Micro Focus Operations Bridge hybrid IT monitoring software (OMi) has a powerful feature known as 'Downtime" to define planned and unplanned outages for the monitored CIs. This feature allows you to configure how events and CI status should be handled when related CIs are in downtime. However, many customers, especially our long-time Operations Management (OM) customers, have been asking - how do I just right click a CI/event in OMi and start/end an outage on that, as and when needed?
The expected resullt of putting a node in outage is that events coming from that node CI should be automatically closed and not appear in the active event browser. Most of these customers do not need the advanced capabilities of the Downtime feature, like service health reflecting the outage status or tracking the downtimes etc.
If you are also looking for such an alternative, this article provides a work flow using OMi standard features.
Approach:
Use a custom tool that adds the outage node in a special node group and then all events coming from the node are automatically assigned to a special user group using a view filer on the node group. After that, an EPI script processes all such events assigned to the user group and closes them. Another tool is used to end the outage on the node which removes the node from the special node group.
Detailed Steps:
Here is a custom workflow that can be used and further customized to implement the simple outage functionality in OMi.
Step 1: Add the node to a specific node group e.g. nodes-in-outage.
There are many ways to make this happen:
a. Using Monitored Nodes UI, create the node group and add the node to it
b. Run the opr-node CLI to do so
c. Create a tool (using opr-node CLI) that appears in the right click context menu or action tab of a node CI or event
In this article, I use option c and create a tool as shown below:
Step 2: Create a view that gets all the node CIs in the above node group and all the interesting CIs which will also be affected by the node outage like a running software and IP address.
Step 3: Create a user group e.g. disabled-nodes-user-group. There is no real need to add any users to this group as its use is limited to the automatic assignment of outage events to the group so that we can easily filter such events later in the EPI.
Step 4: Create a user group assignment rule which uses the view created in previous steps to filter the events matching the CIs in the view and assign those events to the specific user group i.e. outage-nodes-user-group
Step 5: Create an EPI script at the "before storing the event" step. The script uses an event filter that selects only those events which are assigned to our special user group and closes these events. If you want, you can add a custom attribute to such events OR instead of closing them, you can drop the events. What you do in the script really depends on your use case requirements.
The event filter used in the EPI script:
Step 6: Remove the node from the special node group when the outage is over
Again, as in step 1, there are many ways to do this:
a. Using Monitored Nodes UI, remove the node from the node group
b. Run the opr-node CLI to do so
c. Create a tool (using opr-node CLI) that appears in the right click context menu or action tab of a node CI or event
Here, I use option c and create a tool as shown below:
Some Points to Consider:
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1. For non-admin users, make sure the user has appropriate permissions to execute tools and to run the opr-node command, as documented in the OMi Online help
2. I used OMi version 10.61 for this workflow and while running opr-node command, it returns with HTTP error 500 in some cases, even though command works successfully. Its a known defect and has been fixed in version10.62
3. I have created a content pack that contains the rules, filter and EPI script definitions. If you would like to make use of that, its available at the marketplace - https://marketplace.microfocus.com/itom/content/one-click-ad-hoc-downtime-management.
I hope you find this useful. Your feedback/comments/questions are welcome.
Events
To get more information on this release and how customers are using Operations Bridge we are happy to announce the following events you can register for
Vivit event – Operations Special Interest Group Webinar – 11th October 2017 – Register here
ITOM Customer Forum, Copenhagen – October 3rd 2017 - Register here
ITOM Customer Forum, Stockholm – October 4th 2017 - Register here
ITOM Customer Forum, London – October 5th 2017 - Register here
ITOM Customer Forum, Brussels – December 7th 2017 - coming soon
Read all our news at the OpsBridge blog
References
Explore all the capabilities of the Operations Bridge Suite and technology integrations by visiting these sites:
- Operations Bridge Suite
- Operations Manager i
- Operations Bridge Technology Integrations eBook
- Operations Bridge Integrations page
