Re: can I set up an alert action to ssh to a cisco device and run commands and send them in the alert?

At a hight level, what you would need to do is:

1. on the target device, set up the script that runs the commands and outputs the information you want
2. on the primary polling engine, create a script (vbscript may be best) that is able to connect to the SolarWinds database and write text into the NOTES field of the alert table
3. on the primary polling engine, install PLINK (the command-line version of PUTTY)
4. set up a trigger action that launches PLINK against the target device, running the script you want and reading the output, and sending that output through the script in step 2 into the NOTES field of the alert
5. A second alert action (with a sufficient delay) would read the ${Notes} variable into your actual message (email, whatever).

You will have replicated the functionality of the APMServiceControl.exe utility that does this for Windows systems.