Sniffer® Portable Professional User's Guide - NetScout

Managing Alarms
Overview
The Alarm Log
12
Sniffer Portable Professional’s alarm features provide a comprehensive
method of detecting and logging network alarm events:
The Sniffer Expert generates alarms during data capture. It can log
an event in the Alarm log when it detects a symptom or diagnosis.
The monitor’s Alarm Manager starts automatically when you start
Sniffer Portable Professional. It logs an event in the Alarm log when
a user-specified threshold parameter is exceeded.
Abnormal network events can be assigned to one of five different levels
of severity: Critical, Major, Minor, Warning, and Informational. In
addition, you can associate each severity level with up to four alarm
notification actions (for example, you can configure Sniffer Portable
Professional to send email when a critical or Major alarm occurs). Alarm
notification actions can be activated during certain time periods within a
day, or on certain days of the week.
Logged alarm events (Monitor alarms and Expert alarms) are listed in
the Alarm log, which you display by selecting Alarm Log from the
Monitor menu or by clicking the Alarm button .
IMPORTANT: Alarms (both Monitor and Expert) are only logged in the
Monitor > Alarm Log if the Enable Alarm option is checked in the
Tools > Options > Alarm tab. This option is enabled by default. See
Setting Up Logging for the Local Alarm Log on page 259 for details.
For each alarm event, you see the type of node that triggered the alarm
(for example, server, bridge, or hub), a description of the alarm, the
time it occurred, and the severity level.
The Alarm log (sample shown in Figure 12-1) displays the following
information:
Status. Alarm status. The Status can be new or acknowledged (i).
To acknowledge an alarm, right-click on the alarm entry and select
Acknowledge.
User’s Guide 257