Kaseya Connect 2012 - Real-World Alerting Best Practices for MSPs

Stop the NOISE! How to tame the monitoring beast ! Chris Amori Virtual Administrator/ Network Depot chris@VirtualAdministrator.com

Get your Geek On! Kaseya can tell you nearly everything!  But do you really NEED to know? Old adage: “Time is Money” definitely applies to alerts.

Monitoring is NOT “One size fits all” 80/20 Rule  One Size fits most Know thy customer!  Special LOB applications?  Mission critical work ?

Go on a Diet! Timothy Ferris in “The 4-Hour Workweek” talks about “information diet” Think about what alerts are critical and which can be ignored permanently, or for period of time.

Critical vs. non-Critical Alerts Critical Non-Critical Server off line  Workstation offline for 4 Low disk space on server days RAID or Drive failure on  Low disk space on server workstation  Bad spot on workstation drive

Processing the Noise Where do the alerts go?  Email  Public folder Ticket or not to Ticket, that is the question…  Email to PSA  Kaseya Ticketing Alarm Summary  Cut and Paste  Kaseya Ticketing (to PSA?)

Stopping the Noise Alerts  Eliminate those that are not actionable  Adjust trigger points  Adjust re-arm times Event Sets  Use Ignore events  Do you need warnings?

Stopping the Noise Monitor Sets  Collect Data, but limit what you want to alarm on.  Adjust the thresholds and duration  Adjust the re-arm

Best Practices for SMB Servers Agent Offline - < 10 min  Get to the customer first  Use Suspend Alarms during maintenance windows Critical Low Disk Space  NOT through “Low Disk Space” Alert  Use Monitor Set - Finite number vs. % ?

Best Practices for SMB Servers Event Log Monitoring  Hardware and Drive errors, including Warnings for degraded drives.  Security errors  Exchange errors  Unexpected Reboots  SQL errors  Backup Alerts ?

Best Practices for SMB Servers Monitor Sets  CPU Performance (above 85%)  Low Memory (below 75 MB)  Critical Low Disk Space (below 750MB)  Disk Transfers and Avg Queue Length  LOB Applications  SQL transactions and locks  Exchange queues  Services ?

Best Practices for SMB Workstations Agent Offline - > 7 to 10 days  Clean up the dead wood Low Disk Space  Use “Low Disk Space” as early warning  Use 2% Monitor Set as critical (if desired)

Best Practices for SMB Workstations Event Log Monitoring  Hardware and Drive errors, including Warnings for degraded drives.  Unexpected Reboots (multiple in a day)  Application hangs and errors (non IE related)

Best Practices for SMB Workstations Monitor Sets  CPU Performance (monitor only)  Low Memory (monitor only)  Critical Low Disk Space (below 2%)  LOB Applications

CALL to ACTION ! Start your Information Diet! Review your Templates or Policies  Are they setup the way you want them to be? Review all Alarms and take steps to STOP the ones you don’t take action on.

Thanks!Questions?

Kaseya Connect 2012 - Real-World Alerting Best Practices for MSPs

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