Android
Contents |
[edit] About Rhybudd - Zenoss on your Android Device
Rhybudd is designed for SysAdmins, DevOps engineers and anyone else whose phone receives notifications from Zenoss or requires quick and easy access to the Zenoss Events console remotely.
Version 3.3 is available as a free download from the Android market and includes features such as;
- Google Cloud backups
- Filter events by Device name or Event summary
- Device Load, CPU and Memory graphs displayed on 'View Device Screen'
- Rapid event acknowledgment
- Event escalation and sharing
- Event log management
- Local caching of events and infrastructure for quick access
- Events polling from as often as every 30 seconds up to an hour
- Support for self signed SSL
- Support for HTTP basic auth on top of Zenoss authentication
- Full 4.x API support
- Full support from Gingerbread to optimizations for JellyBean
- Written by one of the SysAdmins / DevOps at DataSift.com - where it is used as our first line of alerting for on-call
Support, feature requests and feedback encouraged; @NetworkString or Gareth@NetworksAreMadeOfString.co.uk
[edit] Getting Started
Install the app from Google Play and then click on 'Open' or find the app in your launcher.
If you're installing Rhybudd for the first time you'll be presented with the following screen where you will need to add your Zenoss URL (including the http or https and any custom port you are using (that includes specifying 8080))
If the settings validate you Rhybudd will then create a local cache of devices and the current events, once done it will launch into the app itself.
The key requirements of Event Acknowledgement, Refreshing and Escalation are available immediately as seen above.
Pressing the Menu button (or softbutton in Ice Cream Sandwich and Jellybean) will provide access to the addtional settings, Infrastructure activities, search and database management tools.
[edit] Managing Events
The core purpose of Rhybudd is to alert you to new Events and then enabling you to manage them.
By default Rhybudd will poll for new Production level Critical, Error and Warning events every minute and raise an Android notification to alert you to this. Clicking the notification will launch the app allowing you to manage you alerts.
[edit] Phone Interface
On a phone single clicking on an event will prompt you to either Acknowledge the event, view more details about the event or do nothing.
Performing a 'Long Press' on an event allows you to select multiple events to perform common actions such as mass acknowledgment or escalating those events to a colleague via SMS or email.
The easiest and quickest way to acknowledge alerts however is through the use of the 'Acknowledge All' action button which looks like this;
[edit] Tablet Interface
One of the many tablet optimizations can be found in the Events list where a single touch will display an additional area detailing the event allowing you to acknowledge if you so wish.
[edit] Managing Devices
Rhybudd also enables you to view the health of the devices in your infrastructure at the press of a finger. The initial view will show a list of all devices and their current event counts by severity. By default this information is cached locally and updated in the background every 30 minutes.
Pressing on a device in the list will query your Zenoss instance for the full details of the server including Memory, SNMP details, uptime and current events.
[edit] Customizing Settings
Version 3.0 of Rhybudd has a variety of settings to help you customise your use of the app to your style of Event management. Allowing options such as persistent notification sounds to wake you up, customisable filtering for event and production classes right the way through to disabling features entirely.
[edit] Event Filtering
Filtering is supported by Rhybudd to reduce the scope of alerts. You can specify Criticality levels (Critical, Error, Warning, Info and Debug), Alerts from production only devices, the ability to hide acknowledged alerts and by specifying Device and Summary filtering. Rhybudd passes your search string directly to Zenoss without client side validation to ensure changes to the server side are automatically supported.
[edit] Audio Alerting
Even if all events are displayed in the events list you can configure the alerting element to only raise a notification and an audio alert only for production devices. Enable or disable Audio notifications, set the notification sound and even enable insistent audio for those heavy sleepers!
[edit] Widgets
Rhybudd also features two widgets to help you monitor the health of your platform at a glance without having to be alerted to each new event.
You can choose either a simple 2x1 cell event count widget or a 2x2 bar graph.
[edit] Notifications
Rhybudd features two primary notifications the first is a sticky notification that informs you that the background poller is running and the last time it check Zenoss for new alerts (a popular request for the nervous on-call guys out there!) and the secondary notification is when Rhybudd detects a new alert.
New alert notifications can vibrate and will issue a notification sound of your choosing. The heavy sleepers out there can enable insistent Rhybudd alerts which will loop the sound until the Notification bar is swiped.
A new alert notification will include as much information as it can impart in the area given, on Jellybean this will the total number of alerts and some extracts (device name and partial summary) of the most critical events.
Clicking on the notification will launch Rhybudd allowing you to delve into the details or Acknowledge the event.
[edit] Escalation
Sometimes you may want to escalate an event or share the details with a colleague. Usually this would require some copy / pasting or simply referring to the Zenoss events console in your communication, with Rhybudd however you can simply select the events you wish to escalate by performing a long press or tapping the multi-select checkbox
Then click the Escalate / Share button 
whereupon you will be prompted to select any application that can accept plain-text input (Email, SMS, GTalk etc) and all the relevant information will automatically be added to your message.
[edit] Other Features
Rhybudd also features the limited ability to manage your Infrastructure such as searching for devices and viewing device details.
Images embedded in Zenoss event summaries are now rendered in the 'View Event Screen'. If those images are behind HTTP basic auth you can configure those credentials in the "Supplementary HTTP Auth" section of the settings.
