Alarm Template Behavior Between Parent Element and DVEs (Baseline Monitoring Use Case)

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Hi all,

I’d like to get some clarity on how alarm templates behave between a main element and its DVEs, specifically in a scenario involving baseline monitoring.

Current setup

Across all our customers, we currently only assign alarm templates on the main element (protocol level).
When DVEs are enabled under that element, they automatically use the same alarm template for parameters that is on the main element and the DVE that has an alarm for — so effectively, the alarming “trickles down” from the parent to all DVEs unless explicitly changed.

Scenario

  • Main element alarm template:
    • Parameters A, B, C use baseline monitoring (e.g. alarm on ~80 drops in traffic)
  • DVEs:
    • Represent individual customer networks
    • Inherit the parent alarm template by default (no template assigned directly)

This works well for the majority of DVEs.

Problem

Some specific DVEs do not have predictable traffic patterns, so baseline monitoring is not suitable for them.

What I would like to achieve:

  • Keep baseline monitoring enabled for most DVEs
  • Override only specific DVEs so that, for example:
    • Parameter A only alarms when value = 0 (instead of baseline)

Question about behavior

If I assign a dedicated alarm template directly to a specific DVE:

  • Will that template completely replace the inherited parent template or only the parameter with a specific alarm specified on the Template?
  • Or is there any form of merging or parameter-level precedence?

From what I understand so far:

  • If no template is assigned on the DVE → it uses the parent template
  • If a template is assigned on the DVE → it may fully replace the parent template

I’d like confirmation on whether this is the correct behavior.

Scalability concern

I want to avoid:

  • Creating separate alarm templates per customer or per DVE
  • Maintaining multiple near-identical templates just to disable baseline on a few instances

What would be the recommended approach?

Is there a best practice to:

  • Selectively disable or override baseline monitoring or any other alarm types on specific DVEs
  • While keeping a single alarm template for the majority of cases?
Johannes Boshoff [DevOps Member] Asked question