User tags

[bruce.ray]

I'm curious as to how others are using the user tags in their environment.  What do you associate the fields with and what rationale went into your decision?

 

 

 

 

 

We run an internal service company for several affiliate companies and are looking at using one tag for associated cost center, in order to relate internal accounting to the monitoring resources used.  Another thought was to use the other tag to group by application or high level service supported, which may come in handy for grouping alarms.  I’m wondering if this is the best use of those fields.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for any feedback.

 

 

 

 

 

Bruce

[Anon Anon]

Bruce,

I think the cost center idea is a pretty good one.

We are not using the user tags now, but we will be using one of them when we implement HP Service Manager (replacing HP Service Desk).  We are an MSP, so the servers we manage do not necessarily have unique names.  When we open tickets in Service Manager based on alarms in NimBUS, we want to match a unique key to map them to a configuration item in the CMDB.  We will put that into one of the user tags for each server running NimBUS.

We have also been talking about using the other user tag to hold some information about the type of alarm, like whether it is a Windows or Unix host.  This would just be for convenience when reporting on alarms in NimBUS or tickets in Service Manager.  Service Manager should be able to report that kind of information based on the CMDB anyway, but this would just be a shortcut method to make things a bit simpler for rough reporting.

-Keith

[Anon Anon]

Hi Bruce,
I'm not using them quite yet, but I probably will in the very near future. The only thing that has slowed me down is my inability to have nimbus automatically discover information about the computer and populate the fields. (Yes, I'm pretty sure I could script this, but I've got a lot of other things I'm working on.)

My plan is to use one field to identify the primary application that the server is supporting and the other field for the role that the server is fulfilling. For instance I might have servers with the following tags:
Tag1/Tag2
NetCommunity/WEB
NetCommunity/DB
BulkEmail/MTA
ActiveDirectory/DC

Just some ideas - I haven't worked out all of the details yet.

However, then I will use the dynamic groups so I can quickly find certain servers for dropping probes, etc.

My main concern is if I have to maintain the tags manually, what if I mess up and drop the wrong probe on the wrong server or neglect to drop a probe on a server that needs it. However, I guess I would still be better off that I am today where I search out servers manually.

Happy 4th!

-Chris

[bruce.ray]

Keith and Chris, thanks for the feedback.  That's helpful.

[Anon Anon]

Bruce,

We use user tag 1 for application classification such as AD, Exchange or the application code we have for each app.  The second tag use use to sub classify the server, ie SQL, ORA, WEB, APP etc.  It seems to be working out well for us right now.

Rob