vCenter 6 Comes with lot of default alerts and I will list the configuration of few of them which could be very handful.
In vSphere C# client when you select vCenter and go to Alarms tab it displays all the alarms vCenter has to offer.
You can also select individual vCenter object like a VM, Datastore, Host, Cluster, DVS, Portgroup etc and go to alarm definitions to find out what alarms are available for that particular object.
Example: test1 is a VM and datastore1 is a vmfs datastore
Best way to make use of these alerts vCenter is to send email notifications to the admin.
The vCenter needs to be configured for email notifications and below are the steps:
To configure an email notifications for an alarm:
- Log in to vCenter Server.
- Click the Administration tab and select vCenter Server Settings.
- Select the Mail option.
- For the SMTP Server option, enter the IP address or the DNS name of the email/exchange server to which the alert notification must be sent.
- For the Sender Account, enter the email address from which the alert must be sent.
- We will need the vCenter IP to be configured in SMTP relays of Exchange server.
I have chosen below Alarms as examples, however you can configure the ones that might interest you.
Datastore Usage on disk
A very useful alerts that monitors the usage of a vmfs Datastore for its utilization. The defaults in the alarms are Warning on 75% Utilization and Alert on 85% Utilization. I am going to go with the same thresholds assuming they are VMware recommendations.
VM Has Snapshots
Another Important alarm that I use is a snapshot alarm, it’s a custom alarm and below are the steps to create. Right click on the blank side of the alarm definition page and click New Alarm.
In the trigger type select VM Snapshot Size.
Set the trigger conditions for Warning and Alert and put your email ID in reporting actions so you know if a snapshot created is exceeding a particular size. please note if you are created a VM Snapshot with .vmsn file(including memory) than this alert considers that in the total VM snapshot size.
Example is the warning is set to 10GB and you create snapshot with memory of a VM which has more than 10GB RAM, the alert triggers immediately.
Some other default Alarms which are useful include the below and can be configured similarly.
- Virtual Machine Consolidation Needed status.
- VM CPU/Memory Usage
- vSphere HA Virtual Machine Monitoring Action
- ESXi host CPU/Memory Usage
- Host Connection and Power state
- Network Connectivity redundancy lost
- Network Connectivity lost
- Thin Provisioned Volume Capacity threshold exceeded
For any questions regarding the configurations of the same please comment on my post and I will get back to you.
For someone who does not have vRealize Operations Manager these alarms could be really helpful. In the future I will posting blogs regarding monitoring from vRealize Operations Manager.
Have a Nice Day…!