Description

Admin Helper is a hqu plugin to help HQ admins for daily tasks. After installation, 'Admin Helper' link is available under administration tab.

NOTE: Alert Helper is in develoment and testing phase. Use at your own risk. Screenshots and documentation is writter for EE edition. CE version of this plugin contain less functionality.

Works with HQ 4.x (both EE and CE)

Current
Download for Enterprise Edition:hqu_adminhelper-ee-2.0.zip
Download for Community Edition:hqu_adminhelper-ce-2.0.zip

Old
Download for Enterprise Edition: hqu_adminhelper-ee-1.2.zip
Download for Community Edition: hqu_adminhelper-ce-1.2.zip

Screenshots(clone):

Screenshots(sync):

Screenshots(delete):

Alert Cloning

Somebody might think that there's no need to clone alert definitions since it's possible to create global template which will then be active on all available resources. Here is the short list what problems this functionality is trying to overcome.

• HQ doesn't provide resource categorization, so we can't separate development and production machines.
• If using global template, alert name is always same.
• If modifying alert under resource, changes will be lost after modifying template.
• Creating complex alert definition on many similar resources is just work duplication. Let the programm do the job.

List of cloned configs:

• All properties are cloned. New definition is always activated.
• All alert conditions are cloned. Configuration is cloned and new measurement points are selected.
• Control action is not automatically cloned, but can be selected for new cloned definition.
• Escalation scheme is cloned.
• Notified users and roles are cloned.
• Notified email addresses are cloned.
• Script and OpenNMS actions are cloned.
• SNMP Trap action is cloned.
• If alert definition has associated recovery alert, that is also cloned and attached to new definition.

Alert Cloning tab contains 4 sections. These are filter, compatible resources, new alert grid and button bar.

Filter Box

Top of the page contains dropdown select box. This select list contains all alert definitions which are active and found from resources. Global type alert definitions and recovery alert definitions are excluded from this list. Names in the list contain alert definition name and containing resource separated by colon. Alert definition you want to prepare for cloning can be selected from this list.

Compatible Resources Table

After alert definition is selected from filter box, this table is automatically filled with compatible resources where alert definition can be cloned. Alert definition always contains prototype of underlying resource and by using this prototype we can select compatible resources. It's clear that we can't clone alert from JBoss instance to FileServer Mount service. List of resources can be navigated forward and backward. Once you find the resource where you want to clone alert, press 'Add' button. Alert is not cloned at this step, instead new definition is added to grid.

New Alert Definitions Grid

This grid will contain list of new alert definition to be created. Before alert cloning is executed, some parameters can be changed. Name and description is brought from old alert definition to this list. Your can modify name and description if needed. From and to fields are showing what to clone are where on raw id level. Last column contain control action. We can't automatically clone control action, because there's no way to know what user wants. However if original alert definition contained associated control action, grid allows you to define new control action. If it's possible to modify control action, cell has text 'none'. If original alert definition didn't contain control action, cell has text 'undefined'. Clicking cell will bring up popup select dialog, where new control action can be pointed.

Button bar

There is two buttons and one status field under grid. Remove button will delete selected rows from grid. Remove All button will clear grid. Execute button will command server side to clone alerts. Status field is used to tell user how many clone operations were done on what time. 'Show Report' button will bring up a little popup window which has some information for alert clone statuses.

Alert Synchronizing

Technically we could destroy previously cloned alert definitions, modify original and clone it to target resources again. That is not very good solution and also limits what admin can do. Changing one configuration parameter for multiple alerts needs too many clicks using gui. Sounds very frustrating, don't you think. This component is made to ease configuration of multiple alert definitions. We try to resolve few problems:

• Changing one alert is already time consuming task.
• More alerts you change manually, higher risk to do mistakes.

Short list what this component is able to do:

• Sync name, description and priority.
• Sync actions - escalation, notify of users, roles and email addresses, script, snmp and openNMS.
• Sync 'enable action filters'.
• Sync condition structure.
• Selection of compatible alert definitions where condition structure can be synchronized.
• Selection of alert definitions which resources relates to selected platform, server or service types.

This component contains few sections:

Filter box

Top of the tab contains box labeled with 'Alert Definitions'. First drop-down selectbox(Alert) is used to select the alert definition which configuration parameters are synchronized to other alerts. Other two selectors (type and 'handle only compatible alerts) are mutually exclusive. If checkbox is not selected, type selector is in use. This type selector contains all viewable resource types what HQ allows you to see. Selecting type will update grid to match alert definitions from those resources. If checkbox is selected, grid will be updated to match only resource compatible alert definitions. This basically means alert definitions which parent resources are similar type.

