Product Tips 1: Use an IP modem to send your alerts with GSX

The GSX Blog

alert resized 600GSX Monitor is able to send your alerts by email. It is very useful but not when your email server is down. In this case it could be great to receive a text message on your phone. By default GSX Monitor supports regular modems on COM port. However it is less and less frequent to find such equipment in enterprises.

So in this blog we are going to see how to use an IP modem. IP modems are really easy to deploy and can be used by many programs, services or applications on the network. IP modems can receive instructions by HTTP most of the time.

So we are going to write a small program to catch GSX information and send the right command to our IP modem. Then the IP modem will send the message by HTTP.

In GSX Monitor you will modify your alert profile and use the section programs

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Click on Programs then New, enter an alias for your trigger and click on “…” button to access to the details of your programs (I have highlight buttons in the screenshot below)

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As you can see GSX Monitor provides you with arguments to pass to your script. We are going to use them in our script. 

In my example IP modem has the IP 192.168.1.1 and my phone is 0612345678 Open a notepad and create a cmd file. Here is the code :

set arg1=%*
start /B /MIN “c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe” “http://192.168.1.1/sendmsg?user=gsx&passwd=xxxx&cat=1&to=”0612345678″&text=”%ARG1%””
taskkill /IM iexplore.exe

So, what did we do? First I have catched all argument passes up to my script. Then I sent and HTTP command. To do this I use Internet Explorer. My HTTP command is built for my modem. To build the HTTP command properly you can refer to modem’s documentation. But as you see I have passed a login/password to be able to use the modem, then a category (don’t pay attention to this), a phone and a text line composed by my arguments.

Save your CMD file as modem.cmd (or choose another name) then go back to the Program Configuration Windows. We are going to enter our program name and choose our arguments to construct the text message. I have chosen the station name (because I have different Stations), the alert message and the status.

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So now GSX Monitor will call my script and pass 3 arguments to it. The script will send an HTTP command with a text message composed by those 3 arguments and I will receive it on my phone. Exactly what I need.

To go deeper in the concept you can use escalations, reminders or set list of contacts on your IP modem to send the message to more people and you are all set to anticipate potential slowdowns of your messaging systems.

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Want to try it out? How about practicing on our solution

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