On site at Gartner 2023, we’ve been able to monitor the status of SDI inputs, and output crosspoint patching by polling the in-built API function of the scorpion.
There is now a basic template which via 2 API calls gets the input and output status of each SDI at 3 second intervals, and then performs the following checks:
- Is the SDI input down when it was previously locked?
- Is the SDI output now routed to a local SDI input, when it previously wasn’t? (This suggests that TFC has been bypassed locally to the scorpion).
Zabbix then uses these checks to create alerts on it’s dashboard, communicating to the engineer the presence of a problem or change which is unexpected.
To use the template, simply create a new host and give it a relevant name, the IP address of the management interface of the Scorpion (not it’s Red or Blue 2110 IP address), and attach the CT_Scorpion_Checks_8x8 template to the host.
Once you have done this, simply hit update to add the host. It is then probably easiest to clone this host, amending the name and IP address, and repeating this process in order to add all the scorpions for the job to the monitoring.
The template has basic alerts for each input and output, but there is an additional dependant alert so that if all SDI outputs have changed to local routing (likely via the pressing of an “oh no” button on the touch control panel in the breakout room), a single alert is triggered stating “All Outputs Locally Routed – Kairos Bypassed in-room.”
You will need to amend this particular alert to suit your job, as unless you are using all 8 SDI outputs it will not triggered. Simply remove the aspects of the expression in the trigger which are not relevant. In the example below, remove the highlighted aspects to only have the trigger fire when the first 3 SDI outputs are locally routed.
If you have multi different scenarios (For example, most rooms are using 3 outputs but a couple are using 5, the most efficient approach is to “clone” the 8×8 template, amend it’s name to reflect the 8×5 usage, disable the triggers for the irrelevant outputs, and as above, remove the irrelevant outputs from the Kaios Bypassed expression. Save this as a new template, and apply it to the relevant scorpion units.
As with all things in monitoring, make sure to disable the host shortly before the de-rig to avoid extraneous alerting!
Template Name: CT_Scorpion_Checks_8x8
Dependent Template: CT_ICMP_5s_Basic
Available to download below as a single file
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