[Xymon] Best way to dealing with 100's of tests or Can I build a page that scrolls down instead of across?

Elizabeth Schwartz betsy.schwartz at gmail.com
Fri Nov 11 22:29:06 CET 2011


We've got a set of four servers that are going to, potentially, have
several HUNDRED custom tests running, one for each of several hundred
custom "queues"
Requirements:
 -get monitoring up for these queues in a hurry
 -have the ability to enable/disable individual tests
 -do NOT create a xymon page that is several hundred tests wide.
  If we create more than a screenful of tests, scroll must be vertical
not horizontal.

So, it's easy enough to make  a client-side test that tests each queue
and returns
    $BB $BBDISP $COLOR  status  $servername.$queuename

BUT that means we would have a BB page that goes a mile wide. This has
been flat-out vetoed as unusable. I kind of agree.

How have you handled multiple tests?
Is there a way to write custom xymon pages that scroll down instead of across?
Is there a better way?

Suggestion1: use the real hostnames with separate test name for each
test, as is. Vetoed  because display would be hundreds of dots wide.

Suggestion2: use a bogus hostname for each test. Vetoed by me because:
we don't want to have to be constantly configuring bogus hostnames for
every test,  and we want a way to add and subtract tests that doesn't
require shell access as the xymon user. Plus bogus hostnames confuse
the first-tier support team.

Suggestion3: use one test for all queues, and write controls and
enable/disable mechanism outside of xymon. Vetoed all around because
we're in a hurry to get this up and we've already *got* xymon, we
don't want to re-invent the wheel and start writing our own test
control panel.

Suggestion4: use a separate test name for each test and set xymon to
not display these fields at all. Presumably they will still show up on
the "all non-green" page and on the enable/disable display, but they
won't muck up the server display page. We'll add a separate "queue
summary" test that is set to not alert, but that will give us one
green dot.  This is the best idea so far, but it means we are running
hidden tests.

Does anyone else have any interesting solutions to the multiple-tests page?

thanks Betsy



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