Overview
An alert is a simple rule: “tell me if this measurement stays above this limit for this long.” Condense measures how each component is running and checks those measurements against your rules, so you hear about a problem before it turns into an outage. You do not write any queries. The queries behind each alert are managed by Condense and cannot be modified.Runtime alerts watch how a component is running, not what is inside your messages.
Alerts you can configure
Each alert is predefined. Pick the ones that matter for the component you are deploying.These are examples of the metrics you can alert on. More predefined alerts may be added in later releases.
Which alerts apply to which component
- Consumer Lag and Consumer Group Health apply to components that read from a topic, such as transforms and output connectors. They do not apply to input connectors, which only write data. For a custom connector, set up its consumer group first.
- Response Latency applies to components that expose HTTP.
- You can set one alert per metric on a component. Trying to add a second one for the same metric is blocked, and you can edit the existing one instead.
Set up an alert
You can configure alerts in two places:- While you deploy a connector, a transform or a custom connector.
- Later, from the Pipeline page, for a component that is already running.
Consumer Group Health and CrashLoopBackOff have no threshold or duration. They fire as soon as the condition is true.
How an alert behaves
Condense checks your enabled alerts on a regular schedule against the metrics it already collects from your components. Each alert is always in one of two states.- Fires once. While the problem continues, Condense does not send the same notification again, so a long incident does not flood your inbox.
- Recovers. When the measurement drops back within the limit, the alert returns to Normal.
- Fires again. If the problem comes back after recovery, Condense sends a new notification.
How you are notified
When an alert fires:- An in-app notification is created immediately.
- An email is sent to the alert’s recipients, if SMTP is configured for the environment. See Configure SMTP for alert emails.
Roles and permissions
Roles without permission see the alert controls locked instead of hidden.
Best practices
- Set a duration long enough to ignore short spikes, and short enough to catch real problems early.
- Configure SMTP before you rely on email recipients.
- Review disabled alerts from time to time, so a component is not left unwatched by mistake.
Common pitfalls
- Recipients added, no emails received. Email is sent only when SMTP is configured for the environment. Without it, you get the in-app notification only.
- An alert never fires. Check that the alert is enabled. Only enabled alerts are checked.
- Too many alerts from short spikes. Increase the duration.
- No threshold field for an alert. Consumer Group Health and CrashLoopBackOff are fixed alerts. They have no threshold or duration.