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Adhoc Job Alert : Defined once, then the 2nd time has error "Alert with same name already exist"

  • 19 March 2021
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Hi! I have a subclient that I use for ad hoc testing of backup/restore etc. Today I wanted to test the outcome for various job alert settings since the upgrade from 11.20 to 11.22 brought about some unwelcome changes to the emailed alerts. Rather than make a change to the job alerts for the many already defined jobs/schedules and then having to wait for the normal job run to see the result I figured it would be better/faster/less disturbing to test the alerts on an ad hoc subclient - one without any schedule.

To perform the test the steps I followed were :

  1. Right click the subclient and select “Backup”
  2. In the “Backup Options” dialog box click the “Advanced” button
  3. In the “Advanced Backup Options” dialog box click the “Alert” tab
  4. There is no alert defined so click the “Add Alert” button
  5. Define the alert as you wish. I gave the alert a “Display Name” of “Ad Hoc Test”
  6. Complete the backup and observe the results.

So the first part of the process is quite straightforward. The problem arises when repeating the process to modify the alert properties (eg switching from html to text, etc. etc.). On the second and subsequent tests there are two problems:

  1. The previously defined alert is not listed at step 3 / step 4. Thus there is no “Edit” alert - only “Add Alert”,
  2. If I add the alert with the same “Display Name” as the first time then it throws an error when hitting the “Finish” button : “Alert with same name already exist”.

So the question is : where do I find the alert and subsequently delete it so I can recreate it with different settings.

Other questions : Is this a set of bugs? IE should not the previously defined alert be listed - why is it not shown when you go to run an ad hoc backup? If the alert name “already exists” then why not permit overwriting it instead of failing - especially at the end of a many step alert defining process. If there were an issue with the same display name being used  on the second and following alerts then why not catch that at the start of the wizard instead of the end. Finally, the alert system should have a way to do this kind of testing without having to go through the artificial process of performing a bunch of ad hoc / throw away backup jobs. Alerts have SOOOO many tweakable knobs and dials and they are SOOO poorly documented in terms of what the actual output/result looks like that it is a guessing game as to what is going to be produced. Good documentation would demonstrate the effects and differences of the various options. (End rant).

Cheers,

 

Ron

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Best answer by Madhusudhanan 25 March 2021, 16:17

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8 replies

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Hi @bRonDoh 

Thanks for the question, Alerts can be found in Monitoring - Alerts in the Navigation bar in Command Center or on the ribbon toolbar in the Java Console.

Creating an Alert

In here you will find all the existing Alert definitions and you can either delete the existing “Ad Hoc Test” and create a new one using the process you already described, or edit the settings as necessary.

Thanks,

Stuart

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Hi Stuart,

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately the alert that I created does not show up in the places you describe. Note that the alert I created was not created via the “Monitoring|Alerts|Alert Definitions|Add Alert Definition”. In fact none of the alerts defined on my various subclients and job schedules / policies shows up anywhere other than the specific subclient and/or schedule policy. I suspect that what you are referring to in the “Create Alert” section is not the same as defining an alert for a specific subclient or schedule policy.

Cheers,

Ron

Mike Struening RETIRED
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Hey @bRonDoh !

I just tried something similar.  Created a small test subclient (so it would finish in seconds) and created an Alert just as you did through the Advanced Options.

I then went right to the overall Alerts screen and it’s not there:

I suspect these alerts are considered one time only, but want to confirm this is the expected experience.

It’s also not listed in the Advanced Backup Options, so I’ll get someone to address that as well.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-struening
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Hi Mike,

I suspect that they are one time as well, OTOH it somehow remembers them since you can’t create the alert with the same name as a previously defined alert. And you can’t choose to overwrite or delete or modify the previously defined alert. I wonder where it stores it? Thanks for taking a look into this!

Cheers,

Ron

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Hi 

 

May i know your service pack of commcell console? From SP11 onwards we have option “Show All” which when selected will show all alerts including the ones similar to what you created. Highlighted alert below is also job based alert. Alert you had created is a job based alert which is tied to the job you had just initiated. Once the job completes, this alert will be cleaned up from our maintenance thread but it could take sometime since maintenance thread runs every 4 hours. For the next job initiated manually, we need to create new alert since earlier one cannot be used since user may want different alert criteria selected. To have common alert, you can create from Control panel and associate it to this subclient. That way for each job submission you dont need new alert. 

Also to test email settings, you can right click any alert and do “Test” and that will generate sample notification. You dont need to initiate backup job to test sample notification. We can use that for validating SMTP settings as well as alert format. 

 

 

Hope this helps. 

 

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Hi,

We are on v11.22.13. There is no “show all” tick box, so I only see the alerts that the system comes with.

 

Ron

M
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Hi 

 

Can you please try with the additional setting bEnableShowAllAlerts? 

Please create additional setting with key bEnableShowAllAlerts, relativePath CommServDB.Console and data type Boolean with value true. Please wait for 5 mins and try restarting commcell console after the key is set. 

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Hi Madhusudhanan,

I was able to apply the additional setting as you suggested and now I can see the alerts created ad hoc as well as those created for specific schedule policies. This is nice. Unfortunately :

  1. These job and schedule policy alerts cannot be deleted from the Console Alerts dialog box. They can be enabled and disabled, but not deleted.
  2. The job alert can be modified from the Console Alerts dialog box, but this is not helpful since the alert cannot be selected via the ad hoc (immediate) job submission’s “Advanced Backup Options | Alert” tab.

OTOH, while the foregoing is a bit of a dead end it is something that can be worked around via the path you suggested of creating the alert first in the “Alerts” dialog box and associating it with the specific subclient I am using for testing. Hopefully the other thread I started will reveal the magic incantation needed to get the alert system to send the list of vm’s that failed or succeeded with errors (like failure to quiesce).

Thanks for the help!

Ron

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