Altiris™ Event Console 7.0 from Symantec Release Notes

Article:DOC1636

Created: 2009-03-05

Updated: 2009-03-05

Article URL http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC1636

Article Type
Documentation

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Description

Event Console reduces the need to maintain separate tools to monitor computers, software, printers, and other devices. Event Console collects SNMP traps and other status messages and displays them in a single location. All status messages that are received by Event Console are converted to a common format that links each received message to the affected resource in the CMDB. These formatted messages are called alerts.

See the following sections for information about this release:

Features of Event Console 7.0
Known Issues with Event Console 7.0

Features of Event Console 7.0

The following are features of this release:

Consolidated alert management in a single Event Console

Alert management shows a consolidated view of device health across your network. Health is viewed by network layout, by organization group, or by directly monitoring the list of received alerts in the Event Console.
The Event Console displays alerts from many sources. These sources could include but are not limited to:

SNMP Traps
ASF Alarms
AMT Alarms
IPMI Alarms
WS-Man notifications
WMI notifications

Event Console provides a rule-based triggering system that lets you process alerts in the following ways:

Launch Task Server tasks in response to specific alerts.
Prevent specific alerts from being stored in the alert database.
Forward alerts to another management system.

Each alert is color coded based on priority. You can filter alerts according to criteria. These criteria can include data range, host name, alarm type, severity, or status.

A double-click on any alert provides a pop-up with more details about the alert. Each alert has its own unique set of details depending on the source. For example, Monitor Solution alerts have data from the rule definition and the associated metric; this data is often predictable. In the case of SNMP traps, the alert details are specified in the associated MIB.

You can right-click on an alert and “acknowledge” it. This signifies that the alert is known and can safely be ignored while it is worked on.

Resolved or Normal events are displayed in the Event Console and are colored as green. This is useful information for server/NOC technicians as it provides positive confirmation that an alert condition has been resolved or has entered a normal state. You can configure an interval for which normal events are resolved.

Known Issues with Event Console 7.0

The following are unresolved issues in this release:

Known Issue	Article ID
An upgrade of Event Console returns the settings to default Following an upgrade of the Event Console, you must reconfigure the Event Console Settings and the Event Console Purging Settings to contain any previous custom settings. This step is necessary because an upgrade of Event Console returns these settings to the default settings.
Unhandled server side exception in IIS causes ‘Data cannot be loaded error’ To work around this issue, first check the database status, and then close the message and refresh the page.
When resolving alerts, use the "Close" button and not the "X" icon When Resolving or Acknowledging an Alert via its Alert Details pop-up, if you close the pop-up via the X in the top-right corner of the page as opposed to the Close button, the Resolved or Acknowledged icon will not show up in the Event Console. As a consequence, the Resolve and Acknowledge action buttons and menu items under Actions will not be properly disabled if that Alert is selected. Refreshing the Event Console page will get the proper icon to appear and properly disable Resolve or Acknowledge actions.
The Alert Rule Settings page has issues with refreshing rule status On all three Rules tabs, the status of your Rules (On/Off) does not update in the list of rules unless you navigate away from the Alert Rule Settings page, return to the page, and force a refresh of the page, or if you use the refresh button at the top right corner of the tab. Switching between tabs does not cause the list of rules to refresh.
The Event Console View web part jitters around after initial installation To resolve this issue, either refresh the page or close and re-open the Symantec Management Console. This is a display problem only and data is not affected.
Multiple alerts cannot be resolved or acknowledged if they are not on the same page You cannot acknowledge multiple alerts at once if the alerts are not displayed within the same page.
If Event Console services are not running, alerts will not be received in the database To work around this issue, you must restart the Event Console service.
SNMP Traps might not be received by Event Console Event Console should be able to receive SNMP traps out of the box. If not, check the following: Make sure the Event Receiver and the Event Engine Services are started. Make sure that the Windows SNMP Trap Service is not running. If it is, stop it and restart the Event Console services. Make sure that Any Host is selected on the security tab of the properties of the SNMP Service. Make sure there is not a filter rule without criteria/conditions. Creating a filter rule with no criteria will only filter ALL alerts.
Windows SNMP Service must be turned off for Event Console to receive SNMP events The built-in Windows SNMP service prevents the event receiver from receiving SNMP traps, and it should be stopped on the computer hosting your Notification Server.
When non-English regional settings are used in Internet Explorer, but the operating system is set to English, then some localized strings in the user interface may not appear To work around this issue, make sure that the operating system's localization settings match the settings in Internet Explorer.
The context menu might close while you are working in it The Event Console could refresh while you are working in the context menu. If this occurs, the menu will close and you must re-open the context menu.
The right-click context menu might not react to your cursor When working with the Group View and Topology View web parts in the portal pages for Event Console a right-click will bring up a context menu; however, to get the context menu to react to your cursor, you must move your cursor slightly to the right of the menu.
You cannot delete the Purge Policy Schedule even though the user interface includes a Delete option When working with the Purge Policy Schedule, within the Jobs and Tasks interface, there are Delete options present. However, if you attempt to delete the Purge Policy Schedule, you will receive an error, and the Delete will fail. The Purge Policy Schedule, by design, cannot be deleted. Please ignore the delete option.