Sybase backups

Purpose

This monitor will look for the last cumulative, database and transaction dumps and send an alarm if some are too old. It will also detect and report dump errors.

Configuration hints

Surveillance table: This is a table of rules that you can use to configure and customize the configuration. Each line of the table will define a rule of monitoring. You can combine multiple rules to cover different cases. Within a rule, you can configure a maximum age of a dump from a given type, and if you want to detect dump errors as well.

Dump age threshold: Use the multi-threshold syntax to set multiple threshold/severity associations: G2W:20 W2M:40 M2C:60 (Green To Warning, Warning To Major, etc...). An alarm of the corresponding severity will be sent if the latest dump is older than threshold. Set 0 in the field if unused

Dump errors: This monitor will look for dump errors that happened since the last check. This check is active when the Backup error severity not DISABLED. In that case, an alarm of the corresponding severity will be sent. If it is scheduled to run every 15 minutes, then it will look for errors 15 minutes in the past. It will cope with system restart, up to a 2 hours delay.

Dump type and DB names: Each rule can be set for one type of dump only:

CUMULATIVE

DATABASE

TRANSACTION

You can then set a filter on the DB name if you need to set a specific rule for it.

Rules order: Rules are processed following their order in the table. One given dump can only be processed once, it will be ignored by subsequent rules. Therefore you MUST define specific rules (for a give DB) before general ones (for all).

Surveillance table

Parameter	Description
Active	If checked, the rule is enabled and will be processed
DB name	A filter to match only a specific DB name, can use RegExp, white or black list
Type	The type of dump to look for
backup max age (min)	The maximum age of the dump in minutes, associated to a severity (G2W:50 W2C:80). Set to 0 if not used.
Backup age severity	The default severity used for backup age alarm if multi threshold syntax is not used
Backup error sev.	The severity of the alert generated if a backup has an error state. Set to DISABLED if not used.
Auto clear	If set, the generated alarms will be automatically cleared from the console if the alarm condition is not fulfilled anymore
Alarm tag	This field allows to add custom text within the alarm message. %MSG% variable will contain the actual generated message and can be used such as: “my_prefix %MSG% my_suffix”. By default, tag will be used as prefix.
Alarm	Defines if the alerting is active for this rule.
Metric	Defines if the metric generation is active for this rule.
Report	If checked, this rule will be used for showing threshold and severity in the daily report

Examples

Active	DB name	Type	backup max age (min)	Backup age severity	Backup error sev.	Auto clear	Alarm tag	Alarm	Metric	Report
true	*	TRANSACTION	G2W:10 G2M:20	MAJOR	CRITICAL	true	true	true	true

Effect : A WARNING alarm will be sent if the last TRANSACTION dump is older than 10 minutes (MAJOR if older than 20 min). A CRITICAL alert will be sent if a TRANSACTION dump error is detected since the last check.

Generated metrics

metricId	metricUnit	metricTarget	metricDescription
DATABASE_BACKUP_AGE	Minutes	[TYPE][DB]	This metrics contains the number of minutes elapsed since the last dump of a given type, for a given DB