How to set hundreds of alerts in less than 60 seconds

You know realtime alerts are critical for running your data center. But to be really useful they can't take too long to set up or result in false notifications.  Packet Power's EMX Energy Portal application has a unique Policies tool that allows an alert to be set up in under a minute and applied to as many monitoring units as you need. Here's how it works.

First create the Policy, then identify who should receive notifications if conditions fall outside your parameters.

Creating a Policy
In the Power Manager software, select "Define Policies" in the "Notifications" box at the top of the page.

This opens a "Policies" box in which you can define a new policy and edit or delete existing policies.  Selecting "New" opens a "Policy Definition" box in which you:

1. Name the Policy
2. Describe the condition that you want to maintain
3. Set the parameters of the Policy in the "Desired Conditions" box by selecting them from the pull down menus for the various categories

In the example below, the condition we want to maintain is for our PDU current to be less than or equal to 80% of the rating of the circuit. Note that the rating can be defined as a number or as a percentage. Using a percentage is useful if you have a variety of different circuit sizes in the data center. You can set a single percentage and it will be applied to all the monitoring units regardless of the current rating.

You'll also see that in the "Violation Handling" box, we have defined this violation as a "Level 4" notification and we have asked to be reminded of the violation every 5 minutes in the "Timeout" field.  

Once the Policy is defined, you opt in or out of that Policy in each room and it will be applied to all of the monitoring units in that room. Open the "Room Configuration" box and simply turn Policies on or off as desired. 

You can set as many Policies as you want and customize them for every room in your data center.  Packet Power gives you the ability to opt in or out of a Policy at the rack level as well as the room level by selecting the appropriate option in the pull down box as shown below.

Identify who gets notified
Notification set up is just as easy.  Clicking on "Set up" in the "Notifications" box at the top of the screen opens the "Notification setup" box.  Simply check the "Notifications on" box in the top left corner of the box. This enables you to enter contact information for the people you want notified of violations.  More than one person can be listed in the box by using the semi-colon delimiter. You can use the default "Subject lines" or customize as desired. 

Once your Policies are set and notifications turned on, you will receive notifications of violations of the desired condition as well as reminder notifications that continue as long as the extraordinary condition exists. You'll also receive a notification when the issue has been resolved. Notifications can be delivered via email or SMS text.

When something is going wrong in your data center, you need to be notified immediately. Packet Power's unique Policies feature makes setting up realtime alerts fast and easy for very large monitoring networks.

Email support@packetpower.com for help setting up Policies in your facility.

Not sure of the difference between Policies and Alerts? Review our recent blog:  Something's wrong! Find out immediately using EMX Policies and Alerts