Forwarding NetCrunch alerts to OpsGenie

NetCrunch alerts can happen at any time, but sometimes they need the attention of someone who is not the NetCrunch user. With OpsGenie those alerts will be posted to OpsGenie Alerts Page as tickets and can trigger Notifications to the email address or the mobile as an SMS (text message), voice message, or mobile app. Here we will show you how to configure a NetCrunch integration with OpsGenie.

For configuring the OpsGenie Notifications please refer to the OpsGenie website.

Enable NetCrunch to post alerts to OpsGenie

To enable NetCrunch to post selected alerts to the OpsGenie Alerts Page you need to first set up an Integration Profile for OpsGenie. To do so, click Monitoring Integration Profiles at the top of the NetCrunch application.

In the editor, the new Integration Profile needs to be named and you will be asked for an "OpsGenie API Key". To configure such a key, follow the link: https://www.opsgenie.com/docs/integrations/api-integration and follow the steps specified to create a custom integration under "Using API Integration". Now copy the API Key into the NetCrunch Integration Profile and save the integration in OpsGenie.

Integration Profile

Create an alert that is sending tickets to OpsGenie

To allow NetCrunch to utilize the integration, it's necessary to create an alerting script (or edit the already existing one). The steps below explain how to create a new alerting script.

  • Click Monitoring Alerting Escalation Scripts
  • In Alerting Scripts Window click Add Alerting Script
  • Click Add and select Action to Run Immediately
  • Click Integrations tab and select OpsGenie Alert
Create alerting Script

A new window will appear where you can configure some optional fields for the OpsGenie Alerts. For example, you can add Teams and other Recipients who should receive notifications for this alert, and add Tags to this alert. Please note the informational text: If the Team name does not exist in OpsGenie it will not be assigned, recipients will be added even if they are not valid users and if the Tag-field is left empty a default Tag 'NetCrunch' will be added.

Test sending alerts to OpsGenie by clicking Test. A small window with the test procedure will appear, and if everything is configured properly, the test should finish with the "Successfully executed" message, while the test alert should now appear in the OpsGenie Alerts Page.

Test the Integration

To test the "Close Ticket" operation you need to create an alerting script with the "Open Ticket" operation as Action to Run Immediately and the "Close Ticket" operation as Action to Run on Alert Close. Then select a node and create an alert (for example Node Monitoring Disabled) to test and assign the alerting script to this alert. The following steps explain how to create a "Node Monitoring Disabled" alert for a single node.

  • Right-click the node where you want to create an alert
  • Select the Node Settings and click Alerts&Reports in the node settings window
  • Click Add Alert, select the Basic tab and choose Node monitoring is disabled
  • Right-click the new Alert and select Assign Predefined Alerting Script Your Script name
Assign the alerting Script

If you now trigger the alert (Disable the Node Monitoring), you will create a ticket. If this alert is closed (Node Monitoring Enabled) the ticket will be closed automatically. After such an alerting script is attached to various alerts, NetCrunch will send alerts to OpsGenie each time when the given alert is generated.

Result

WebHooks (Two-way-integration)

OpsGenie is one of NetCrunch's two-way-integrations, which means you can configure a WebHook that sends information back to NetCrunch when the alert is closed in OpsGenie so that the alert in NetCrunch is closed as well. This does not resolve the problem which caused the alert but it will close the alert generated by NetCrunch (i.e. Node may still be down even though the alert is closed).

To be able to receive WebHooks from OpsGenie you need to configure the NetCrunch API Key access. To do so, go to the OpsGenie Integration Profile and click "Open API Key Manager". Copy the WebHook URL and replace the [Web_Access_address] with your Web access address (i.e. https://123.456.789.0/ncinf/rest...).

API Key Manager

Go to OpsGenie, select Integrations WebHook, and create a new WebHook for the URL with your replaced Web_Access_Address in the field for the WebHook URL. Deselect all Alert Actions except "Delete" and "Close" and save the Integration.

From now on when NetCrunch creates an alert and the alert is closed in OpsGenie, the alert in NetCrunch will also be closed (the problem still exists, just the alert for this problem is closed).

Alert closed

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