Detailed information on clearing and purging alarms (4309807)

Question 1:  How do I purge Alarms in the GUI from the Foglight database?

Question 2:  How do I clear Alarms from the command line?

Question 3:  What effect does Alarm count have on Alarms dashboard performance and other dashboard performance?

Question 1:  How do I purge Alarms from the Foglight database?

Refer to KB 40651 for details on how to purge alarms from Foglight.

Question 2:  How do I clear Alarms from the command line?

Clearing Alarms is normally done in the Foglight Admin Console | Alarms | Alarms dashboard | select individual alarms or select All | Clear

A groovy script could be scheduled to purge alarms to be run via cron in Linux/Unix or Windows Scheduler. 

Question 3:  What affect does Alarm count have on Alarms dashboard performance and other dashboard performance?

When opening the Alarms dashboard or other dashboards that query for Alarms in the Foglight database, the greater the alarm count, the longer it will take for the dashboard to open.  Therefore it is suggested that if a Foglight environment is generating large amounts of alarms, the following take place:

a.  Investigate the root cause of the large quantity of Alarms:

ROOT CAUSE - Is the reason that the Alarms are being generated because what is being alarmed on is not being addressed?

RULE TUNING - Are the amount of Rules turned on that are actually on necessary for daily monitoring?  Could the collections frequencies in the Agent Properties be lowered to reduce Alarm count? 

SIZING - Is FMS(s) capability (FMS CPU & Memory, number of FMS' to clients/agents ratio) able to handle the monitoring environment (agent type, weight, count)?

Hint:  look for repetitive alarms and ask consider these questions on these alarms.

b.  Users can clear alarms which will improve dashboard performance (as per Quest Dev.).

c.  Users can purge alarms from the Foglight database using a groovy script, but once again, are the root causes listed in item a. above being addressed?  The maximum alarm count that the Foglight Admin console can display is 10,000 alarms.  Concern should arise when Alarms reach 50,000 and above.