Cloudera Docs

Getting Started with Streams Messaging Manager Alert Policies

Learn how to set up Alert Policies and Notifiers, how to view generated alerts, and how to disable an Alert Policy in Streams Messaging Manager (SMM).

Alert Policies in SMM are user configured alerts that automatically trigger when configured conditions are met. An alert contains the details of the policy including the alert message and the conditions that triggered the alert. Once an alert is triggered, a notification is sent out by SMM using the Notifier associated with the Alert Policy. You can use these alerts and notifications to monitor the health of Kafka, as well as to identify and troubleshoot problems.

For example, assume that you want to monitor your Kafka topics to ensure that data production and consumption is happening without interruptions. To do this you could set up an Alert Policy that triggers if the bytes consumed from or produced to your topics fall below a specified threshold. When the alert is triggered, SMM sends out a notification using the Notifier associated with the Alert Policy immediately notifying you of a potential issue.

The following steps walk you through how to set up a simple Alert Policy that uses an HTTP Notifier, how to view the generated alerts within SMM, and how to disable an Alert Policy.

  1. Access the SMM UI by entering the following in a browser window:
    http://localhost:9991
  2. Click (Alerts) on the navigation sidebar.
  3. Create a notifier.
    1. Go to NOTIFIERS.
    2. Click ADD NEW.
    3. Configure the notifier as follows:
      Take note of the URL property. This property specifies the URL where this notifier sends alerts. You do not need to add the URL of an actual service to create and test Alert Policies. As a result, for this tutorial, you can set this property to a placeholder value. For example http://my-service.com/endpoint. In a production environment however, the URL you enter would be an endpoint of a target service that can consume and process the alerts that SMM sends.
    4. Click Save.
  4. Create an Alert Policy.
    1. Go to ALERT POLICIES.
    2. Click ADD NEW.
    3. Configure the Alert policy as follows:
    4. Click Save.
  5. View alerts.

    Go to History. Wait a few seconds and refresh the page, alerts should appear on the page.

  6. Disable the Alert Policy.
    1. Go to Alert Policies.
    2. Find the alert policy that you want to disable, and click the toggle button beside the alert policy.
To learn more about Alert Policies and Notifiers, see Managing Alert Policies Using Streams Messaging Manager.