User's Manual

Forwarding Alerts
You may want to consolidate alerts from multiple management stations to one management station. For
example, you have management stations in multiple locations and you want to view status and take
action from one central location. For information about the behavior of forwarded alerts, see Forwarding
Alerts Use Case. To create alert forwards:
1. Select Manage → Alerts → Common Tasks → New Alert Trap Forward Action.
2. In Name and Description, provide Trap Forward name and description and then click Next.
3. In Trap Forwarding Configuration, provide destination host name or IP address, provide community
information, to send a test trap to the destination management station, click Test Action. To forward
the trap in the same format to the configured destination, click
Forward Trap in Original Format and
click Next.
4. In Severity Association, assign the alert severity to which you want to associate this trap forwarding
alert and then click Next.
5. In Categories and Sources Association, assign the alert categories source to which you want to
associate this trap forwarding alert and then click Next.
6. In Device Association, assign the device or device groups to which you want to associate this trap
forwarding alert and then click Next.
7. By default the Trap Forward Action is always active. To limit activity, in Date Time Association, enter
a date range, time range, or days, and then click Next.
8. In Summary, review inputs and click Finish.
The severity status for any trap is set to normal and for a successful alert action, combination of
severity, category, and device has to confer with the selections in the preceding steps.
Forwarding Alerts Use Case Scenarios
This section describes scenarios about forwarding alerts using the SNMP v1 and SNMP v2 protocols. The
scenarios consists of the following components:
• Managed node with an SNMP v1 agent, referred to as MNv1
• Managed node with an SNMP v2/v2c agent, referred to as MNv2
• Managed station 1 with OpenManage Essentials, referred to as MS1
• Managed station 2 with OpenManage Essentials, referred to as MS2
• Managed station 3 with a third-party software, referred to as MS3
Scenario 1 — Forwarding Alerts in the Original Format Using SNMP v1 Protocol
In this scenario, SNMP v1 alerts are sent from MNv1 to MS1 and then forwarded from MS1 to MS2. If you
try to retrieve the remote host of the forwarded alert, it displays the name of MNv1 as the alert originates
from MNv1. MNv1 is displayed because the SNMP v1 alert standards allow you to set the agent name in
the SNMP v1 alert.
Scenario 2 — Forwarding Alerts in the Original Format Using SNMP v2/v2c Protocol
In this scenario, SNMP v2 alerts are sent from MNv2 to MS1 and then forwarded from MS1 to MS3. If you
try to retrieve the remote host of the forwarded alert from MS3, it is displayed as MS1
Since there are no fields in an SNMP v2 alert to specify the agent name, the host which sends the alert is
assumed as the agent. When an SNMP v2 alert is forwarded from MS1 to MS3, MS1 is considered as the
source of problem. To resolve this issue, while forwarding SNMP v2 or v2c alerts, a varbind is added with
OID as .1.3.6.1.6.3.18.1.3.0 with the variable value as Agent Address. This has been set based on the
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