There are three types of alerting that can be employed to detect connection loss in SwitchMonitor.

  1. If the device is being monitored, SwitchMonitor can be configured to generate an email alert if the device is unreachable. This is done via the config tool on the “Alerts” tab.
  2. Click “Add” and enter the email address where the alert should be sent along with the IP address of the monitored device. Select “Comm Fail” as the Interface.  Any communications failure with the device will generate an alert email.
  3. If the interface is being monitored, SwitchMonitor can be configured to generate an email alert if the interface changes status from UP to DOWN, or from DOWN to UP. This is done via the config tool on the “Alerts” tab. Click “Add” and enter the email address where the alert should be sent along with the IP address of the monitored device. Select the interface number, and then check the “Status change” box. Any status change of this interface will generate an alert email.
  4. If the device is forwarding syslog messages to the SwitchMonitor server, alerts can be generated from the syslog message. This is done via the config tool on the “Syslog” tab. Click “Add” and enter the email address where the alert should be sent along with the IP address of the device. The search string should include the specific message that the device would generate for triggering this alert to be sent out.

Additionally, historical loss of communication information is available at the bottom of the device information page. The system will add notes as to when the device was unreachable, and when the device was reachable again.

For interfaces, the historical tracking of interface availability is at the bottom of the interface details page.

Historical syslog messages can be viewed in the “Syslog” listing.