Good morning everyone,
This morning, I was able to successfully configure heartbeat monitors for a SaaS alert delegation platform named OpsGenie. Heartbeat monitoring will inform users in the assigned escalation schedule(s) that OpsGenie has lost connectivity to the Solarwinds server(s).
We previously used AlertCentral at my place of employment, only to find it wasn't top-of-the-line for our alert delegation needs. Also, modems were somewhat out of the question (management decision?), so we didn't really have much of a way to alert pagerholders if our entire network environment went down; or if our virtual cluster hosting the Solarwinds servers also went down. Since we're using Office365, we completely rely on Internet connectivity. If the primary and secondary Internet connections at our main site went down simultaneously, no Solarwinds alerts could integrate with OpsGenie to be delegated to the correct teams. We wouldn't even know about it! As you most likely already realize, many gaps existed for alerting.
My thoughts are that I should create a document that defines this simple process so that any other Thwack members utilizing OpsGenie can be led in the right direction. Again, this process is fairly simple and easy to learn how to do; but sometimes, it's best to have a fish given to you even if you already know how to fish.
Step 1:
Create a Heartbeat integration within OpsGenie. Ensure that the correct teams and recipients are defined. Also, copy the apikey because you'll need it later in Step 4.
Step 2:
Create a heartbeat name in the "Heartbeats" tab on the left-hand pane. I had to create two different heartbeat names for each of my Solarwinds front end servers (i.e. SAMserver, NPMserver). Make sure that "10 Minutes" is the defined time variable.
Step 3:
Download the lamp application ( Download lampzip - OpsGenie ). Unzip the file. Store the contents of the "lamp" folder on any disk drive of your Solarwinds server(s). (i.e. C:\Lamp)
Step 4:
Modify the lamp.conf file with the correct apikey. The correct apikey is provided in the initial Heartbeat integration created in Step 1 above. lamp.conf is located at <install path>\conf\lamp.conf (i.e. C:\Lamp\conf\lamp.conf).
Step 5:
Create a batch file that will execute the command necessary to properly send a heartbeat message from your server to OpsGenie. The command to be used is: lamp heartbeat --name <HeartbeatNameFromStep2> (i.e. lamp heartbeat --name SAMserver).
Step 6:
Create a scheduled Windows task on your Solarwinds server(s) that will run the batch file every ten minutes for an indefinite time period. This ensures OpsGenie will receive a heartbeat message once every ten minutes.
*NOTE: you will need to start the batch file in the install path of the Lamp application (i.e. C:\Lamp) or else it will not work as desired.
Step 7:
Review the heartbeat to ensure it is actively updating itself every ten minutes.
I sincerely hope the viewers of this document find the information helpful. Thanks all!
-Michael