Many laptops belonging to our "power users" were either running out of space, and/or kicking up DISK SMART or Prefailure alerts. The information was not being provided to our on site techs or our help desk in a timely fashion, and many of the laptops subsequently failed leaving the users without computers.
The default e-mail alerts about these laptops (and their problems) did not describe what the actual error was, therefore they were of no help to the help desk staff or to the on-site techs.
Our Solution
We went in and customized two items within TASKS > Platform Management > HP Client Health Notification Policies, to better describe the errors and to route them to the appropriate people before the hard drives could crash.
First, we cloned the 'Disk Drive Alert' notification, and customized the query to only show DISK SMART or Prefailure alerts. This filtered out any other alerts and allowed us to focus on the machines that were in danger of failing as opposed to just getting full.
Second, we tweaked the E-mail Automated Action to place the error message in the e-mail. By doing this, we could focus on the machine under the greatest risk (Pre failures).
Third, we directed the e-mails to our help desk and to any on-site support, and of course the Altiris Administrator. We explained that there may be many reasons why these messages may appear, and could show potentially false positives, but contacting the user to check in on the health of their machine may prevent failures, and show a competency in identifying and mitigating problems and risks before they occur. We found that the machines kicking up these error messages to the NS were in fact having some sort of issue that was noticeable to the end user already.
Here are the two tweaks for you to copy and try:
**REMEMBER TO CLONE YOUR POLICIES FIRST**
These can easily be customized to your needs.
To edit Disk Drive alerts to show a certain alert (in this case DISK SMART &apm; Prefailure) message.
Under Edit Query:
SELECT id.Name, id.[Domain], ah.DeviceType, ah.Alert, ah.Message, CONVERT(CHAR(20), ah._eventTime, 100) AS EventTime,
ah._ResourceGuid AS ResourceGuid, id.[Last Logon User]
FROM Inv_AeX_AC_Identification id INNER JOIN
Evt_HPCMS_Health ah ON id._ResourceGuid = ah._ResourceGuid
WHERE (DATEDIFF(hh, ah._eventTime, GETDATE()) <= 1) AND (ah.DeviceType = 'DiskDrive') AND (ah.Alert = 'CRC' OR
ah.Alert = 'Prefailure' OR
ah.Alert = 'Disk SMART')
To Edit the e-mail alert to show actual alert:
Under edit e-mail automated action:
The machine %altirisResourceName% has a reported a %altirisHpCmsalert%
Return on Investment
Unmeasurable. The cost of sending out a replacement hard drive or whole unit ahead of time, far outweighed the "cost" of a ticked off end user who would be out of a computer. This was also a key to remind the user to backup important data, as their drives may have been dying.
These alerts, along with others, such as CPU thermal alerts & memory module alerts, give Admins, IT departments, and Help desk workers the ability to proactively attack potential failures in the field before they happen.
This is a easy value-add to management, and easily quantifiable ROI for Altiris solutions and HP desktops and laptops.