interface.
Note: In OMC application we used a demo account.
To view all the outstanding alerts and the availability of the targets, we can view them from below console by navigating “Hamburger menu à Alerts.”
Summary
We’ve seen 360° overview on how to create the Oracle Management Cloud channels of email and Mobile, and also we have covered a few other topics which are demanding for this article.
- Adding Alert Rules
- Modifying Alert Rules
- Interpreting Alerts/metrics
- Viewing Outstanding alerts/availability of the targets.
Authors Bio
Nassyam Basha is a Database Administrator. He has around ten years of experience as a Production Oracle DBA, currently working as Database Expert with eProseed KSA. He holds a master’s degree in Computer Applications from the University of Madras. He is an Oracle 11g Certified master an Oracle ACE Director. He actively participates in Oracle-related forums such as OTN with a status of Super Hero, Oracle support awarded as “Guru” and acting as OTN Moderator and written numerous articles with OTN and on Toad World. He maintains an Oracle technology-related blog, www.oracle-ckpt.com and can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nassyambasha/
Monowar Mukul is currently working as a Principal Oracle Database Specialist. I am an Oracle certified Master (Oracle 12c Certified Master Administration, Oracle 12c Certified Master MAA, and Oracle 11g Certified Master Administration). He has been working as an Oracle DBA consultant over 17 years with Oracle MAA space for both Exadata and non-Exadata Systems, Oracle Cloud Space and SOA Middleware. He worked across various business sectors including tertiary education, energy, government, mining and transport in Australia. He demonstrated highly developed critical thinking and analytical skills working as a Principal Oracle Database Specialist. You can find more details about him and his work achievements at https://www.linkedin.com/in/monowarmukul/
