Grass Valley iControl V.4.43 - Manual (Page 377)

iControl
User Guide
367
The Refresh button is disabled until the Alarm Browser hierarchy changes on the server in a
way that would affect the current display—for example, when a new folder is created.
Alarm Providers
An alarm provider is a small program responsible for publishing alarm data. Alarm providers
are based on plug-ins—a kind of software template. The provider is like a clone of the plug-in,
but it is customized to work with a specific device (e.g. the Kaleido-Alto at IP
10.10.50.3 ), or a
specific category of devices (e.g. routers).
Some alarm providers are built right into the core of the iControl system. Others can be
created as required from the GSM Alarm Browser window. These include alarm providers for
video routers, Kaleido frames, GPI inputs, iTX, VBI, UMD and various third party SNMP devices.
Figure 7-26: List of alarm providers (plug-ins) in a GSM Alarm Browser
When you create a new alarm provider, an instance of the plug-in starts running on the
Application Server, and begins publishing its alarms to the GSM. There are two types of alarm
providers: single instance and multiple instance.
Single-instance Alarm Providers
For certain plug-ins, once an instance has been created on the Application Server, the plug-in
name is removed from the list of alarm providers. An example of a single-instance plug-in is
the Router plug-in, since only one instance is required to monitor all the routers on a local
network.
Multiple-instance Alarm Providers
Most alarm provider plug-ins can have multiple instances, each monitoring a specific device
on a network. For example, multiple instances of the Kaleido plug-in might be running
simultaneously, each one assigned to a different Kaleido frame. Another example is virtual
alarms—every virtual alarm is an instance of the virtual alarm plug-in.