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Situation Analysis

Description

The Situation Analysis workflow configuration allows you to add tags to a Situation based on a set of quantitative analysis rules run against the alerts within the Situation. These rules can be simple; for example, “70% of the alerts are critical”, or more complex; such as, “add a tag if there are 2 different hostnames, at least 20 alerts and more than 10 disk space full alerts”.

Each analysis method consists of a set of criteria (a rule), with three possible types:

  • threshold: a count or percentage threshold:

    • alerts sharing the same attributes

    • alert count

  • distinct: a count of unique values of an alert field.

  • filter : include or exclude alerts from the analysis.

You can define multiple analysis methods with one as the default to use if the analyseSituation action does not define an explicit method. The action adds the relevant tag only if the Situation meets all criteria: if A and B and C then addTag. Because all criteria must be true, the order is unimportant. The action evaluates filter criteria before all others. This ensures that the thresholds are applied only to the fully filtered set of alerts.

In addition to setting and removing tags, the analysis can also add and remove Situation Flags. This allows external and internal processes to retrieve Situations with specific tags using the getSituationsWithFlag endpoint in the Graze API.

Configuration settings

An analysis method consists of the following configuration items:

Setting

Type

Required

Description

Tags field

string - global

yes

A JavaScript array that defines where the Situation tags will be set. The default is custom_info.tags.

Method name

string

yes

A unique name for the analysis method.

Tag

string

yes

The tag that will be added if all criteria are met.

Set as Default

Boolean

no

Should this method be run if no other method was specified. All default analysis methods will be run.

Remove existing tag

Boolean

no

If the criteria returns false, and the tag was previously set, then remove it.

Add tag as Situation flag

Boolean

no

Sets or removes Situation flags to match any tags.

Criteria

group

yes

The list of criteria within this analysis method.

Criteria type

choice

yes

The criteria type. See the following sections:

Distinct criteria settings

Setting

Type

Required

Description

Distinct operator

choice

yes

The calculation - i.e. are there more than X distinct values of Y

  • at least

  • more than

  • less than

Number of distinct values

number

yes

The threshold of distinct values.

Attribute name

text

yes

The alert field (such as source) to check.

Filter criteria settings

Setting

Type

Choices

Required

Description

Exclude alert

Boolean

yes

Should this filter be included or excluded. If selected (checked), any alert matching the filter will not be evaluated against the distinct or threshold criteria.

Filter

text

yes

A valid SQL-like alert filter, e.g. description matches ‘jvm_stall’

Threshold criteria settings

Configuration Item

Type

Required

Description

Threshold

number

yes

The absolute or % value. (See percent and threshold type)

Threshold type

choice

yes

The type of threshold: either the number of alerts (as a value or percentage) or the number / percentage of alerts sharing the same value for a group of attributes:

  • same value

  • alert count

Note

If a threshold type of “alert count” is used with a percentage, the percentage is calculated against the total number of alerts in the situation — not the filtered set.

List of attributes

list

yes if “same value” was used

The list of attributes to check. For example, check if 70% of alerts shared the same source and type add both “source” and “type” as attributes.

Percentage

Boolean

yes

Specifies whether the threshold is an absolute number or a percentage of all member alerts.

Simple example

If a Situation has more than 50% of alerts with a severity of critical, add the tag “Urgent” to the tags.

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Complex example

A tag of JVM_STALL should be added to the Situation if there are more than 5 critical jvm_stall alerts from 3 different hosts from the same application.

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