Auto-magically Keep PRTG Tidy From Irrelevant Sensors and Devices

Due to a popular demand, we have added the ability to automatically handle the tedious job of cleaning-up PRTG from irrelevant sensors and devices in cases such as deleted Virtual Machines, inactive Azure resources, switches that were removed from the network, old interfaces no longer connected etc. Such issues can be seen in dynamic environments or during migrations and topology changes.

Below is an example of a down sensor in PRTG that represents an Azure resource that doesn't exist any more in Azure.

Obviously, one could delete Down sensors manually, however in dynamic environments PRTG becomes cluttered with many irrelevant monitors appearing on a daily if not hourly basis.

We are pleased to announce, that starting with version v4.1.7 of our Azure Sensor pack, thanks to a new feature of Monitoring Automation, such capability is available to all types of sensors (AutoMonX sensors, PRTG native sensors and any custom sensors you have implemented).

Important: Please note that deleting sensors is irreversible and will also delete the historic data of these sensors. Use this feature with extra care!

This feature is bound to our EULA agreement. AutoMonX is not responsible for any damages direct or collateral due to usage of any of our products or their features.

The deletion of sensors also deletes devices without any sensors and empty sub groups to avoid phantom resources as seen below:

How does the automated deletion of sensors work?

1. The AutoMonX Monitoring Automation, invoked via CLI compares the PRTG sensors last messages against the lines of text located in down_sensors_filter.ini file, each line at a time.

2. PRTG Sensors with last messages that match any of the lines in down_sensors_filter.ini are automatically deleted from PRTG. Below is an example of a sensor that would be deleted based on the filter rule and the last message of the sensor in PRTG

Relevant CLI commands:

Use our PRTG Automation to delete sensors from PRTG

AutoMonX_PRTG_Automation.exe -delete_down -p <passhash> -grouplist <Group1,Group2>

Setting up an automatic deletion of sensors

You need to setup a Windows scheduled task that would run our PRTG monitoring automation and delete the irrelevant sensors. You can use the contributed batch file Amx_Sensor_Deletion.cmd located at AutoMonX\Azure\Contrib directory

You need to supply two important parameters to the batch file:

1. The PRTG group where the problematic sensors are be located. It is highly recommended to provide the exact groups where dynamic changes are observed and not the PRTG Root Group.

2. The PRTG user passhash (not the same as password)