The purpose of the Service Assurance Adapter Platformis to normalize events and place them into a topological context so that they can be imported into a Global Manager. This means that the Adapter PlatformServer takes incoming events from a variety of other sources and translates the information into standard notifications. The standard notification is based on the ICIM_Notification class and consists of many attributes. When the Adapter Platformis used as a platform for ASM Adapters, the ASM Adapters set the properties of the notification attributes. Depending on the configuration of the adapter, the attributes created for each notification may or may not be populated with data.

Also, when the Global Managercollects the notification information from the Adapter PlatformServer, not all of the attributes of the notification get passed by default. Notification attributeslists the attributes of the notifications for Service Assuranceand also identifies those that get passed to the Global Manager.

Note:

For attributes that contain a time value, time is counted in seconds from Midnight, January 1st, 1970 GMT (the Epoch).

Table 1. Notification attributes

Notification attribute

Type

Value range

(default value)

Passed

by default

Description

Acknowledged

Boolean

TRUE or FALSE

No

TRUE if the notification has been acknowledged, FALSE if not.

Active

Boolean

TRUE or FALSE

(Default: TRUE)

No

TRUE if the notification is active, FALSE if not.

AuditTrail

Special

No

Audit trail for the notification. AuditTrail is a table that includes:

  • ActionType

  • SerialNumber

  • Text

  • Timestamp

  • User

Category

String

Yes

Type of notification. Possible values include:

  • Availability

  • Discovery

  • Error

  • Operational

  • Performance

  • PowerSupply

  • Resource

  • Temperature

  • IMPACT

These categories correspond to the Exceptions of the same name described in the IP Manager User Guideand the Business Impact Manager User Guide.

Certainty

Float

0 to 100

(Default: 100)

Yes

Confidence level that this notification is the correct diagnosis.

ClassDisplayName

String

Yes

Class name of the managed element (where the event occurred) that is displayed to the user.

ClassName

String

Yes

Class name of the managed element where the event occurred. This attribute along with InstanceName and EventName uniquely identifies this notification. ClassName may differ from the ElementClassName.

ClearOnAcknowledge

Boolean

TRUE or FALSE

(Default: FALSE)

Yes

TRUE if the notification should be cleared when it is acknowledged. Use this in cases when notifications never expire or that have sources that will not generate a clear.

ElementClassName

String

Yes

Class Name of the object that the event occurred on.

ElementName

String

Yes

Element Name of the object that the event occurred on.

EventDisplayName

String

Yes

Name of the notification that is displayed to the user.

EventName

String

Yes

Name of the event. This attribute along with ClassName and InstanceName uniquely identifies this notification.

EventState

String

No

Indicates the state of the notification. Possible values include:

  • ACTIVE

  • SUSPENDED

  • WAS_ACTIVE

  • INACTIVE

  • UNINITIALIZED

EventText

String

Yes

A description of the notification.

EventType

Special

MOMENTARY or

DURABLE

(Default: DURABLE)

Yes

Indicates the nature of the event. A MOMENTARY event has no duration (such as an authentication failure). A DURABLE event has a period during which the event is active and after which the event is no longer active (such as a link failure).

FirstNotifiedAt

Integer

(Default: 0)

No

First notification time. (This value is reset after an event is archived.)

Events diagnosed by an underlying domain include timestamps that accurately reflect when the event occurred. The Global Manageruses this value from the event for the FirstNotifiedAt/LastNotifiedAt times when it creates the notification.

Impact

Integer

(Default: 0)

No

A number that quantifies the impact of this notification on the infrastructure or business processes. Larger numeric values indicate a larger impact.

InMaintenance

Boolean

TRUE or FALSE

(Default: FALSE)

No

TRUE indicates that the device associated with the notification is in maintenance mode, FALSE if not.

InstanceDisplayName

String

Yes

Name of the instance that is displayed to the user.

Note:

If tagging is implemented in the Global Manager, the InstanceDisplayName may include a tag suffix.

InstanceName

String

Yes

Name of the instance where the event occurred. This attribute along with ClassName and EventName uniquely identifies this notification.

IsRoot

Boolean

TRUE or FALSE

No

TRUE if the notification is a root cause, FALSE if not.

It is often useful to filter on IsRoot to find those notifications which require immediate attention.

IsProblem

String

Yes

Yes indicates if (and only if) at least one of the source event types is “PROBLEM” and other source event types are either “PROBLEM” or “UNKNOWN”.

No indicates that one or more of the source event types is “EVENT” or “AGGREGATE”.

Because filtering on IsRoot can result in transient behavior when events are received from multiple underlying sources, it is recommended to filter on IsProblem instead.

LastChangedAt

Integer

(Default: 0)

No

Time since the Epoch when the status of the notification last changed. This is calculated by the Global Manager.

LastClearedAt

Integer

(Default: 0)

No

Time since the Epoch when the notification was last cleared. This is calculated by the Global Manager.

LastNotifiedAt

Integer

(Default: 0)

No

Time since the Epoch when the notification was last notified.

Name

String

No

Internal identifier for the notification.

Occurrence Count

Integer

No

Number of times the notification has occurred.

Owner

String

No

Name of the user responsible for handling this notification.

Severity

Integer

1 to 5

(Default: 5)

Yes

An enumerated value that describes the severity of the notification from the notifier's point of view. Valid values are the integers 1 through 5:

  1. Critical indicates action is needed NOW and the scope is broad, for example, an outage to a critical resource.

  2. Major indicates action is needed NOW.

  3. Minor indicates action is needed, but the situation is not serious at this time.

  4. Unknown indicates that the element is unreachable, disconnected, or in an otherwise unknown state.

  5. Normal is used when an event is purely informational.

    Note:

    Only the numbers, not the text descriptions, are passed by the Global Manager.

SourceDomainName

String

No

The name of the domain that notified current occurrences of this event. If there is more than one domain, the attribute lists each separated by a comma.

An intermediary Managerthat relays an event is not listed as a source. For example, “Trap Processor” (SNMP Trap Adapter) is listed as the source of a notification and not the intermediary SAM Adapter PlatformServer.

SourceEventType

String

UNKNOWN

Yes

Indicates the type of event from an underlying source or sources. Value can be: PROBLEM, EVENT, AGGREGATE, or UNKNOWN. (Not to be confused with Event Type.)

TroubleTicketID

String

No

Trouble-ticket number associated with this notification.

UserDefined1-10

String

No

User defined field 1-10.