In this Document

Applies to:

Purpose

This document explains the steps to configure Notification Rules in the Enterprise Manager Grid Console.

Scope

This document is applicable to Enterprise Manager users who would like to configure their Enterprise Manager, so that they can receive notifications for Metric Alerts or Policy Violations or Job status in the console.

Details

Notification Rules provide an option to choose the targets and conditions under which the OMS should be sending notifications.The methods for sending notifications include e-mail, SNMP traps, running custom scripts, PL/SQL procedures or all of them.

You must define the appropriate notification method before configuring a notification rule to make use of the method. For details, refer to:

Document 429426.1: Configuring Email Notification Method in EM - Steps and Troubleshooting
Document 434886.1: Configuring SNMP Trap Notification Method in EM - Steps and Troubleshooting
Document 414409.1: Configuring Notifications for Job Executions in Enterprise Manager

Steps for Configuring Notification Rules

When you define the notification rules, you can choose to make them ’public’ to share them with other administrators, or to keep them ’private’ for your own use.

Grid control installation has out-of-box notification rules defined, which cover most of the common alert conditions for various targets. To view the pre-defined rules, login to the grid console : 

Click the Preferences global link. In the left-side menu, click on
   Notification
          Rules

An Administrator with superuser privileges can see all rules (private and public). An EM administrator without Super Administrator privileges, will see a link for 'My Rules' instead of 'Rules'.

User-defined 'Rules' can be created if necessary, using the 'Create' button in this page. 
While creating new rules or configuring the existing rules, the following apply: 

1. You can provide a description of the notification rule, which will be shown on the Notification Rules page and helps in distinguishing the various rules. 

2. You can specify whether the rule is public or not. 

3. Choose the Target Type, for which this rule will be applied. You can also choose a particular target of this type or all targets of this target type, defined in this console. If a metric is defined against a 'Cluster Database', the Target Type chosen should be 'Cluster database' and not 'Database Instance'. If the wrong target type is chosen, no notification will be sent even if there is an alert in the console for that metric.

4. You can choose the target Availability States for which you want to receive notifications. Availability states are generic and apply to all target types managed by Enterprise Manager, the notifications will be sent when there is a transition from another state to the selected state. 

5. Add 'Metrics' belonging to the chosen target type. Note that the page will display only those metrics which have thresholds defined on them. This is because non-threshold metrics will not generate alerts, so there can be no notification for these. 

6. User-defined Metrics created against the targets will not be displayed individually. There will be two metrics named : User-Defined String Metric and User-Defined Numeric Metric.
   You will have to click on the torch icon next to these metrics, to add the individual UDM's. This option is available only form 10.2 GC onwards. 

7. For the metrics chosen, choose one or more of the severity states for which the notification has to be sent : Critical, Warning and Clear.
   For Example, consider that for the Host Filesystem Space Available metric, the thresholds have been set to Warning : 20, Critical : 10.
If the Filesystem Space Available falls below 20%, then a 'Warning' alert will be raised in the console.
If no corrective action is taken and the Filesystem Space Available further falls below 10%, then the Warning alert will change to 'Critical' alert.
If at any point of time, the value evaluated is above 20%, then the warning / critical alerts previously raised, will be 'Clear'ed.

Depending on the values calculated for that metric and the thresholds set, the severity states can change in any of the following sequences:
Warning -> Critical -> Warning -> Clear, 
Critical -> Clear,
Warning -> Clear,
Warning  -> Critical -> Clear etc.

If all the 3 severity states are chosen in the notification rule(s), then the number of notifications sent will be more depending on the above sequence of severity changes for that metric.
Hence, if the number of notifications need to be reduced then the availability states / severity states chosen should be reduced.

When editing a metric already associated with the notification rule, you can only modify the Severity and Corrective Action states. 

8. 10.2 GC allows notifications for Corrective Actions defined on the metrics. Both successful and failed attempts of corrective actions (for warning and critical states of the metric) can be enabled for notifications. 

9. 10.2 GC allows notifications for Policy Violations defined in the console, in the Policies tab. The notification can be enabled for these states of the policy: Violation, Clear.
   If a policy has associated corrective actions with its violation state, successful or failed attempts of these corrective actions can be enabled for notifications as well. 

10. 10.2GC allows notifications sent for Enterprise Manager Jobs, executed from the EM console. Note that these are EM level jobs and not those created from the Administration tab (DBMS_JOBS) of a particular database.
   The 'Jobs' tab of the notification Rules wizard, allows the user to choose a 'Specific Job' or add 'Jobs by Criteria'. The following states of the job execution can be enabled for notification : Scheduled,Started,Suspended,Succeeded and Problem. 

11. The last criteria in the Actions tab of the Rule is to specify the Notification Method that will be used for sending the notifications. If Email is required, you can choose 'Send Me E-mail'.
   Refer to Document 464847.1: How to Enable 'Repeat Notifications' from Enterprise Manager Grid Control? 
  If other notification methods like SNMP Trap, PL/SQL or OS command have already been defined, they will be listed in this page. You can choose the method that needs to be used for the notification.

Note:
There will be some changes in the above pages as new features get introduced across versions. For details, refer to Document 813399.1: New Features for Notifications in 10.2.0.5 Enterprise Manager Grid Control

References