Compatible Alerts Grid

This is self updating grid where selectable alert definitions are shown. Grid can be sorted by clicking header fields. To select alert definitions which you want to sync, select last columns selectboxes accordingly.

Sync Instructions

Under grid you can see three boxes which are labeled as general, conditions and actions. After you have selected alert definitions startpoint and endpoints, use these checkboxes to select configurations you want to synchronize. Notice: Condition Set can only synchronized with compatible alert definitions.

Button Bar

End of the tab contains 'Synchronize' button to request server side to do the synchronizing.  Like alert cloning, there's small report button to show status of sync operation.

Alert Delete

Third tab contains functionality to filter and list current alert definition. Selected definitions are possible to delete.

Filter

There are few ways to list and filter possible candidates for deletion. First line contains three radio buttons which are used to pre-select certain definition groups. First button allows to select alerts which are under certain resource type. Second button allows to select definitions which are under group resources. Third button just gives selection to all resources.

Second row contains some extra filters which can be used to limit search results from first line. First text box can be used to add regex style search patters. Style of the regex is java. Second and third checkboxes allows to limit search results to just recovery and/or disabled definitions.

Alert Selection Grid

When filters are defined, grid can be updated by pressing arrow button on grid header. Grid is also updated when Alert Delete tab is activated.

Grid shows possible candidates which can be chosen for deletion. You can mark lines individually, or highlighting lines and pressing 'Toggle Highlighted' button.

Source Repository

Development of this plugin (master rep) is hosted on github.com.

Master branch: http://github.com/jvalkeal/hqu-adminhelper/tree/master

Global git address: git://github.com/jvalkeal/hqu-adminhelper.git

Change Log

Version 2.0

New major version which brings functionality to delete group of alert definitions. No screenshots yet, but there is third tab named as 'Alert Delete'.

Version 1.2

First version to support HQ community version. Most of the changes related to ce support. Two bugs are fixed. Synchronizing action conditions sometimes resulted an error which resulted default settings. If target alert definition had escalation enabled and synchronize tried to remove it, unset operation failed.

Issues:

• Dojotable showing resources in clone tab is missing one resource with every page. This means that 13th (and so on...) resource(s) can't be selected. This is a known bug in HQ's backend. 

Version 1.1

Small bug fix. When user tried to synchronize users, roles and email addresses together withing same sync operation, only first selected type from the list was actually synchronized. This is now fixed.

Version 1.0

This new major release brings functionality to synchronize alert definitions. Cloning doesn't contain any changes or fixes.

Issues:

• Sync of recovery alerts, either using it as source or destination, have some logical problems. At least sync of escalation is known issue, since recovery alerts don't have escalation.
• There's action filter ' Disregard control actions that are defined for related alerts.' for those alerts which have control action. Sync of this field is not addressed.
• There's some ui issues. Page flickering with FF, small css issues with IE(common box model problem), grid problems with chrome(multiple bugs in browser).  

Version 0.3

There is new button 'Remove All' which will clear the grid. There's more error handling, which means giving warnings in some cases. If baselines are not calculated, we're now giving warning during the cloning operation. Small fixes are now done. Next release will come with new major version. Version 1.0 will add some functionality to synchronize alerts.

Issues:

• Sorting can't be fixed. HQ's underlying functions won't allow sorting in this case. Will fix it by moving from table to grid.

Version 0.2

Alert selection box(filter) is moved to top of page to get proper drop-down box width in IE. Snmp actions are cloned by copying their values. There is now better error handling and some reason for failed clones are told users. Bottom of the page contains button which opens a little status page. Apparently issues with cloned recovery alerts not recovering was not related to any bugs.

Issues:

• Clear grid after cloning is executed. (Is this really an issue?)
• Error handling should still be better.
• What happens when user is added to notifications on resources where he has no rights.
• Potential problem when cloning condition with high/low baseline. What if other resource baseline is not calculated.
• Compatible resources table sorting by 'name' is not working.
• There are some code level issues what needs to be fixed/cleaned. No ugly code Ma'am.

Version 0.1

First version where alert cloning can be tested.

Issues:

• Alertdef selection too narrow in IE.
• SNMP action cloning not supported yet.
• Need to give better feedback to user in case of errors. Also must add more error handling.
• Clear grid after cloning is executed.
• Alert does not always recover - bug.