7.7.2. Active Alarms

An Alert on a NexLog system can either be an event or a state. Alerts that represent a state are also referred to as ‘Active Alerts’ or ‘Alarms’. All alarms on a NexLog system are also alerts, but an alert is not necessarily an alert. For example, Alert Code #8 “Recorder Startup” is an informational alert informing of an event, but is not an Alarm. Alert Code #6001 “RAID is degraded” is an alarm, since when the event it is informing of will remain in effect until resolution (by replacing a drive). Some alerts which are not alarms will raise an alarm if the alert occurs more frequently than a preset threshold, or will show up as an Alarm for a few minutes after occurring, but then revert automatically to a non-alarm alert.

The Active Alarms page allows you to view the Alarms that have triggered on the system but have not yet been resolved. Therefore, these alarm states are actively in progress and awaiting resolution. Some alarm states will resolve on their own, for example, an alarm complaining that the networking cable has been disconnected, will be resolved automatically once the recorder detects that a network cable has been reattached. Other alarms, such as the degraded RAID alarm, may require user intervention to resolve.

If there are any currently active alarms to show, you will see a table with one row per alarm. The columns are as follows:

Time: The date and time the alarm triggered and became active

AlertCode: The Alarm code for the alarm (See Alerts and Logs: Alert

Codes)

AlarmText: The user friendly description of what the alarm represents

Times: If the same alarm triggers multiple time, they can be ‘compressed’ down to a single alarm entry. In that case the “Times” field displays how many occurrences this single entry represents.

Acknowledge: The word ‘Yes’ if the Alarm has been acknowledged, otherwise a button containing the text ‘Ack Now’ which will acknowledge the alarm.

It is impossible to resolve an alarm from the Active Alarms Setup page. For an alarm to be resolved, the underlying cause must be fixed. Some alarms will automatically resolve, while others will require user intervention, such as replacing a disk drive. However, while an alarm cannot be resolved through Setup, it can be ‘Acknowledged’. When an Alarm is acknowledged it remains active and in effect, but the recorder understands that the user is aware of the issue and makes less effort to draw the user’s attention to the problem. Mainly, acknowledging an active alarm will prevent the alarm condition from causing the Front Panel’s alarm indicator to blink red. It will also silence audio alarms associated with the alarm. In addition, the “Show Acknowledged Alarms’ checkbox on this Configuration Tool page allows the user to determine whether or not acknowledged alarms should be displayed.

The final checkbox on this page is “Automatically Refresh Page” If checked, the alarms page will automatically refresh itself with the up to date status from the recorder approximately once per minute. This saves having to constantly refresh the page manually to see if any new alarms have arisen.