Installation guide

Condition and State Triggers
Use condition triggers and state triggers to set alarms on performance metrics, power states, and connection
states for virtual machines, hosts, and datastores. To set alarms on other objects in the inventory, you must use
event triggers.
Condition and state triggers use one of the following operator sets to monitor an object:
n
Is equal to and Is not equal to
n
Is above and Is below
To define a condition or state trigger, you choose the appropriate operator set and enter the values for the
warning and alert status. You can use any number of triggers for an alarm. When you use more than one trigger,
you choose whether to trigger the alarm when any conditions are satisfied or when all conditions are satisfied.
For example, you can create a host alarm that has two condition triggers, one for CPU usage and one for memory
usage:
Table 21-1. Example – Setting Condition Triggers
Trigger Condition
Warning Alert
Operator Value Operator Value
1 CPU usage Is above 75% Is above 90%
2 Memory usage Is above 75% Is above 90%
If you trigger the alarm when all conditions are satisfied, the alarm will trigger the warning only when both
CPU usage and memory usage values are above 75%. Likewise, it will trigger the alert only when both CPU
usage and memory usage are above 90%.
NOTE Unexpected results might occur when you have an alarm with multiple triggers with opposing warning
and alert conditions, and you set the alarm to trigger when all conditions are satisfied. For example, an alarm
has two triggers that set warnings and alerts for the virtual machine power state.
Table 21-2. Example – Opposing Warning and Alert Conditions
Trigger Warning Alert
1 Powered Off Powered On
2 Powered On Powered Off
If you choose to trigger the alarm when all conditions are satisfied, the alarm triggers a warning. This is because
the vServer System uses the AndAlarmExpression operator to validate the condition statuses for each trigger.
When they are all satisfied, the first condition is satisfied, and therefore is used: Warning & Alert = warning.
Condition and State Trigger Components
Condition and State triggers are comprised of a trigger type, a triggering condition and length, and warning
and alert values.
Table 21-3 describes each component of Condition and State triggers.
Table 21-3. Condition and State Trigger Components
Trigger Component Description
Trigger type The condition or state to monitor, for example, VM CPU Usage (%).
Condition The qualifier used to set the threshold for the trigger, for example, Is Above and Is
Below.
Chapter 21 Working with Alarms
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