Steps to Use SolarWinds Orion Platform
with PageGate
Send Text and SMS Messages from SolarWinds Orion Platform
Alerts are generated for user-definable
events, and may be triggered by the simple occurrence
of an event or by the crossing of a threshold
value for a monitored Interface, Volume or Node.
Alerts may be set to notify different people on
different days, different times of the day, different
people for different events, or any combination
of times, events, and people. Alerts can be configured
to notify people who need to know about the emergent
event.
How To Setup
Alerts are configured within the Alert Manager section of Solarwinds, which can be accessed by running the 'Advanced Alert Manager' in the start menu from the Solarwinds program group.
Solarwinds integrates with PageGate by submitting information to PageGate's GetAscii API. The GetAscii module allows you to monitor a directory or series of directories, whether on the local hard drives or accessible by UNC path, for text file output. GetAscii also provides a command line executable for other applications to pass messaging parameters to.
It's also important to note that there are two trigger actions in the Solarwinds Orion Platform that you can use:
Dial Page or SMS
Execute an external program
The "Dial Page or SMS service" trigger action tells the Network Performance Monitor to look in the local Windows registry of the Solarwinds server for some very, very specific entries from PageGate's GetAscii module. To use this trigger action, you must install PageGate on the Solarwinds server as, again, this trigger action references the local windows registry on the Solarwinds server.
The "execute an external program" trigger action is a method of manually configuring the command lines that are automatically configured by the "Dial Page or SMS Service" trigger action. So, if you don't have PageGate installed on the Solarwinds server, it's still entirely possible to integrate the two programs, it just takes a little more effort as you have to manually construct what's automatically provided with the "Dial Page or SMS Service" trigger action. Due to this, we recommend installing PageGate on the Solarwinds server - you can save yourself a lot of time and effort in your alert configuration.
So, now that we've gone over the basics, here's how to set it up in practice.
The first step is to install the PageGate server. As noted above, we do recommend installing PageGate on the Solarwinds server itself so you can use the "Dial Page or SMS service" trigger action.
After the program is installed, we'll first need to create a basic data processing folder. This can be any folder local to the PageGate server but to keep things simple, we recommend creating c:\PageGateData\Solarwinds\
Now that we have the basic processing directory created, run the PageGate Admin.
Go to Interfaces - GetAscii - Settings.
Set the 'Polling Directory' to the basic data processing folder you created (c:\PageGateData\Solarwinds\ by default).
Check Enabled, click Apply and tell it Yes, you do want this enabled.
Next, we'll want to go to Program - Settings. Once there, in 'Run on this Server', check GetAscii and click Apply. If you're prompted for credentials, leave them blank and click Apply again.
Once 'updating services' goes away, open the PageGate Monitor and you should see that Server, Scheduler, GetAscii and Connectors are green, indicating that they're running.
Now that we've handled the PageGate side of things, here's how to configure your alerts in Solarwinds.
The first step is to open the Advanced Alert Manager.
In the list of alerts, you can either add a new alert or edit an existing alert. Regardless of which you do, the important part is the Trigger Actions. So, once you can get to the Trigger Actions, click 'Add Action'
If PageGate is installed on the Solarwinds server, select 'Dial Page or SMS service' and click 'Configure Action'.
Give the action a name, something simple like PageGate SMS alert.
Click on the elipses button (...) next to Page Recipients and you should notice that every recipient and group you've configured in PageGate is available to select. Click and drag the recipients that need to be messaged in to the 'Send Page To' column, then click OK.
Enter a sender's name value in the From field. We recommend using Solarwinds.
In the 'Message to send' section, enter the message you wish to deliver, including any Solarwinds variables.
When finished, click Add Action.
If PageGate is NOT installed on the Solarwinds server, you'll need to select the 'Execute an external program' Trigger action, then click 'Configure Action'.
Give the action a name, something simple like PageGate SMS alert.
In the 'network path to external program' section, we'll need to configure the full command to pass to PageGate. The command structure will need to look like this:
\\<path to the PageGate GetAscii Share>\sendpage32.exe <recipient> <sender> <message, including Solarwinds variables>
For example, let's say that PageGate is installed on a machine named PG01 and that we want to send a message to the it_alerts group from the sender Solarwinds and that the message should say "Node ${N=SwisEntity;M=DNS} is down", this is the command you would use:
\\PG01\sendpage32.exe it_alerts Solarwinds Node ${N=SwisEntity;M=DNS} is down
When finished, click Add Action.
SolarWinds Orion Best Practices
Tips
to Integrate with SolarWinds
Video Tutorial to Setup Integration with SolarWinds Orion and PageGate
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