6.3

With the widget interaction congured in this way, the select alert in the Acct Dept Alert List is the
source for the data in the other widgets. When you select an alert in the alert list, the Health, Risk, and
Eciency widgets display alerts for that object, Top Alerts displays the topic issues aecting the health
of the object, and Alert Volume displays an alert trend chart.
7 Click Save.
You created a dashboard that displays the alerts related to the accounting virtual machines and hosts group,
including the Risk alert you created.
Defining Symptoms for Alerts
Symptoms are conditions that indicate problems in your environment. You dene symptoms that you add
to alert denitions so that you know when a problem occurs with your monitored objects.
As data is collected from your monitored objects, the data is compared to the dened symptom condition. If
the condition is true, then the symptom is triggered.
You can dene symptoms based on metrics and super metrics, properties, message events, fault events, and
metric events.
Dened symptoms in your environment are managed in the Symptom Denitions. When the symptoms that
are added to an alert denition are triggered, they contribute to a generated alert. Symptoms that are not
added to an alert denition are still evaluated and if the condition is evaluated as true, appear on the Alert
Details Symptom tab on the Troubleshooting tab.
Define Symptoms to Cover All Possible Severities and Conditions
Use a series of symptoms to describe incremental levels of concern. For example, Volume nearing capacity
limit might have a severity value of Warning while Volume reached capacity limit might have a severity
level of Critical. The rst symptom is not an immediate threat. The second symptom is an immediate threat.
About Metrics and Super Metrics Symptoms
Metric and super metric symptoms are based on the operational or performance values that
vRealize Operations Manager collects from target objects in your environment. You can congure the
symptoms to evaluate static thresholds or dynamic thresholds.
You dene symptoms based on metrics so that you can create alert denitions that let you know when the
performance of an object in your environment is adversely aected.
Static Thresholds
Metric symptoms that are based on a static threshold compare the currently collected metric value against
the xed value you congure in the symptom denition.
For example, you can congure a static metric symptom where, when the virtual machine CPU workload is
greater than 90, a critical symptom is triggered.
Dynamic Thresholds
Metric symptoms that are based on dynamic thresholds compare the currently collected metric value against
the trend identied by vRealize Operations Manager, evaluating whether the current value is above, below,
or generally outside the trend.
For example, you can congure a dynamic metric symptom where, when the virtual machine CPU
workload is above the trended normal value, a critical symptom is triggered.
Chapter 3 Customizing How vRealize Operations Manager Monitors Your Environment
VMware, Inc. 59