System Alerts

System Alerts allow administrators to be notified about important system states and possible issues, including, the status of standby servers for high availability, storage availability, certificate expiration, and password expiration through the admin dashboard.

About System Alerts

System alerts allow administrators to be notified of important system statuses and possible issues through the Oracle Database Security Central console in Oracle Database Security Central (Oracle DBSecCentral).

System Alerts provide Oracle DBSecCentral administrator users with proactive information necessary for maintaining important Oracle DBSecCentral components. They can help you identify system failures before they happen and improve the stability and reliability of your Oracle DBSecCentral system. The status of different components and processes are checked every six hours. If there are any issues a system alert will be generated for one of the following:

To learn more about the specific system alerts and the recommended resolution, see System Alerts and Recommendations.

Configuring or Modifying System Alert Email Notifications

You can configure email notifications for system alerts. This allows you to receive an email whenever a critical or high severity system alert occurs. The email you receive will contain the system alert category and severity in the email subject. The system will check if any email notifications need to be sent out every six hours.

Configuring or Modifying System Alert Email Notifications

Prerequisites:

The connection between your email and Oracle DBSecCentral needs to be configured. See Configuring the Email Notification Service for more information.

To configure or modify email notifications for system alerts:

  1. Log in to the Oracle Database Security Central console as a super administrator.

  2. Select Settings.

  3. Select System in the left navigation menu.

  4. In the System Alerts section,

    • If configuring for the first time, select Select here.

    • If modifying, select Email Notification.

    A dialog box will appear.

  5. In the To field, enter the email(s) you would like to receive system alert notifications. Each email address can be comma or semicolon separated.

  6. Optionally, in the Subject field, enter the Email Subject you want to receive for system alerts. By default, “Oracle DBSecCentral System Alerts” will be used as part of the subject. In addition, the email subject will contain the system alert category and severity.

  7. Select Save.

Example 15-1 Email Notification for One Alert

If the Subject field was left blank and there is one system alert with high severity under Storage category, the email subject will be “Oracle DBSecCentral System Alerts: Storage - High”.

Example 15-2 Email Notification for Multiple Alerts

If the Subject was set to “Oracle DBSecCentral System Alerts”, and there are multiple system alerts in the system such as:

Adjusting the Frequency of the Background Job For System Alert Email Notifications

By default, email notifications are sent out every six hours. This frequency can be adjusting by performing the following steps:

  1. Unlock the avsys user.

    See Unlocking the AVSYS User.

    Note: Remember to relock the avsys account when you’ve completed this task.

  2. Run the following command on SQL*Plus as the avsys user:

    exec dbms_scheduler.set_attribute('avsys.avs_email_notification_job','repeat_interval','FREQ=<YEARLY
      | MONTHLY | WEEKLY | DAILY | HOURLY | MINUTELY | SECONDLY>;INTERVAL=<1-99>');

  3. Lock the avsys user.

    See Locking the AVSYS User.

Example 15-3 Adjust the Email Notification Schedule to Daily

exec dbms_scheduler.set_attribute('avsys.avs_email_notification_job','repeat_interval','FREQ=DAILY;INTERVAL=1');

Example 15-4 Adjust the Email Notification Schedule to Every 30 Minutes

exec dbms_scheduler.set_attribute('avsys.avs_email_notification_job','repeat_interval','FREQ=MINUTELY;INTERVAL=30');

Viewing System Alerts

System Alerts can be viewed from the admin dashboard, directly from the System in the Oracle Database Security Central console, or in the syslog.

Viewing alerts from the dashboard:

  1. Log in to Oracle Database Security Central Console as an administrator.

  2. Select system alerts chart from the admin dashboard. This will bring you to the System page.

  3. View the system alerts in the System Alerts section at the bottom of the page.

  4. Select a system alert to view the history of that alert. A pop-up will show a list of alerts based on the selected alert. The alert history will show a maximum history of three months.

Viewing alerts from the System:

  1. Log in to Oracle Database Security Central Console as an administrator.

  2. Select Settings.

  3. Select System in the left navigation menu.

  4. View the system alerts in the System Alerts section at the bottom of the page.

  5. Select a system alert to view the history of that alert. A pop-up will show a list of alerts based on the selected alert. The alert history will show a maximum history of three months.

Viewing alerts from the syslog:

  1. Log in to the Audit Vault Server through SSH and switch to the root user.

    See Logging In to Oracle DBSecCentral Appliances Through SSH.

  2. View system alerts in the syslog (/var/log/messages) by filtering for the DBSecCentral SYSTEM ALERT tag.

For descriptions of the severity levels, see System Alerts Severity Levels.

For a list of possible alerts and recommendations, see System Alerts and Recommendations.

Closing System Alerts

Once an error condition is fixed, a super administrator user can close a system alert.

  1. Log in to the Oracle Database Security Central console as a super administrator.

  2. Select Settings.

  3. Select System in the left navigation menu.

  4. In the System Alerts section, select one or more system alerts that you’d like to close.

  5. Select Close System Alerts.

Once an alert is closed, the same alert will not be displayed within 24 hours, even if the error condition is met again. After 24 hours a new system alert will be generated if the error condition is met.

For descriptions of the severity levels, see System Alerts Severity Levels.

For a list of possible alerts and recommendations, see System Alerts and Recommendations.

System Alerts Severity Levels

System alerts include the following severity levels: