Foglight for Oracle (Cartridge) 5.9.2.1

Many Foglight for Oracle multiple-severity rules trigger alarms. To improve your monitoring experience, you can customize when alarms are triggered and whether they are reported. You can also set up email notifications.

This section covers the following topics:

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Introducing the Alarms View

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Setting and Modifying Alarm Sensitivity Levels

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Modifying Alarm Settings

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Configuring Email Notifications

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Cloning Agent Settings

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Reviewing Rule Definitions

Introducing the Alarms View

The Alarms view enables you to modify global settings and agent-specific settings for alarms.

To open the Alarms view:

Open the Administration dashboard as described in Opening the Databases Administration Dashboard .

Click Alarms.

The list of agents that you selected on the Databases dashboard is shown in the upper right corner of the view.

From the Alarms view, you can complete the following tasks:

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Setting and Modifying Alarm Sensitivity Levels

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Modifying Alarm Settings

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Configuring Email Notifications

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Cloning Agent Settings

Setting and Modifying Alarm Sensitivity Levels

Foglight for Oracle has three sensitivity levels that control which alarms are reported:

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Essential — Enables only the most important alarms.

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Normal — Enables a selection of alarms from different rule categories, including all Essential alarms.

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Tuning — Enables all alarms.

You can change the sensitivity level assigned to each agent. If a sensitivity level does not include all the alarms you want to track or includes too many alarms, you can view a list of multiple-severity rules and modify the sensitivity level that is mapped to each severity.

Changes made to a sensitivity level affect all agents that are assigned that sensitivity level. If you want to enable or disable alarms for the selected agents, see Enabling or disabling alarms for selected agents .

Setting the alarm sensitivity level by agent

Each agent has its own sensitivity level setting. The default is Normal.


	TIP: Select a sensitivity level that is closest to what you want, then customize it as necessary. For instructions, see “Viewing and modifying alarms assigned to severity levels” on page 177.

To change the sensitivity level used by an agent:

In the Alarms view, click the Sensitivity Level tab.

Select the check boxes for agents you want to edit, click the Set alarm sensitivity level button, and then click a sensitivity level button such as Essential.

Click Save.

Viewing and modifying alarms assigned to severity levels

You can view a list of multiple severity rules to see which severities are assigned to which sensitivity level. If desired, you can change the assignments. Changes to sensitivity levels affect all agents.


	TIP: If you want to see descriptions of the rules, follow the steps described in “Reviewing Rule Definitions” on page 187.

To view and edit alarms assigned sensitivity levels:

In the Alarms view, click the Sensitivity Level tab.

Click Define sensitivity level.

Review the assignments. Recall that the Normal level includes all alarms assigned to the Essential level, and the Tuning level includes both Normal and Essential alarms.

If you want a record of the existing settings, click View as PDF and export the settings to a PDF file.

Select the check boxes for the rules you want to edit, and then click Set level.

In the Set Rule dialog box, select a sensitivity level for each severity.

Click Set.

All selected rules are updated with the new assignments.

Modifying Alarm Settings

You can customize how the alarms generated by the default Foglight for Oracle rules are triggered and displayed in the Alarm view’s Settings tab. All changes to alarm settings apply to the selected agents, with the exception of thresholds, which can be customized by agent.


	TIP: If you want to copy alarm settings to another agent that was not in the selected list— for example, you add a new agent — you can copy the alarm customizations to that agent. For instructions, see Cloning Agent Settings .


	IMPORTANT: Avoid editing Foglight for Oracle rules in the Administration > Rules & Notifications > Rule Management dashboard. Default rules may be modified during regular software updates and your edits will be lost. Always use the Alarms view.

The Alarms list controls the contents displayed to the right and the tasks that are available.

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All Alarms – Displays all rules with configured alarms and indicates whether alarms are enabled. In this view, you can enable or disable alarms for all the rules at once. You can also set email notifications and define mail server settings.

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Category of rules – Displays a set of related rules with configured alarms. In this view, you can enable or disable alarms and also set email notifications for the category of rules.

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Rule name – Displays the alarm status for the selected rule. If the rule has multiple severity levels, displays the threshold configured for each severity level. In this view, you can enable or disable the alarm, edit the alarm text, and edit severity levels and their thresholds. You can also set email notifications for the alarm.

You can complete the following tasks:

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Enabling or disabling alarms for selected agents

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Modifying alarm threshold values

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Editing the text of the alarm message

Your changes are saved separately and applied over the default rules. This protects you from software upgrades that may change the underlying default rules.

Enabling or disabling alarms for selected agents

You can override the global alarm sensitivity level setting for the selected agents. You can enable or disable alarms for all rules, a category of rules, or an individual rule.


	TIP: If you want to see descriptions of the rules, follow the steps described in Reviewing Rule Definitions .

To enable or disable alarms:

In the Alarms view, click the Settings tab.

Decide on the scope for the change: all alarms, a category of rules, or a selected rule.

Complete the steps for the selected scope:

Table 30. Alarm scope
Scope	Procedure
All alarms	Click All Alarms. In the Alarms Settings tab, click either Enable all or Disable all.
Category of rules	Click a category. Click either Enable all or Disable all.
Selected rule	Click the rule. In the Alarms Settings tab, click the link that displays the alarm status. Select Enabled or Disabled from the list and click Set.

Click Save changes.

Modifying alarm threshold values

You can and should modify the thresholds associated with alarms to better suit your environment. If you find that alarms are firing for conditions that you consider to be acceptable, you can change the threshold values that trigger the alarm. You can also enable or disable severity levels to better suit your environment.

When a rule has severity levels, a Threshold section appears in the Alarm Settings tab showing the severity levels and bounds by agent. Many rules, such as Baseline rules, do not have severity levels and thresholds.

When editing thresholds, ensure that the new values make sense in context with the other threshold values. For most metrics, threshold values are set so that Warning < Critical < Fatal. However, in metrics where normal performance has a higher value, such as DBO - SGA Library Cache, the threshold values are reversed: Warning > Critical > Fatal.


	TIP: If you want to review the thresholds for all Foglight for Oracle rules in a single view, use the Rule Management dashboard. In the navigation panel, click Homes > Administration, then click Rules. Type DBO in the Search field to see the list of predefined rules for Oracle databases. For rules with severity levels, you can see the threshold values set for each level. If you want to edit threshold values, return to the Alarms view. Edits made directly to the default rules may be overwritten during software upgrades.

To change severity levels and thresholds:

In the Alarms view, click the Settings tab.

Click the multiple-severity rule that you want to edit.

Click the Alarms Settings tab.

In the Threshold section, review the defined severity levels and existing threshold bounds for all target agents. The colored bar across the bottom of the view indicates the percentage of collections that fall within each threshold.

From this view, you can perform the following tasks:

Table 31. Tasks
Task	Procedure
Edit severity levels and set threshold (lower bound) values for all agents.	Click Enhance alarm. Select the check boxes for the severity levels you want enabled and set the threshold values. Click Set.
Change the threshold (lower bound) values for one agent.	Click Edit beside the agent name. Set the new threshold values and click Set.
Copy the changes made to one agent’s threshold values to all other agents.	Click Edit beside the agent name that has the values you want to copy. Select Set for all agents in table and click Set.