6.0.1

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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
will monitor all virtual machines running in the cluster and will trigger when any one of them meets the
criteria defined in the alarm. If you want to monitor a specific virtual machine in the cluster, but not others,
you would select that virtual machine in the inventory and add an alarm to it. One easy way to apply the
same alarms to a group of objects is to 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 can not make changes to 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.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“View Events,” on page 106
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“View System Logs,” on page 107
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“Export Events Data,” on page 107
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“View Triggered Alarms and Alarm Definitions,” on page 107
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“Live Refresh of Recent Tasks and Alarms,” on page 108
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“Set an Alarm,” on page 109
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“Acknowledge Triggered Alarms,” on page 117
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“Reset Triggered Event Alarms,” on page 117
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“Preconfigured vSphere Alarms,” on page 118
View Events
You can view events associated with a single object or view all vSphere events. The events list for a selected
inventory object includes events associated with child objects. vSphere keeps information about tasks and
events for 30 days.
Procedure
1 Select an inventory object in the vSphere Web Client.
vSphere Monitoring and Performance
106 VMware, Inc.