Connect ARMS alert management to PagerDuty - Application Real-Time Monitoring Service

PagerDuty is an incident response platform that notifies on-call responders by phone, SMS, or email. By connecting Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS) alert management to PagerDuty, you route ARMS alerts directly to PagerDuty through webhooks to automatically trigger incidents and resolve them when the alerts clear.

How it works

ARMS detects an anomaly and fires an alert.
The alert triggers a webhook that sends an event payload to a PagerDuty Events API endpoint.
PagerDuty creates an incident and pages the on-call responders assigned to the target service.
When the ARMS alert recovers, the webhook sends a resolve event to the same endpoint, and the PagerDuty incident resolves automatically.

Events API v1 vs V2

PagerDuty offers two Events API versions for inbound integrations. Choose the version that fits your needs before you start.

	Events API V2 (recommended)	Events API v1
Alert data format	Structured payload with PD-CEF fields	Basic event payload
Classification and filtering	Rich alert data for classification, filtering, and triage	Limited
Best for	Environments that need structured incident data in PagerDuty	Simple alert forwarding

For most use cases, use Events API V2. It supports the PagerDuty Common Event Format (PD-CEF), which makes it easier to classify, filter, and act on ARMS alerts within PagerDuty. For more information, see Events API.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure that you have:

An Alibaba Cloud account with ARMS enabled
A PagerDuty account (PagerDuty offers a 14-day free trial; for more information, visit PagerDuty)
A PagerDuty service configured with an Events API v1 or Events API V2 integration -- record the Integration Key and Integration URL from the service's Integrations tab, because you need them later (for detailed steps, see Create a service in PagerDuty documentation)

Note

When you add an integration to your service, select Events API v1 or Events API V2 based on the comparison above.

For Events API V2, copy the Integration Key and Integration URL (Alert Events).
For Events API v1, copy the Integration Key and Integration URL.

Step 1: Create a webhook in ARMS

Create a webhook to send ARMS alerts to your PagerDuty service endpoint. The steps differ slightly depending on which Events API version you chose. Follow the option that matches your setup.

Option A: Events API V2 (recommended)

Log on to the ARMS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Alert Management > Notification Objects.
Click the Webhook Integration tab, and then click Create Webhook.
In the Create Webhook dialog box, configure the following settings:
1. Enter a webhook name, for example, PagerDuty-v2.
2. In the Post field, enter the Integration URL (Alert Events) you copied from PagerDuty.
3. In both the notification template and the recovery template, enter the integration key in the following format:
```
integration_key=<your-integration-key>
```
  Replace <your-integration-key> with the Integration Key from your PagerDuty service.
Click Send Test. A status=success message confirms that ARMS can reach PagerDuty. To verify end-to-end, open the PagerDuty console and check that a test incident appears on your service's activity feed. If the test fails, verify that the Integration URL (Alert Events) and Integration Key are correct and that your network allows outbound HTTPS requests to PagerDuty.
Click OK.

Option B: Events API v1

Log on to the ARMS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Alert Management > Notification Objects.
Click the Webhook Integration tab, and then click Create Webhook.
In the Create Webhook dialog box, configure the following settings:
1. Enter a webhook name, for example, PagerDuty-v1.
2. In the Post field, enter the Integration URL you copied from PagerDuty.
3. In both the notification template and the recovery template, enter the integration key in the following format:
```
integration_key=<your-integration-key>
```
  Replace <your-integration-key> with the Integration Key from your PagerDuty service.
Click Send Test. A status=success message confirms that ARMS can reach PagerDuty. To verify end-to-end, open the PagerDuty console and check that a test incident appears on your service's activity feed. If the test fails, verify that the Integration URL and Integration Key are correct and that your network allows outbound HTTPS requests to PagerDuty.
Click OK.

Step 2: Create a notification policy

Link the webhook to a notification policy so that ARMS alerts are routed to PagerDuty.

Log on to the ARMS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Alert Management > Notification Policies.
Click Create Notification Policy.
In the Notification Objects section, select the PagerDuty webhook you created in Step 1 as the notification object. For details about other policy settings, see Create and manage a notification policy.
Click Save.

Verify the integration

After you complete the setup, trigger a test alert in ARMS to confirm that incidents appear in PagerDuty:

Create or modify an alert rule in ARMS with a condition you know will be met, such as a CPU usage threshold of 1%.
Wait for the alert to fire.
Check your PagerDuty service's incident list. A new incident should appear with the alert details from ARMS.
After the ARMS alert recovers, confirm that the PagerDuty incident resolves automatically.

What's next

Create and manage alert rules -- Set up the alert rules that trigger PagerDuty incidents.
Create and manage a notification policy -- Fine-tune which alerts route to PagerDuty and which go to other channels.