An element is a piece of an own or vendor-provided hardware or software making up a service (e.g., a router, a network interface, an Apache Tomcat instance, a SQL database, a DNS server, etc.).
An element can be assigned to multiple services (e.g., many services may rely on the same DNS server, physical host or storage).
Elements in the Salesforce are a simplified representation of managed objects in the Nextian RMM. In majority of cases element information is populated from the RMM by the synchronization process and is not modified by the Salesforce users.
Apart from monitoring/observability function, elements are used to calculate recurring service cost (all elements’ costs roll up to a total on the service). This information is used to calculate service profit and margin. In other words, service elements can be thought of as a recurring “bill of materials” for a service.
Each element has the following information, stored in the Element__c object:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Element Name | A standard Salesforce name field used as a unique, customer-defined service designation, e.g., [email protected]. |
| System Name (SysName) | Internal system name of the element, this field is typically updated from the RMM/NMS. |
| Managed | Managed elements are not monitored (e.g., a 9U shelf space in a data center), but they still might have an associated cost and provider, and thus affect service revenue/profit and margin. Unmanaged objects have Operational Status automatically set to Unmanaged. |
| Network Address | A human-readable network IP or DNS address of the element, e.g., 192.168.4.11 or switch-1312.nextian.com. This string is automatically created by the RMM based on element’s actual address (IPv6 or IPv4, DNS or dotted, static or dynamic). |
| Dynamic Network Address | Checked if element has a dynamic network address, unchecked if static (static is the default value). |
| Type | Element type such as Service, Network Device, Network Interface, Host, Application, Virtualization, CPU, Storage, etc. |
| Make | Element manufacturer and/or device type, e.g., Cisco ASA, Dell PowerEdge, etc. |
| Model/Version | Element model or version designation (e.g., 2821). |
| Firmware | Firmware version, revision, etc. |
| MAC Address | MAC (physical) address of the device (usually associate with the WAN or primary interface), obtained from the NMS/RMM inventory. MAC address can be used in Salesforce search (it is an external id). |
| Contact | Textual identification of the contact person for the device (usually MIB-2::sysContact) retrieved from the NMS/RMM inventory. |
| Operational Status | Operational status (Up, Down, Has Issues) of the element. The status is determined by the RMM based on element probing. |
| Provider | Provider (Salesforce account) of the element used to indicate elements that have been purchased from third parties. Empty value indicates own element (which can still carry MRC). |
| Monthly Recurring Cost | Monthly Recurring Cost (MRC) of the element — monthly provider charge or internal monthly cost. |
| Serial Number | Optional serial number for inventory tracking. |
| Asset Tag | Optional asset tag inventory tracking (e.g., can be used along with bar-code readers, etc.). |
| Last Boot Time | Read-only time when element was booted up last, updated from RMM/NMS. |
| Uptime | Uptime (days since last boot time) for operational elements (Up, Has Issues), empty for non-operational elements. For example, a 12-hour uptime is equal to 0.5. An additional, string version of this field returns uptime in a human-readable format, e.g. 1 days 23 hr 19 mins. |
| Last Configuration Change | Datetime when element configuration was changed last (retrieved directly from the element if available, otherwise left empty). This field is read-only and should be only updated automatically by the RMM/NMS. |
| RMM Element/Node Id | Element id in the RMM/NMS system with additional attributes. The value depends on the monitoring system used to source element information. |
| Suppress RMM Updates | When checked, RMM will not make any updates to the element (availability, performance, etc.). |
| Last Update In RMM/NMS | Date and time when element was last updated in RMM/NMS. |
| Monitoring System URL | URL of the monitoring system for element (e.g., a link to a Zabbix host, a SolarWinds Orion node or other). |
Operational status
Element operational statuses are updated from network monitoring systems using by the Nextian RMM / Network Monitoring Integration. Individual element statuses roll up to service statuses.
- Up — the element is fully operational.
- Has Issues — element is available but experiencing issues (e.g., long response times).
- Down — element is not available.
- No Data — no data has been collected for the element yet.
- Unmanaged — element is unmanaged (the Managed flag is not set), and therefore does not have an operational status per se.
Availability history
Nextian keeps track of availability history/operational status timeline for each managed element. The history is kept for 30 days in the App; a different, usually longer retention time can be set in the RMM. The 30 day limit is imposed in order to save on Salesforce storage charges and is also based on the fact that account managers usually do not need to know as much historical detail as NOC personnel (aggregated availability statistics, are calculated for greater time periods, e.g., 99.9% uptime over last 24 months – the 30 day limit applies to details only).
Element availability history is displayed in element details:
The history is kept in Element_Availability_History__c object and is is maintained as follows:
- When a new element is created, its status is set to No Data for managed, or Unmanaged for unmanaged elements.
- Inserting availability history for unmanaged elements is not allowed.
- Adding histories with No Data statuses is not allowed.
- When all element histories are cleared, operational status of the element is set to No Data.
- Dates on history records must be unique.
- Adding a history record prior to the current last history record is not allowed.
- If all history records for an element removed its operational status is set to No Data.
