Forum Discussion

jeffnorton's avatar
jeffnorton
7 years ago

Ping only devices

We are a network MSP.  We have several customers with a large number of ping only devices.  LMs terms don't charge per device for ping only.  However, there's a caveat to that.  The ping function for a device must be nested under another device such as a Collector.  Apparently the billing system doesn't have the ability to distinguish between an SNMP/WMI device and a ping only device.  The problem with nesting under another device is that ping device is hidden several layers down making it difficult for a customer to find them.  These ping only devices don't work well with the NOC widget.  I wound up having to create a second NOC widget for just ping only devices to get visibility.  What I'm proposing is the LM modify their billing device detection such that Ping only devices are input just like any other device and that the billing system scans device to determine if it's Ping only or not

ping
  • Mike_Suding's avatar
    Mike_Suding
    Former Employee
    7 years ago

    Have you tried doing pings in 'Services' tab.  Services > Add > Internal Ping checks?  Then you can navigate and search without them being underneath a device?  Below is a screenshot showing an example and resulting NOC widget on a dashboard.

     

  • mnagel's avatar
    mnagel
    Icon for Professor rankProfessor
    7 years ago

    I was also going to note that internal service checks are the solution, with the caveat that you have zero ability to control the alert format for specific instances -- there is only one global service alert template.  With Ping_Multi-, you can at least clone it and generate a custom alert (except you can't reference the WILDVALUE token, which is super annoying).  Since LM is on this thread, I will also point out that the Service functionality is only a small subset of what other vendors provide (e.g., Pingdom) with either the same or higher per-device cost.  I would love to see improvements in alert handling as well as for check scope (more than just port 80/443 for HTTP and general port checks, to name just a couple).

  • Sam_Mallen's avatar
    Sam_Mallen
    Former Employee
    7 years ago

    Hi Mark- I will reach out to you directly to discuss general Service improvements.