Let’s talk notifications for a minute.
Everyone complains that a tool is noisy for alerts (typically emails).
Why not find a way to limit what you receive, and eliminate, the noise.
Sure, there’s alert tuning, but there are a ton of built-in options with Subscriptions in SCOM.
Let’s Start by talking about now a subscription is built in SCOM.
Step 1 – An owner (or ‘subscriber’) is needed
This can be an email address, group name or variable you may want to pass to a command line for a destination (e.g. support team/NOC/POC)
Step 2 – A channel is needed (simply put, a way to get the data out of SCOM)
This can be SMTP (email), or a custom executable to a ticketing system, NetCool, BMC True Sight, xMatters, Derdack, to name a few.
Step 3 – Criteria to send to an owner (details)
Time to set up a subscription, and learn as we go!
Do you have the necessary 3 parts (subscriber, channel)
Do you have a destination/subscriber already set up?
Yes, see go to Channel
No, follow the subscriber blog here
Do you have a channel set up
Yes, see go to Subscription
No, follow the Channel blog here
Do you have a naming convention for the subscription parts?
The Subscription name needs to be intuitive, i.e. Application Name, Team Name, Company Name (depending on the environment)
Process an Application’s alerts
Example ‘BizTalk alerts’
If BizTalk alerts needed to go to different teams
‘BizTalk DEV Alerts’ or ‘BizTalk PROD Alerts’
or if Criteria is involved ‘BizTalk Performance Alerts’
or if alerts need to route to another company ‘Contoso BizTalk alerts’
Capitalize what needs emphasis so in the Subscriptions view (make searches or sorts easier and more intuitive)
Making sense where I’m going with this?
Criteria can influence the name
CLASS, MONITOR, RULE, SEVERITY, GROUP, RESOLUTION STATE
To me the value comes in with the Description field in a subscription.
Adding relevant detail here makes life easier when followed, to know what the subscription is doing.
Try this model for the Subscription Description
CRITERIA
SUBSCRIBER
COMMENTS
Example
+MONITOR = Health Service Heartbeat Failure +SEVERITY = Warning/Critical +RESOLUTION STATE NOT equals 255 +SUBSCRIBERS = GROUP Server Admins via Email +Comments: Created 2016-02-12 for SCOM Agent tuning
Time to set up a subscription
Subscription Summary Healthservice Watcher subscription to alert on any NEW Healthservice Heartbeat failures
Name SCOM HealthService Watcher
Description
+MONITOR = Health Service Heartbeat Failure +SEVERITY = Warning/Critical +RESOLUTION STATE NOT equals 255 +SUBSCRIBERS = GROUP Server Admins via Email +Comments: Created 2016-02-12 for SCOM Agent tuning
Criteria
Notify on all alerts where
created by Health Service Heartbeat Failure rules or monitors (e.g., sources)
and of a Warning or Critical severity
and with Not Equals 255 resolution state
Subscribers
GROUP Server Admins via eMail
Channels
SMTP Channel
