Configuring events and alerts¶

Enabling email alerts¶

OpsCenter can post alerts to selected email addresses. To enable email alerts, you must edit the email.conf file and provide valid SMTP server host and port information. This file is located in the following directories:

• Package installations: /etc/opscenter/event-plugins
• Binary tarball installations (Linux and Mac OSX): <install_location/opscenter/conf/event-plugins
• Windows installations: Program Files (x86)\DataStax Community\opscenter\conf\event-plugins

To enable email alerts:

1. Make sure that you have valid SMTP mail accounts to send and receive alerts.
2. On the OpsCenter daemon host, open the email.conf file for editing.
3. Set enabled to 1.
4. Provide valid values for your SMTP host, port, user, and password.
5. Enable Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol on your system if you want secure communications. Typically, SSL is required.
6. Provide valid values for the to_addr and from_addr email addresses. The to_addr value is the account that will receive alerts.
7. Optionally, set the level of alerts to send and the desired subject line.
8. Save email.conf and restart the OpsCenter daemon.

For example, in a system with email alerts enabled for critical and alert-level events,:file:email.conf looks like:

[email]
enabled=1
# levels can be comma delimited list of any of the following:
# DEBUG,INFO,WARN,ERROR,CRITICAL,ALERT
# If left empty, will listen for all levels
levels=CRITICAL,ALERT
smtp_host=smtp.gmail.com
smtp_port=465
smtp_user=mercury@gmail.com
smtp_pass=*********
smtp_use_ssl=1
smtp_use_tls=0
to_addr=cassandra_admin@acme.com
from_addr=mercury@gmail.com
subject=OpsCenter Event

To enable email alerts to multiple addresses:

Create a different email conf file with settings for each email address. All conf files are loaded so you can name them email1.conf, email2.conf, and so on.

Enabling alerts posted to a URL¶

OpsCenter can post alerts to a URL if you provide a correctly formatted POST script. For example, a simple PHP script containing print_r($_POST); should be sufficient for getting started.

To enable URL posting on the OpsCenter side, you must edit posturl.conf and provide a path to your script. This file is located in the following directories:

• Package installations: /etc/opscenter/event-plugins
• Binary tarball installations (Linux and Mac OSX): <install_location/opscenter/conf/event-plugins
• Windows installations: Program Files (x86)\DataStax Community\opscenter\conf\event-plugins

To enable URL posting:

1. Make sure your web server and posting script are configured to receive alerts.
2. On the OpsCenter daemon host, open posturl.conf for editing.
3. Set enabled to 1.
4. For url, provide a valid path to your posting script. For example: url=http://50.1.1.11/postOPSCevents.php.
5. Optionally, select the desired logging level. The default is to listen for all levels of events.
6. Save posturl.conf and restart the OpsCenter daemon.

In a system with posting enabled for critical and alert-level events, posturl.conf looks like:

[posturl]
enabled=1
url=http://50.1.1.11/postOPSCevents.php
# levels can be comma delimited list of any of the following:
# DEBUG,INFO,WARN,ERROR,CRITICAL,ALERT
# If left empty, will listen for all levels
levels=CRITICAL,ALERT

You can set preferences to specify how the posting is handled on the receiving side.

To verify that events are posting correctly:

1. Post events to a file such as /tmp/events on the web server host.

2. Create a script. For example, create a PHP script http://50.1.1.11/postOPSCevents.php:

   <?php
     file_put_contents('/tmp/events', print_r($_POST,true), FILE_APPEND);
   ?>
   

3. Deploy the script. You might need to restart the web server.

4. Launch a logged event, such as an OpsCenter restart or garbage compaction from Dashboard > Cluster > List View. Output to /tmp looks something like this:

   Array
   (
     [api_source_ip] => 67.169.50.240
     [target_node] => None
     [event_source] => OpsCenter
     [user] => None
     [time] => 1311025598851602
     [action] => 20
     [message] => Garbage Collecting node 50.1.1.24
         [level] => 1
         [source_node] => 50.1.1.24
         [level_str] => INFO
   )