6.7

Table Of Contents
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Alarm Rules - Defines the event, condition, or state that triggers the alarm and defines the notification
severity. It also defines operations that occur in response to triggered alarms.
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Last modified - The last modified date and time of the defined alarm.
An alarm definition consists of the following elements in the vSphere Web Client:
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Name and description - Provides an identifying label and description.
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Alarm type - Defines the type of object that is monitored.
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Triggers - Defines the event, condition, or state that triggers the alarm and defines the notification
severity.
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Tolerance thresholds (Reporting) - Provides additional restrictions on condition and state triggers
thresholds that must be exceeded before the alarm is triggered. Thresholds are not available in the
vSphere Web Client.
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Actions - Defines operations that occur in response to triggered alarms. VMware provides sets of
predefined actions that are specific to inventory object types.
Alarms have the following severity levels:
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Normal – green
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Warning – yellow
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Alert – red
Alarm definitions are associated with the object selected in the inventory. An alarm monitors the type of
inventory objects specified in its definition.
For example, you might want to monitor the CPU usage of all virtual machines in a specific host cluster.
You can select the cluster in the inventory, and add a virtual machine alarm to it. When enabled, that
alarm monitors all virtual machines running in the cluster and triggers when any one of them meets the
criteria defined in the alarm. To monitor a specific virtual machine in the cluster, but not others, select that
virtual machine in the inventory and add an alarm to it. To apply the same alarms to a group of objects,
place those objects in a folder and define the alarm on the folder.
Note You can enable, disable, and modify alarms only from the object in which the alarm is defined. For
example, if you defined an alarm in a cluster to monitor virtual machines, you can only enable, disable, or
modify that alarm through the cluster. You cannot change the alarm at the individual virtual machine level.
Alarm Actions
Alarm actions are operations that occur in response to the trigger. For example, you can have an email
notification sent to one or more administrators when an alarm is triggered.
Note Default alarms are not preconfigured with actions. You must manually set what action occurs when
the triggering event, condition, or state occurs.
vSphere Monitoring and Performance
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