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Alerts

Dell™ OpenManage™ Client Instrumentation Version 7.4 User's Guide

  Overview

  ASF Alerting

  WMI Alerting

Overview

Alerts are generated when a system's state of interest changes. There are two basic types of alerting: local alerting to the current computer user and remote alerting to a management application. Dell™ OpenManage™ Client Instrumentation (OMCI) handles both types of alerting.

The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) has released the Alert Standard Format (ASF), which defines alerting and remote control interfaces that enable management of networked systems when their operating system is absent. This includes a networked computer that has an inactive or inoperable operating system or that is in a low-power system sleep state. The ASF specification is available at www.dmtf.org. ASF documentation is provided with Dell systems that support ASF.

ASF handles remote alerting for environmental events, which are detected by sensors, such as temperature, electrical, and fan probes, and chassis intrusion sensors. ASF also handles additional alerting in the operating-system-absent environment. By default, OMCI handles remote alerting for all events.

ASF 2.0 adds important security measures to the ASF standard, which defines alerting and remote control interfaces to proactively manage networked devices when their operating system is absent. The first industry specification for operating system absent management, ASF allows a network administrator to be alerted to failures of specific components within a networked device, thereby minimizing on-site maintenance while maximizing remote visibility of and access to local systems. Without ASF, operating system absent problems require manual intervention to force a reboot of the system.

There are three settings in the system BIOS that OMCI allows for configuration:

• Off — The system is configured so that all ASF 2.0 features are turned off.
  
  
• Alert Only — The system is configured so that ASF 2.0 alert is the only feature that is turned on.
  
  
• On — The system is configured so that alerts and remote control are turned on.
  

The system network interface card (NIC) and basic input/output system (BIOS) support ASF 2.0. If the BIOS allows for any ASF 2.0 configuration, then that is exposed through the Microsoft® Windows® Management Instrumentation (WMI) by OMCI.

ASF Alerting

In previous versions of OMCI, environmental alerts were sent as desktop management interface (DMI) alerts. With the introduction of ASF, the environmental alerts are handled by the ASF NIC. ASF monitors the environmental probes at a very low level and sends out a Platform Event Trap (PET) when an event occurs. Where applicable, OMCI notifies the local user of the alert. For information on which PET a specific model of Dell system supports, see the system's User's Guide.

ASF is a DMTF management standard that specifies "pre-operating system" or "operating system-absent" alerting techniques. The standard is designed to generate an alert on potential security and fault conditions when the operating system is in a sleep state or the system is powered down. ASF is designed to supersede previous operating system-absent alerting technologies.

WMI Alerting

Local alerting involves displaying user messages and writing to the Windows event log. Remote alerting is accomplished through WMI indications. When OMCI detects an event, it generates an alert, which can be transmitted through the WMI service to a remote management application that is subscribed to that type of alert.

When an alert is generated, OMCI supports three types of notification:

• NT event log
  
  
• Remote
  
  
• Console
  

In OMCI, each type of event (for example, CurrentProbe, TemperatureProbe, Smart, and so on) that gets logged is provided with an unique event ID number. The events have unique IDs to allow log scraping; this way you can programmatically look at the event log and determine what OMCI events have occurred.

You are also provided with an option to receive either a single alert or a limited number of alerts of the occurrence of an event, of a given type. You can mask out specific events and can generate single alert messages for only those events. The Dell_IndicationStaticValues class has the MaxNTEventLogNotifications, MaxDisplayNotifications, and the OccurrencesCount properties, which control the number of notices of each alert condition that are sent to the NT event log and to the local display. For example, setting a value of 0 will not send any notices.

You can change any attribute or CIM class through standard CIM editors. The following properties in the Dell_IndicationStaticValues class control the number of notices of each alert condition that are sent to the NT event log and to the display. You can modify the below listed values through standard CIM editors or through scripts.

• MaxNTEventLogNotifications: The maximum number of notices of this type that will be sent to the NT event log. Values are 0=never send, 1=first occurrence only, 2=first and second occurrences, and so on. The special value of –1 sends all occurrences. The default value is –1.
  
  
• MaxDisplayNotifications: The maximum number of notices of this type that will be sent to the local display. Values are 0=never send, 1=first occurrence only, 2=first and second occurrences, and so on. The special value of –1 sends all occurrences. The default value is –1.
  
  
• OccurrencesCount: The number of notices of this type that have occurred. It retains a count of the number of occurrences of the given alert that have occurred since the last reset. The initial value is 0. Setting OccurrencesCount to 0 restarts the sending of notices.
  

Since the instances of the Dell_ IndicationStaticValues class are stored in the WMI repository, the above data is persistent across shutdown, restart, sleep, hibernate, and standby modes. You can reset the OccurrencesCount at reboot by installing a script to run at boot time.

Two new properties have been added to the Dell_Configuration class. They are:

• GlobalNTEventLogSeverityLevel: Controls the notice to the NT event log based on the severity level of the event
  
  
• GlobalDisplaySeverityLevel: Controls the notice to the local display based on the severity level of the event
  

OMCI recognizes the following eight WMI severity levels (represented by integers 0 through 7):

• UNKNOWN = 0
  
  
• OTHER = 1
  
  
• INFORMATION = 2
  
  
• WARNING_DEGRADED = 3
  
  
• MINOR = 4
  
  
• MAJOR = 5
  
  
• CRITICAL = 6
  
  
• FATAL_NONRECOVERABLE = 7
  
  

NOTE: Events with CRITICAL severity will cause OMCI to shut down the local system after a 60-second delay. The GlobalDisplaySeverityLevel property in the Dell_Configuration class should always be set to 6 or below; otherwise, the system will not receive a shutdown command from OMCI.

The lowest WMI severity level that OMCI sends is WARNING_DEGRADED and the highest is CRITICAL. The severities of OMCI 7.x events are listed in Table 4-1. OMCI sends local alerting and remote alerting for all the listed events.

Table 4-1. Events Polled by OMCI 7.x

¹ The event is specific to OMCI 7.0.

² The event is specific to OMCI 7.1 and later versions.

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