DCE doesn't send mail notifications

[DCIM_Support]

Hello,

our DCE about 200 UPSs. Also there are several notification policies. Every policy contains multiple Actions (send Mail) an every Action contains muliple mail receivers. But at least one mail notification ist not working. I found out, that one UPS changed its state to "warning", but we did not get any mail. But the notification policy is configured like all the others and they work.

Is there any known bug about mail notifications? Does anyone have an idea, what I can test?

Thanks in advance 😀

(CID:134028649)

[DCIM_Support · Accepted solution]

Hi Matthias,

There is no bug that I am aware of that would cause the system to send for some alerts and not others.

The first thing I would suggest is verifying not only that the UPS saw the issue but that DCE saw the issue. Is the event you're looking for listed in DCE under alarm history?

With APC units, there is what is called "Priority Scanning" which should allow DCE to see the alerts almost immediately. This is noted in k-base FA271584. With a 3rd party device, DCE will not see the event until the next polling sequence. If that is set to 5 minutes, that means that the alarm could occur and last 4:59 and then clear and potentially not get noticed by DCE. Again, alarm history should verify this.

Something else you may want to look at is the policy and actions you're associating with the device(s) that failed to send. Verify the device is actually in the policy you think it is. Verify there is no delay if you click Add alarm actions:

You may also want to verify that the alarm action is properly set up to send to send to the proper e-mail address and for all the different severities it may encounter:

You may also want to validate that for the device in question, the specific device alarm is enabled:

If it is a manually created threshold, make sure it is set up properly as well. Please also make sure that the device itself is not in maintenance mode.

You may also want to check your server or your spam folder. Perhaps something was blocked or sent to the wrong place.

To troubleshoot, you can always try to run a packet capture while testing the UPS in this warning state. This will show you what DCE is or is not sending. You can also try to send to a different e-mail address from this profile...one that is known to work with a different profile.

Thanks,

Steve

(CID:134028697)

[DCIM_Support]

Dear Matthias Hartmannn,

Tell us, please, did you solve your problem or not?

With respect.

(CID:134680049)

[DCIM_Support]

Hi Steve, sorry for the delay, but the affected UPS was not reachable for a long time. I have checked all the described steps and they are configured correctly. However, the UPS sometimes generates the message "UPS: On battery power in response to an input power problem" several times a day and no alert is generated. The alert always occours only for some seconds and even only some of them are detected by the DCE. But for none of the events an alarm is generated. Other UPSs send mails, so the server mail settings are correct.

(CID:134687204)

[DCIM_Support]

Hi Matthias,

I'm not sure I fully understand your response. You mention this device does not alert through DCE but others do. You also show this image:

Is this an image of alerts for the UPS in question or are you showing the other device that does alert?

Exactly how long are these on-battery events if you look at the device log (on the device itself)?

Is DCE actually seeing the event of UPS on battery and not e-mailing or is it just not seeing the event at all?

If you look under the device menu, SNMP Device Communications Settings, then SNMP scan settings for this specific device, is it set up with a check mark for priority scanning?

If you look in the logs for the device itself, do you see any errors about SNMP access?

Steve

(CID:134687325)

[DCIM_Support]

Hi Steven, thanks for the fast reply.

the screenshot shows the alarm history of the UPS in the DCE. There are considerably more entries in the log of the UPS. These last about 1-2 seconds. I think that's too short and DCE doesn't detect all of them. The UPS is not in maintenance mode.

The alarm policies are configured with two mail actions. One sends a mail to the respective team on site. The other one sends a mail to a central mailbox, which I monitor. Here several mail from other devices are received daily, but no alarms from the mentioned UPS. For this reason we slowly lose confidence in the software, because nobody knows how many alarms we are still missing.

Yes, all UPSs are marked for priority scanning. This seem to be system default, because I've never seen this menu before 🙂

The device doesn't show any SNMP errros.

Matthias

(CID:134687368)

[DCIM_Support]

Hi Matthias,

You're right. If the event only lasts for 2 seconds, DCE may not pick it up. There's nothing you can really do about that. DCE does not alarm immediately when the NMC sends a message to DCE about an alert. Instead, to make sure it is not a false message, when DCE gets a message from an NMC it goes back and polls a specific alarm OID.If that OID is blank, DCE sees no alert and does not message.

The time between the UPS going to battery, sending a message, DCE receiving the message, then sending a poll to the device, that could be a few seconds or more. If the event is only lasting 1-2 seconds, DCE will never see it. The only alternative in such an event is to have the UPS send the messages for itself.

Steve

(CID:134687378)

[DCIM_Support]

Hi Steven, thanks for the explanation. That's not what I wanted to hear, but at least now I know we don't have a bug in the configuration. Many thanks for the quick help!

Matthias

(CID:134687398)

[DCIM_Support]

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