[Xymon] Question: alternative(s) to sms/mms gateways

[Lars Kollstedt]

Am Montag, 24. August 2015, 15:41:28 schrieb Ribeiro, Glauber:
> Question for the Xymon list:
> 
> What have you used, other than email-to-sms/mms gateway, to send xymon
> alerts to cell phones? 
> I've been hit a few times with unreliable email to mms gateway (TMobile). 
> I know about pushover.net. Are there any others?


Hello Glauber,

I read this as you're seaching for a more reliable solution than sending E-
Mails to a remote E-Mail-to-SMS Gateway.

Since it makes less sense to send alerts for network/internet is broken via 
internet, we needed an other solution. We're operating a wide area network and 
the xymon of course should alert us about network issues.

We are running SMS-Gateways directly attached to the Bigbrother/Hobbit/Xymon-
Servers for a very long time. The vendor of both of our modems is MOXA, but 
it's of course a much older model than this one:
http://www.moxa.com/product/OnCell_G2111.htm

But the specs haven't changed much from the first look. Today there are also 
some other vendors.

This takes a SIM-Card like a mobile phone, and is moutet to DIN-Rail, were 
also the external switching-powersupply is located.


On the Xymon-Servers we're running the smsd from the smstools provided by 
http://smstools3.kekekasvi.com. Since the Server is a Ubuntu they're already 
available as a package. 
We are running this as an E-Mail-to-SMS-Gateway more or less for historical 
reasons, or because we've some other Systems using this as E-Mail-to-SMS-
Gateway, choose one. We're running this as with a Script that is plugged into 
postfix as pipe-Script (perl-Script), but it would be also possible to let an 
Xymon-Alert-Script drop the SMS into the smsd-queue. Writing a file into a 
specific folder with some specific headers isn't really rocket science. ;-)

We're using this for about 12 years with the smstools, now. And some years 
with a Tobit-Server in between, before.


For one of the xymon servers, we needed to get out of the ferrocroncrete 
cellar rooms, where no mobile phone works, to get the modem work realible.


One thing you should also consider is, that SMS-Flatrates are (nearly) always 
shipped with a clause prohibidding the use for SMS-Gateways. On other 
contracts this is not so wide spread. So read the contract you are using for 
this carefully. This might affect the realibility of the alerts.
On the other hand you should have a look at the amount of send SMS carefully. 
Multipart SMSes might also increase expenses, but the smstools allow to 
deactivate them. ;-) :-)

This is not really a solution for sending huge amounts of SMSes (mainly 
because of the costs), but it's a highly independent way to send alerts. We 
are using 2 modems, one attached to each xymon server.

Kind regards,
	Lars

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