Cloud Webhooks – Notification Options for System Level Alerts to Improve your Cloud Operations

by Jay Chapel | Aug 25, 2017 | Cloud Management, Cloud Services | 0 comments

Webhooks are user-defined HTTP POST callbacks. They provide a lightweight mechanism for letting remote applications receive push notifications from a service or application, without requiring polling. In today’s IT infrastructure that includes monitoring tools, cloud providers, DevOps processes, and internally-developed applications, webhooks are a crucial way to communicate between individual systems for a cohesive service delivery. Now, in ParkMyCloud, webhooks are available for even more powerful cost control.

For example, you may want to let a monitoring solution like Datadog or New Relic know that ParkMyCloud is stopping a server for some period of time and therefore suppress alerts to that monitoring system for the period the server will be parked, and vice versa enable the monitoring once the server is unparked (turned on). Another example would be to have ParkMyCloud post to a chatroom or dashboard when schedules have been overridden by users. We do this by enabling systems notifications to our cloud webhooks.

Previously only two options were provided when configuring system level and user notifications in ParkMyCloud: System Errors and Parking Actions. We have added 3 new notification options for both system level and user notifications. Descriptions for all five options are provided below:

• System Errors – These are errors occurring within the system itself such as discovery errors, parking errors, invalid credential permissions, etc.
• System Maintenance and Updates – These are the notifications provided via the banner at the top of the dashboard.
• User Actions – These are actions performed by users in ParkMyCloud such as manual resource state toggles, attachment or detachment of schedules, credential updates, etc.
• Parking Actions – These are actions specifically related to parking such as automatic starting or stopping of resources based on defined parking schedules.
• Policy Actions – These are actions specifically related to configured policies in ParkMyCloud such as automatic schedule attachments based on a set rule.

We have made the options more granular to provide you better control on events you want to see or not see.

These options can be seen when adding or modifying a channel for system level notifications (Settings > System Level Notifications). In the image shown below, a channel is being added.

Note: For additional information regarding these options, click on the Info Icon to the right of Notify About.

The new notification options are also viewable by users who want to set up their own notifications (Username > My Profile).  These personal notifications are sent via email to the address associated with your user.  Personal notifications can be set up by any user, while Webhooks must be set up by a ParkMyCloud Admin.

After clicking on Notifications, you will see the above options and may use the checkboxes to select the notifications you want to receive. You can also set each webhook to handle a specific ParkMyCloud team, then set up multiple webhooks to handle different parts of your organization.  This offers maximum flexibility based on each team’s tools, processes, and procedures. Once finished, click on Save Changes. Any of these notifications can be sent then to your cloud webhook and even Slack to ensure ParkMyCloud is integrated into your cloud management operations.