Now that we are monitoring our first piece of equipment using the Ping driver, we will set up an alarm to track the status of this equipment.

An equipment’s status can change based on the alarms you configure. In this example, we will instruct zebrix control to mark the equipment as critical when the probe can no longer reach it.

To start, go back to your equipment configuration, navigate to the Alarms tab, and click the + button.

You have two types of alarms to choose from:
1. Alarm on measurements: An alarm triggered by the values returned by a measurement.
2. No data aarm: An alarm triggered when zebrix control no longer receives data from the equipment.

In this example, we will configure an alarm on measurements by selecting that option.

- The alarm will be based on the Ping driver, the Ping category, and the Alive metric.
- We will set the equipment to move to a critical state when the returned value is equal to false.

To test the alarm, disconnect the equipment’s network cable or turn it off. You will see the equipment change to a critical state in Zebrix Control:

However, simply displaying the equipment’s status in the interface may not be sufficient. You may prefer to be notified more directly, such as via email. This is where incidents come into play, which we will configure in the next chapter.

Set up your First Incident