Monitoring AIops

Monitoring AIops

Disclaimer: Community-maintained open-source project. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by SolarWinds, Paessler, Zabbix, or any monitoring vendor. SolarWinds, Orion, SWQL, THWACK, PRTG, Paessler and Zabbix are trademarks of their respective owners. MIT licensed.

Governed AI-ops for network / infrastructure monitoring across three NOC platforms in one server — SolarWinds Orion (SWIS REST + SWQL, port 17774 with an automatic fallback to the legacy 17778, HTTP Basic auth), Paessler PRTG (web API, port 443/8080, API token), and Zabbix 6.x/7.x (JSON-RPC 2.0 at /api_jsonrpc.php, API token) — with a built-in governance harness: unified audit log, policy engine, token/runaway budget guard, undo-token recording, and risk-tier labelling on the audit trail. One config can span all NOCs; each target names its own platform.

What it does

Answers the questions a NOC operator actually repeats, and guards the writes that follow:

• Canned-SWQL library — the most-asked THWACK questions shipped as named, validated queries (nodes_down, flapping_interfaces, muted_report, high_cpu_nodes, volumes_full, unmanaged_scheduled), plus a validated read-only SWQL passthrough (SELECT-only) for everything else.
• Active-alert dedup / rollup — collapses an interface-flap or node-down storm into a single counted entry instead of a wall of near-identical alerts, across SolarWinds, PRTG, and Zabbix (problems, with the 0-5 severity scale mapped to canonical levels).
• Triple SolarWinds + PRTG + Zabbix coverage — one MCP server spans all three NOCs; no incumbent hobby MCP does.
• Governed writes — mute/unmute, maintenance windows (incl. Zabbix maintenance.create with a replayable delete-undo), unmanage/remanage, node removal, and PRTG sensor pause/resume — each audited, risk-tiered, and the destructive ones gated with dry-run + double-confirm. Suppression and maintenance writes are time-boxed (they require an end time / duration).

What this tool does, and does not, decide

It delivers NOC operations — reads and writes — accurately and efficiently, and records every one of them. It does not decide whether a write is allowed to happen. That is the agent's judgement, or the permission of the account you connect it with: give it a SolarWinds/PRTG/Zabbix account with read-only monitoring scope and the writes fail at the server — the place that actually owns the permission.

So there is no read-only switch, no policy file, no approval gate to configure. The one thing the tool guarantees is that nothing is silent: every call, over MCP and over the CLI alike, lands an audit row in ~/.monitoring-aiops/audit.db, and destructive writes still capture their before-state and record an inverse where one exists.

Each tool declares a risk_level, kept in agreement with its [READ]/[WRITE] documentation tag by a test, and carried into the audit row as a descriptive tier — so a reviewer can see at a glance that a row was a high-risk node removal. It is a label, not a gate.

Running a smaller / local model? See agent-guardrails.md — it lists the guardrails this tool now enforces for you (so you don't spend prompt budget restating them) and gives a ready-made system prompt for what's left.

Capability matrix (42 MCP tools)

Group	Platform	Tools	Count	R/W
SWQL	SolarWinds	swql_library, swql_canned, swql_query	3	read
Alerts	all	active_alerts (dedup/rollup)	1	read
	all	alert_acknowledge	1	write (low)
SolarWinds health	SolarWinds	node_status, nodes_list, interface_status, volume_status, application_status, topn, noc_rollup	7	read
SolarWinds writes	SolarWinds	list_events, list_unmanaged, list_muted	3	read
	SolarWinds	mute_alerts, unmute_alerts, schedule_maintenance, remanage_node	4	write (med)
	SolarWinds	unmanage_node, remove_node	2	write (high)
PRTG reads	PRTG	prtg_sensors, prtg_sensor_details, prtg_devices, prtg_groups, prtg_history, prtg_system_status, prtg_alarms	7	read
PRTG writes	PRTG	pause_sensor, resume_sensor, schedule_maintenance_prtg	3	write (med)
Zabbix reads	Zabbix	zabbix_problems, zabbix_hosts, zabbix_hostgroups, zabbix_triggers, zabbix_events, zabbix_item_history, zabbix_maintenances	7	read
Zabbix writes	Zabbix	zabbix_create_maintenance	1	write (med)
	Zabbix	zabbix_delete_maintenance	1	write (high)
Undo	all	undo_list, undo_apply	2	undo

The CLI exposes a convenience subset; the full 42-tool surface is via the MCP server.

Quick start

uv tool install monitoring-aiops          # or: pipx install monitoring-aiops
monitoring-aiops init                     # wizard: pick platform (solarwinds/prtg/zabbix) + store the secret (encrypted)
monitoring-aiops doctor                   # verify config, secrets, connectivity
monitoring-aiops overview                 # NOC summary: platform + active/unacked alerts + top rollup
monitoring-aiops swql library             # list the canned SWQL queries
monitoring-aiops swql canned nodes_down   # run a named canned query

Run as an MCP server (stdio):

export MONITORING_AIOPS_MASTER_PASSWORD=...   # unlock secrets non-interactively
monitoring-aiops mcp

Governance

Every MCP tool passes through the bundled @governed_tool harness:

• Audit — every call (params, result, status, duration, risk tier, approver, rationale) is logged to ~/.monitoring-aiops/audit.db (relocatable via MONITORING_AIOPS_HOME).
• Budget / runaway guard — token and call budgets trip a circuit breaker on tight poll/retry loops. It is a safety backstop, not authorization.
• Risk-tier labelling — each tool's declared risk_level is carried into the audit row as a descriptive tier (a label, not a gate). MONITORING_AUDIT_APPROVED_BY / MONITORING_AUDIT_RATIONALE are optional audit annotations, recorded when set and never required.
• Undo recording — reversible writes record an inverse descriptor (mute_alerts→unmute, unmanage_node→remanage, pause_sensor→resume, zabbix_create_maintenance→delete that maintenance id).

Supported scope & limitations

• Platforms: SolarWinds Orion (SWIS REST + SWQL), Paessler PRTG (web API), and Zabbix 6.x/7.x (JSON-RPC 2.0; API token via Bearer header on 6.4+/7.x, with a legacy auth-field fallback for 6.0).
• Zabbix scope: problems/triggers/hosts/host groups/events, bounded item history, maintenance windows (create/delete), and event acknowledge via the cross-platform alert_acknowledge. Template/discovery/user CRUD and trend.get are not covered — open an issue if you need them.
• Validation status. Behaviour is exercised by the test suite against mocked SWIS/PRTG/Zabbix responses; it has not been run against a live NOC (see docs/VERIFICATION.md). PRTG has a free perpetual 100-sensor Freeware edition with the API, and Zabbix is fully open source (a Docker-compose appliance is a 10-minute live check) — the easiest live checks. SolarWinds is a 30-day trial only; past the trial this tool is mock-only, which is the largest verification debt. monitoring-aiops doctor is the fastest live check (a SWQL query for SolarWinds, /api/status.json for PRTG, unauthenticated apiinfo.version + an authed host count for Zabbix).

Missing a capability?

Want another canned query, a platform dialect fixed, or a capability that isn't here? Open an issue or a PR — feedback and contributions are welcome.