Message center

The Message Center organizes system performance alerts to help you effectively monitor the state of your database. Pre-configured and custom alerts generate messages when the component they measure exceeds the specified threshold.

Access the Message Center in the following ways:

• On the MC Home page, select Message Center in the MC Tools section.

• Select the message envelope icon in the top-right of any database-specific page, then select Message Center in the quick view.

• On the database Overview tab, select the number (including 0) in the Unread Messages (This Week) widget.

The Message Center can retrieve up to 10,000 of the most recent messages generated for a database. By default, it lists up to 600 messages generated in the previous week. For details on how to retrieve messages that predate the previous week, see Date Filtering.

Filter the messages grid

The Management Console provides options that filter the messages that populate the messages grid by database, keyword, message type, and date. Use one or more of these options to view only the messages that you want to manage.

Database filtering

Select Showing to list the databases that are associated with the logged in user account. Choose a specific database to view only messages for that database, or select (All DBs) to view and manage messages across all of your databases.

Keyword filtering

Use the search bar at the top-right of the screen to list messages that contain the entered text. For example, if you enter 29, the grid lists any messages that contain those characters within the message title or message details available when you click the plus (+) icon to expand the message row.

Message type filtering

After you select a value for Showing, the number of messages for that value are totaled and grouped by type near the top-right corner of the screen, below the search bar. These message types use the syslog standard to define severity levels. The MC message types are defined as follows:

• All Messages: Messages that are not archived or deleted, and are within messageCenter.maxEntries for the previous week.

• High Priority: Messages that you assigned a High Priority alert priority on the Alerts tab. These messages correspond to syslog levels 0 and 1.

• Need Attention: Critical or error messages that indicate that correspond to syslog levels 2 and 3.

• Informational: Warning, notice, informational, or debugging messages that correspond to syslog levels 4, 5, 6, and 7.

To populate the grid with only a single message type, select the number or message type description.

Date filtering

Select Retrieve Older Messages to enter From and To dates to list messages that were generated before the previous week. Vertica stores 10,000 of the most recent database messages so that you can retrieve older messages when necessary.

Message groups

The Message Center groups messages and notifications as Recent Messages, Threshold Messages, and Archived Messages. All message groups use the following priority levels and color codes:

• Critical (Red)

• Warning (Orange)

• Notice (Green)

• Info (Blue)

Recent messages and threshold messages

Recent Messages include the most recent messages generated within the previous week within the messageCenter.maxEntries value. Threshold messages include messages that are generated when the database exceeds a pre-configured, custom, or default alert threshold.

Recent Messages and Threshold Messages are listed using the message type, database name, a description of the message, and the date and time that the message was generated. Additionally, there are collapsible grid headings that group the alerts by Today, Yesterday, and This Week.

Archived messages

Archived messages are messages that you manually saved for later. When you select the check icon for an individual message or select Archive All, MC marks the message as read and archives it. Archived messages do not have the same date or messageCenter.maxEntries restrictions as Recent Messages or Threshold Messages.

The Archived Messages tab contains the following tools to refine search result filters:

• Use the From and To boxes above the grid to define a time frame for the archived message search. To combine multiple time frames, select the Do not clear existing search results checkbox.

• Sort or filter messages even further using the Type, Database Name, Description, and Date columns.

Message actions

Perform actions on all, multiple, or individual messages. To execute actions on all messages at the same time, use the Select All or Select None buttons near the top-right of the screen by the search bar.

Each message row has a checkbox so that you can perform actions on one or more messages simultaneously. Select the plus (+) icon to expand the message row and display the following message details:

• Summary

• Host IP

• Time of occurrence

• Number occurrences of this message

• Description

For additional information about each message, query EVENT_CONFIGURATIONS.

When you select the X icon or select multiple messages and click the Delete Msgs or Delete all buttons, the message is permanently deleted.