Hello Forum,

we have devices that are monitored during specific times...normal business hours.

The device is set to go into Maintenance mode on off-hours.

We are still getting UP message...once the device goes off maintenance...ie the next day at xx:xx am

It is configured that the "up message" to be dependent to the "Down message".

Have I found a bug with the DOWN, UP message...if the device goes into Maintenance mode in WUP SP1?

Regards

I must be the only one using Maintenance mode in this forum....

Since the sites we are monitoring are 7:00 am to 7:pm,

we do not want to get any pages from those devices after 7:00 pm....so the devices go into Mainternance mode in WUP from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am each day.

The scenario is this,

 if the device that in maintenance mode goes down for 5 minutes or more and then up during the maintenance mode  hours (7:00 pm to 7:00 am......We still get an UP messages at 7:00 am.

Please note that  (this "UP" message is dependent on the DOWN for 5 minutes), this message is sent  as soon the devices goes off Maintenance mode at 7:00 am.

To me it look like that the Down & UP messages are not tie down to see if the previous message was ever sent.

Ogos,

You are not the only one using recurring maintenance periods -but I am completely unable to reproduce your problem. Maintenance is just fine, if a node goes down during the maintenance window I don't receive any alert, neither up nor down.

I think you have a problem with your setup ? Did you double-check, triple-check the config ?

From your message it looks like you already have WUP SP1, otherwise it would not be possible to make the UP alert dependent on the DOWN state.

Could it be that you placed some action policy on specific monitors as well as on the device as a whole, and that an unexpected policy triggers because of that ?

Sorry but I can't say more than check, doublecheck, triplecheck !!

HTH

Sergio,

Thanks for your reply....Yes, I am running WUP SP1 running on Windows 2003 server with a MS SQL database.

I am monitoring DSL lines and Pix firewalls for our remote small offices and we do not need to support them after hours and weekends...that is the reason I was using Maintenance mode.

can someone please explain to me the difference between Maintenance Mode and Blackout Periods ?

Regards

Basically, the difference is :

* When you put a device in maintenance mode, it is NOT polled. Which means that while in maintenance mode, you do NOT know the status of your devices.

* When you define a blackout period, monitoring continues BUT alarms won't be sent.

After that, it's a matter of taste.

My personal feeling in your case is that blackout is more appropriate than a recurring maintenance period, because you can still compute the REAL uptime of your devices if you define a blackout -you just won't get the alarms. IMHO "maintenance" should be used when you REALLY do maintenance on the device.

I'm using a recurring maintenance on one device currently, because everyday between 5 and 5.30pm someone needs to take a web site offline, perform some maintenance on it, then put it online again. When producing reports, I am then able to explain management that there's a guy doing this everyday and that it might be worth investigating whether this could be automated.

Of course this still does not explain WHY you are receiving the UP alerts...

Thanks Sergio - that sorta helps me out.

One other question - unrealated to this problem, but..

During the blackout mode - if alarms are generated, can I have them sent when the blackout period is over?

Alarms not sent are not queued somewhere, so you can't send alarms that happened during blackout when you leave the blackout period.

One workaround would be to create a report and generate this info from the db -because if device states during the blackout period up/down times will still be recorded in the database.

Another workaround would be to trigger a special alarm during blackout periods (because blackout periods are associated with actions, you can trigger one type of action out of blackout periods and another type during blackouts). I use this because I have some alarms for which I send an SMS -during business hours because there is no SLA outside business hours. Outside of business hours I just send a mail.

So my email action blackout period is business hours, and my SMS action blackout is outside of business hours.

But since an action can do lots of things -like, run a program ! you can virtually do anything with this -it all depends on the program you run.

oct_7,

I gave up on try to figure it out why I was getting the up message at the end of the maintenance periods and start using blockout periods.

The difference could have been that I was using Maintenance mode individually on each devices....by using blackout periods, it is part of a ACTION POLICY, in the Action Builder I have defined an DOWN and the BLACKOUT periods of 7pm to 7am on Monday thru Friday and 24 hrs on each day of the weekend.

The same Blackout Periods on the UP message(dependent on the Down message,SP1 feature)

then this action policy is applied to each of the device.

It is working flawless now...but like I said before, we no longer using Maintenance mode.

Regards