The best way to do this is to use the ICMP Metric in the Agentless metric library and ping the Server on a predefined polling interval and then if it does not respond set the Severity to Critical and Associate a Email Task with the Critical Severity.

In the Basic Symantec Management Platform Pack on the Monitor Pack Community location on Connect it contains a Availability Policy to check if the Notification Server is Available and will alert when it is offline you could maybe use this as you baseline and create your own using this sample.

The heartbeat on the Monitor Plugin is used to check the Monitor Plugin availability and the default polling interval is 25 minutes i think and the server checks for this heartbeat every 10 minutes, though all of this is configurable and can be reduced down to a few minutes but for Server Availability it is recommended to use the ICMP Metric.

I will be creating a Demo Video shortly which i will be posting onto the Monitor Pack Community which will show how to create the Availability Alert and also how to configure the Monitor Plugin heartbeat.

I hope this information helps.

Joseph Carson

Hello,

In the next day i will upload a Demo Video which shows how to get alerts when a server is unreachable.  it will be available in the following link and also on the Monitor Pack Community.

ftp://ftp.altiris.com/Product/Monitor_Solution/MonitorSolution7_Demo_Chapters/

Joseph Carson

Thanks Joseph. Looking forward to the video. I was using the Heartbeat to monitor server availability, but was not pleased with how long it would take to get a response. I had set the Heartbeat to check for heartbeat every 1 minute under the Monitor Server Settings, and had configured the Agent to send the heartbeat every 15 minutes for Data collection. I then set the event console to fire off an email for any alert of category Heartbeat. This worked, but it seemed to be on the data collection interval of 15 minutes, not on the "Check for Heartbeat every" setting. 15 minutes would be too long to wait to see if a server was available.
In 6.5 I had written a script to ping the servers and utilized the task server to send the alert. Now I see the agentless Ping metric and am hoping to use that. I'll wait until I see your video to set that up.
Thank you.

Hello All,

I have finally completed the Demo Video to show how to use Monitor 7 to check for Server Uptime and Availability and alert into the event console and/or run a task when it fails.

The Video is available today on the following link and later in the week it will be also available on the Monitor Pack Community.

ftp://ftp.altiris.com/Product/Monitor_Solution/MonitorSolution7_Demo_Chapters/

http://www.symantec.com/connect/groups/monitor-pack-factor-challenge-altiris-server-management-suite-70

Learn how to monitor you servers and network devices uptime and availability and if a server goes down or does not respond get a Critical Alert into the Event Console and perform a Task like sending an Email, perform auto power management or bring another server online etc...

This Demo Video goes through the steps to show the following:

•Create a new monitor policy
•Create a new rule
•Create a Availability Metric using ICMP Agentless Metric
•Trigger Rule if ICMP Agentless Metric is not Success
•Create an Email alert if Rule is Triggered
•Create a Critical Alert into Event Console

If you are looking for something on this for version 6.5 then it is possible as IssacRoss mentioned to use a script or Command Line to do this though it is not native as it is today in version 7.

I hope you are finding these Demo Video usefull and if so i will continue to create them as needed.  If anyone has any requests or suggestions for another Demo Video i would be more than happy to hear them.

Joseph Carson
Sr. Product Manager

Hi All,

Please note that the FTP link above is no longer available at this time and all the Videos are available directly from the Monitor Community Group Page.

Kind Regards,

Joseph
I used the video as a guide and set up agentless uptime using ICMP. Received an email for every server that we are monitoring once I turned on the policy. Is this normal or is there something else I have to tweak?

Thanks
Bruce

Hello Bruce,

Just checking, are you getting failure Email Alerts or Success emails alerts?  It maybe that you have configured it to send emails on a Success instead of Failure.

Kind Regards,

I recieved alerts on informational instead of the critical setting that I put in place. The metric is set to alert if the status in not equal to success.

Computer:  HERSHEY\rsmeta5 
Source:  HERSHEY\altirisms 
Computer severity:  Critical 
Rule Information
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Rule severity:  Informational 
First occurrence:  9/29/2009 8:51:06 AM 
Last occurrence:  9/29/2009 8:51:06 AM 
Count:  1 
Solution:  Altiris Monitor Solution KB 45011 SP2 
Monitor policy:  Herco Uptime Availabilty 
Category:  System 

Machine are all up and running and can be pinged from server, it reports back as informational in the event viewer. Should I blow away the policy and start again?

Hi Bruce,

I would recommend disabling the Policy and i will be able to give you a hand tomorrow if that would work for you?

Best Regards,

Hi Bruce,

I noticed in the Policy that the Category is the following:

Category:  System 

if you could View the Details of that Alert from the Event Console and then edit Rule under the Action Drop down this will take you to the Rule which is causing the Alert.  This would be the rule to review if it is configured correctly.  The Category System normally has a bit of rules which return Informational and maybe incorrectly configured.

Br,

will do

Can this be done in version 6?

Hi All,

Yes this is possible, please see IsaacRoss post above.  IsaacRoss would it be possible to post your script here that allows ping of Servers using Monitor 6?

Also please note that in SMS 7.0 SP1 we have included 3 rules in the Agentless 2003/2008 Server pack that trigger Major Severity Alert when Servers are unavailable.  These are the ICMP/HTTP & HTTPS rules and are included in the Agentless Pack today.

Br,