Is it possible to add a sensor to multiple devices?

Hi,

well, but it's possible to clone a sensor to only one device, isn't it? Is there a way to clone the sensor to more than one device or to one group (all devices within this group)?

Thank you

Cloning is only possible on a 1:1-basis, which is why we recommend to use a Device Template (as suggested in the linked article) if you want to "copy" one (or more sensors) to several devices in one go.

Does Device Template work for devices that is already created? If I'm not wrong, it will work (""copy" one (or more sensors) to several devices in one go") to devices that is not created yet, right? But I need to add a sensor to a group of devices thats is already created and is already being monitored.

Thank you very much.

The Auto-Discovery and the Device Templates can be used with existing devices. You would configure the settings appropriately (choose the template for the Auto-Discovery in the Groups settings or on the individual devices) and then run the Auto-Discovery.

Is this going to be added in PRTG 12? it would make things a lot easier and quicker.

Hi,
we are already on PRTG 12 but I'm afraid there are no changes. Sorry.
Best regards

Hi

I am also requesting to copy single sensor to multiply devices.

Karl

Hi,
we we will put this on the wishlist for upcoming releases.
Best reagrds

Needed - yes please!

You vote is counted.

* UP *

What about adding a sensor to multiple devices? Is it still not possible, my company is using PRTG v12.4 (I know it's getting old)?

I'm requested to add a customized pingsensor to several devices, each devices are in different area.

I am aware about the possibility to change settings to more then one sensor at the time, however I need to add this sensor to the devices...... that's where my problem started

Do you guys have an advice for me?

Regards

Matt

In your case you can go to the management tab and drag and drop the sensor that you customized onto the other devices and it will clone the sensor with your settings.

Is this still on the wishlist? If so please add my vote.

plus one

+1

I do this pretty often, but in Powershell:

Import-Module "C:\Powershell\Modules\PRTG\PRTG.psm1"
$Devices = Get-prtgDevicesInGroup | where {$_.tags -contains "testtag"}
$Sensors = Get-prtgSensorInGroup | where {$_.id -eq "2047"}
Add-prtgSensorToDevice -DevicesScriptBlock {$Devices} -SensorScriptBlock {$Sensors}

More details in my site: https://thedomainiown.wordpress.com/prtg-related/adding-a-sensor-to-a-device/

@AndrewG: Just wanted to say great work on the PowerShell module for accessing the API. This just saved me a load of hassle adding a new sensor to dozens of devices, so a huge thank you for this!

I did have to make a small change to the call though because the -contains operator didn't seem to find the tags correctly. Using -like with wildcards instead worked a treat though. I also had to change the module a bit as we only use SSL for the PRTG admin website, so it didn't work until I did a find and replace in the module to change all the URLs to use the HTTPS URL instead.

Congrats to @AndrewG to his PS module and just to say that is very sad from Paessler that we're already in version 16 and this (basic) feature hasn't been implemented yet. I'm a big fan of PRTG and I recommend it to everyone, but this is a huge gap in a monitoring tool, very difficult to excuse...

@Roadrunn12, @KoNXuRo thanks for the feedback.

I have been not using PRTG for the last 6 months, but just got it approved at my current place of work, so the Powershell admin module should continue to grow.

Changing http to https should be a simple find and replace - I will place that in a variable when I get around to it. Thanks for the -like / -contains comment - This has caught me about before.

Also, I just updated the page and added a comment that explains how to add multiple HTTP sensors based on info from a txt file:

• The Domain I Own: Adding a Sensor to a Device

This should be a standard feature in PRTG, everything that leads to repetitive manual labor should be automatize-able. Especially if it affects hundreds of servers... It should not lead to rather not adding anything because of the huge amount of time involved, or having to revert to a third party work-around (thanks AndrewG though).

Paessler, please make it possible in multi edit for instance to add a sensor. (easy enough to find all WMI sensors with uptime as filter and then add a sensor from a list of available ones already added, or create on on the fly. Cloning one by one, as I have seen suggested on other KB articles is daft. In short, fix this. Thanks

Hello ahoppe,
thank you for your input.

One of the reasons why this isn't possible, is that while manually batch adding sensors is an improvement it is still not the 'optimal' solution. Even better than manually batch-adding sensors is relying on the auto-discovery process to do so. Using the Auto-Discovery with custom Device Templates allows for lots of flexibility with little manual work (after the initial setup).

Basically, you need to add one or more sensor(s) to a single device manually first to create the initial device template. Then, you can perform an auto-discovery with this very template on as many devices as you want. The result will be, these sensors (or sensor types) being deployed on all servers that you've selected to do the discovery on (You can use multi-edit to configure/discover multiple devices at once).

The template can have one or more sensors, so instead of having an "Uptime" template (that adds only this sensor) you could have a "webserver" template, that adds all relevant sensors in one go.

There are some caveats to the Auto-Discovery process that need to be taken into consideration: For example, if you chose to do this for the SNMP System Uptime sensor, a single sensor will be deployed every-time. However, if you do this for the SNMP Traffic Sensor, it will result on multiple sensors (on per active interface) on each device after the discovery, since each device may have one or more distinc interfaces and it is impossible for the auto-discovery to decide "which one is the most important one".

Best Regards,
Luciano Lingnau [Paessler Support]

I tried this method with Device template, but it added all the sensors that I deleted previously. Autodiscovery finds lots of sensors I don't need so I remove them. And then if I want to add 2 new sensors to all specific devices I also get all the deleted ones. Even more work. So I would also vote for a way to manually add new sensor to a selected group of devices.