Updated 1/6/15:

Based on feedback I made the following updates to the App Volumes Event Notifier:

• Added Windows Authentication as a option when connecting to the App Volumes SQLDB
  • When adding or updating a DB you select either “Windows Authentication” or “SQL Authentication” for the connection.
  • Please use domain\username syntax for Windows Authentication connections

• Added a check to see if an instance of the application is already running.

The updated version of the application can be downloaded here: http://goo.gl/bGIMsi

Keep the ideas and suggestions coming.   Thanks!

I have been running App Volumes for several weeks now in my home lab and working through a lot of Customer Demos where I am building up and tearing down my App Volumes environment very quickly.   I had some times where volumes didn’t mount properly and I had to keep going back to the System Messages section of the App Volumes web interface.

To help with getting more real-time alerting on App Volumes system messages I wrote the App Volumes Event Notifier which is very similar to the Horizon View Event Notifier Fling I wrote (https://labs.vmware.com/flings/horizon-view-event-notifier).

This version is a Beta and doesn’t have many features yet.   I will add filtering and ability to send messages in batch in a upcoming release.  I wanted to get it out there so others can use and test.

Prerequisites:

• System running .NET 3.5
• SQL account with access to App Volumes DB

 Setup:

• Place App_Volumes_Event_Notifier.exe and the associated XML configuration file in the same directory.
• Launch the .exe and navigate to settings

Database Settings

• Click “Add DB Server”
  • Enter a Friendly Name – in Name
  • Enter the SQL server and instance in DB Server (ex:  server\instance)
• Enter the DB name in the database field.  NOTE: The default DB name for App Volumes is svmanager_production
• • Enter the SQL username and PW with access to the App Volumes DB
  • Click Save Changes – you can also test connection to the DB at this time.
  • You can add additional App Volumes DBs to monitor at this time by following the same process

Events Settings:

• There aren’t event types in App Volumes so you don’t need to set anything here
• You can set how many minutes to query in the system messages table
• Click Save Changes

SMTP Settings:

• Enter SMTP server address
• Enter port if not 25
• Enter who to have alerts sent from
• Enter list of users who will receive the alerts (comma separated)
• You can send a test message
• Select if you would like alerts sent via email or not
• Click Save Changes

Running the Application:

• Click “Start” then select the “App Volumes Events” tab to see any current events.
• Click the X at the top right of the form to minimize to the system tray
• The App Volumes Notifier Icon Looks like this:  
• The tray icon can be right-clicked or double-clicked to bring the form back up

Stopping and Exiting the Application:

• Click “Stop” to stop processing Events
• Select File | Exit to close the application completely.

The application can be downloaded here:  http://goo.gl/bGIMsi

This is a very basic version, and I would appreciate feedback on issues or suggestions.   You can send them to me via email:  chrisdhalstead@gmail.com or on Twitter: @chrisdhalstead

Thanks!