Events

Events within Rnms are something that has happened. They are created by either a poller backend or a consolidator and have to be linked to a Host or an Attribute. Plain Events only have an created time, they do not have a concept of duration like alarmed Events.

Alarmed Events

If an Event is of an EventType that permits alarms and is associated with an Attribute then the Event will be marked as an Alarmed Event. These items have a stop_time which can either be set at creation or when another Event of the same EventType and Attribute but different state (usually Up) comes along.

Event Type

All Events have an EventType. This is specific domain or aspect of an Attribute or Host. For example an interface Attribute may have an operational status change or Error count exceeded EventType. Using Event Types means it is easier to determine when the Event has been cleared, or its a duplicate Event.

Event State

All Events have a State. While an EventType will tell you the type of event, such an interface status change, or a TCP port result, the state will tell you more about the Event, such as the interface status is now Down or the TCP port is now Open.

A departure from JFFNMS is that the Event State has a StateColor which sets the color in the event viewer and the Attribute and Host maps. Previously an Events colour was determined by its Severity which was based upon the EventType. Now the state sets the colour.

How Attribute state is determined

An Attributes state is inherited purely from the collection of active alarmed Events for that Attribute. When Rnms detects that the collection of Events has changed for an Attribute, all of the active (that is, not have a corresponding stop event or timed out) alarmed Events for that Attribute are collected and the one with the lowest priority setting has its state copied to the Attribute.

As the EventState has a link to the StateColor table, this is what also determines the colour of an Attribute in the maps.

The state of a host is similiarly determined using the same method with the exception that the active alarmed events for all Attributes within are host are evaluated.