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How alerting works
Before setting anything up, it helps to understand the model. JOATOS separates what raises an alert from who gets told.
The two building blocks
- Alert profile — the condition. It defines what triggers an alert and which things it watches.
- Notification profile — the delivery. It defines a channel (email, push, Slack, and so on) and its recipients.
You attach one or more notification profiles to an alert profile. When the alert fires, every attached notification profile is notified independently — so one condition can email a team, post to Slack, and open a helpdesk ticket at once.
What can trigger an alert
Alert profiles come in types:
- Up/Down — fires when a monitored device or server goes offline (and clears when it comes back).
- Resource threshold — fires when a metric — CPU, memory, or disk — stays above a percentage you set for a sustained time.
- Log / trap event — matches syslog patterns or SNMP traps (a more advanced type).
Where an alert profile applies
Each profile is assigned to what it should watch:
- Global — all devices and servers
- A specific site, device, server, or group
- An uptime monitor (for Up/Down profiles)
Escalation and repeat-notifying
Up/Down profiles can carry escalation tiers. After the initial alert, each tier re-notifies all the attached notification profiles again after its delay — if the condition is still active. This nudges the right people if an outage drags on.
Staying quiet enough
To avoid a flood, each alert profile has a rate limit — a maximum number of alerts per time period — and a send clear notification option so you're also told when things recover.
The trail
Every notification that fires (and every clear) is written to the alert history, with its delivery status. See Reviewing alert history.
Putting it together
- Set up how alerts are delivered — at least one notification profile (and SMTP if you want email).
- Create an alert profile, attach the notification profile(s), and assign what it watches.
- Watch results in alert history.