hierarchical alerts

[rgcda]

We have vROps (6.0.1) and Hyeric (5.8.4) installed.  The vROps is new and I migrated our vCOps data over to it recently.  I migrated to vROps because VMware support suggested I move to it because of the hierarchical alerting functionality that was build into it.  What is happening is that I would like one place for my alerts to come from and that would be vROps.  I have Hyperic agents installed on machines so that I can monitor services and machine availability.  In the previous version of vCOps and Hyperic there was no hierarchical alerting functionality in vCOps.  So what would happen is if I am monitoring the availability of a server and some services on the server and it goes down I would get alerts from vCOps that the server is down and services are down.  If the server is down I only want that alert.  VMware support said there was no way to do this in vCOps and I should go to 6.0.1 because it's build in there.  Unfortunately, I'm not seeing this functionality as built.  Would somebody be able to provide me an example of how to setup a Alert Definition that would provide a solution to this problem.  Thank you.

[fbess]

In vROps 6 alerts are are fired based on one ore more symptoms. E.g. you create a symptom host down and a symptom service down. The alert service down then makes use of both symptoms where you define both are required to fire the alert. 

[rgcda]

I have created separate host down and service down symptoms.  The problem is I have a separate alert definition for service down and a separate alert definition for host down.  When the host goes down I get multiple emails - 1 being the host down and 2 being any number or services being monitored on that server.  I just want the one email that the host is down.  I'm not seeing how to not have emails generated on services being down when the host goes down.  I have several servers with 10+ services on them and if the server goes down they are getting 11+ emails when all they need is one.