Alert Messaging in the CMS Distributed Workflow System

WMAgent is the core component of the CMS workload management system. One of the features of this job managing platform is a configurable messaging system aimed at generating, distributing and processing alerts: short messages describing a given alert-worthy informational or pathological condition. Apart from the framework's sub-components running within the WMAgent instances, there is a stand-alone application collecting alerts from all WMAgent instances running across the CMS distributed computing environment. The alert framework has a versatile design that allows for receiving alert messages also from other CMS production applications, such as PhEDEx data transfer manager. We present implementation details of the system, including its python implementation using ZeroMQ, CouchDB message storage and future visions as well as operational experiences. Inter-operation with monitoring platforms such as Dashboard or Lemon is described.