About NOC Boards

Best used to view particular sets of infrastructure monitoring data. The NOC Board dashboard, provides a Network Operations Center view with an extremely responsive at-a-glance look at a defined subset of your network operations and what is currently in an alarm state and in particular what has and has not been acknowledged.

Each board is configured with a selected host group or service group, downtime and availability windows, a contractual SLA percentage, and acknowledgment, downtime and state filters to restrict output to specific information. 

Once a NOC Board is created it's added to a list of available boards each showing a single line status, where a user can simply toggle a link to view/hide details. The detailed content can be sorted by service status and services can be acknowledged.

NOC Boards can also be added as an internal link within a menu page enabling permitted user access to a page containing associated NOC Boards. RBAC extends into displaying only those entities associated with the logged in user's role.

See our related blog posting 

Navigating NOC Boards

NOC Board List

  • Configured NOC Boards are listed by going to Dashboards > NOC Boards. 
  • Click a NOC Board link to view or collapse the NOC Board.
  • Each user available NOC Board will display a single line status, for example:
    • NOC Board name: NOC Board 1
    • Host Group or Service Group: GroundWork Servers
    • Hosts: Number of Hosts in an UP or DOWN state
    • Services: Services in an OK, CRITICAL, or WARNING state
    • SLA %: An indication if the contractual SLA percentage has been MET or NOT MET, along with the actual SLA percentage.

      noc board status line

NOC Board Summary

Upon opening a NOC Board link, the top area displays a large number indicating the total number of service problems for the selected host group or service group along with a summary of the defined directives. The button is used to open the NOC Board configuration dialog. The second part of the NOC Board displays host and service information based on the configuration. Users can sort by the service Status column title and can directly acknowledge issues by clicking No within the Ack column for each element. Host and Service columns offer drill-down capability linking directly to the Status Summary for more detailed information.

NOC users can quickly see a subset of the monitored infrastructure with a clear indication of alarm state and duration, maintenance and acknowledgment status, and the availability percentage over a defined period.

noc board summary and display

Creating a NOC Board

  1. Go to Dashboards > NOC Board.

  2. For an initial NOC Board, select the link Default NOC Board, which is the NOC Board template used to create a new board, or if present you can select the Add New Board button.

    After defining a new NOC Board, select Save As New. Select Save when you want to override/clone the NOC Board you selected to edit.

  3. Click the button located on the right, and select the display options outlined in the table below.

  4. Enter the NOC Board directives, described here:

    FieldDescription

    Name

    System name for the NOC Board, must be unique.

    Display Title

    Displays the entered title in the list of available NOC Board dashboards (Dashboards > NOC Board).

    Host Group or Service Group

    Select to create the NOC Board for a host group or a service group.

    Downtime Window

    Displays the NOC Board scheduled and past downtime status data over the time entered.

    Availability Window

    Calculates the SLA percentage availability for the NOC Board content over the time entered.

    SLA Percentage

    Provides a calculated SLA percentage based on this entered contractual SLA percentage and selected time windows and filters. For example, a 78% calculated SLA% for a given host group means that of the total time for all hosts and services in the group, the resources were Up or OK for 78% of the Availability Window. If you set the SLA Percentage to 80%, your SLA will show NOT MET. If you set it to 75%, it will show MET.

    Auto Expand/Show Board Summary

    Selecting Dashboards > NOC Boards will list the user's available NOC Boards, displaying a single line status for each.

    If a NOC Board has Auto Expand checked, it will automatically expand its host and service details, if not checked it will display a single line status. The first board in the list with expand checked will be expanded, only one board can be expanded.

    If a NOC Board has Show Board Summary checked, it will automatically show the summary of its configuration at the top of the host a service details, if not checked no summary is displayed.

    Rows

    Number of rows to display in the NOC Board output.

    Refresh Rate

    Number of seconds before the NOC Board content is refreshed.

    Ack Filters

    Displays NOC Board content that matches the selected acknowledgment filters.

    Downtime Filters

    Displays NOC Board content that matches the selected downtime filters.

    States

    Displays NOC Board content for selected states. The Ack Filters, Downtime Filters and States selections are exclusive, in that resources must meet all selected criteria to be displayed.

    Columns

    Only data for checked columns are shown in a NOC Board display: 

    • Host: Displays host name.
    • Alias: Displays host alias name.
    • Service Name: Displays service name and service detail.
    • Status: Displays color-coded status indicators for both host and services.
    • Time Down: Displays a Duration column indicating the amount of time the service has been in the reported state. 
    • Maintenance: Displays if a the element is currently in downtime and if downtime is scheduled within the Downtime Window.
    • Ack: Displays if an element has been acknowledged, and allows for users to acknowledge issues directly from a NOC Board.
    • Availability: Shows a percentage of availability for the service based on the Availability Window.
    • Nagios Links: Displays a column in the NOC Board enabling users to link directly to Nagios for hosts owned by Nagios.

  5. After defining a new NOC Board select Save As New, or as mentioned above, select Save when you want to override/clone the NOC Board you selected to edit.

Cloning a NOC Board

Open an existing NOC Board, click the button located on the right, update as needed, select Save As New.

Use Case: Adding a Top Level NOC Board

To add a NOC Board to a top-level or sub-level page with restricted users, see Menu Editor.

Related Resources