After you define action lists and templates, you can define actions in the action lists that refer to the templates. Each action specifies something you want Operations Sentinel to perform when an alert is raised, acknowledged, or cleared.
The actions specified in an action list are executed when
The alert policy containing the action list is active.
An alert event report raises, acknowledges, or clears an alert or escalates or deescalates an alert by changing its severity.
The alert event report refers to the action list. The alert event report can either explicitly specify the action list with the attribute EXT_ACTION_LIST or implicitly refer to an action list with the attribute ALERTID.
You can use a delay time to influence the order of execution. Using delay time, you can escalate notification of an alert based on how long it has been outstanding. With a delay time, an action is not initiated until the specified amount of time has passed since Operations Sentinel received the event report that triggered the action. For example, a command or script is not executed until the specified delay has elapsed. However, if a resource required by the action is busy, the delay time can be longer than specified.
Actions resulting from raising an alert are discarded if they have not been initiated when an acknowledge or clear event occurs for the alert. These actions are also discarded when a subsequent raise event results in escalation or deescalation of the alert.
Actions without delay times or with equal delay times are not guaranteed to execute in any particular order. For example, two actions without delay times require different resources: one action dials a modem and the other sounds a buzzer. The order of execution depends on whether the resources are busy. If neither resource is busy, Operations Sentinel may execute the actions in any order. However, if a resource is busy, Operations Sentinel does not execute the action requiring that resource until the resource is free.