Have you looked to William Lams website virtuallyGhetto and specifically this page:
http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2010/05/getting-started-with-vsphere-sdk-for.html
You can find a reference on that page to his vGhetto Script Repository here:
vGhetto Script Repository
He also has this script repository on github:
https://github.com/lamw/vghetto-scripts/tree/master/perl
Specifically look at this script alarmManagement.pl. I've attached my modification to the script to provide timestamps.
My effort is to essentially poll our vCenter platform via the API for the current alarm states on a regular basis. What I haven't been able to get is a mapping of an alarm to a vCenter object like "HOST" or "VM". For some reason, Williams script shows the column heading "Alarm Entity" but it is "Datacenters" for ALL my alarms. What I don't understand as well is the Alarm Key that is identified for each alarm. This appears to be a unique identifier assigned to the alarms but I don't know if the numerical key is assigned based on the order in which the alarms are generated or how they are assigned.
Good luck and let me know if you have made any further improvements to Williams great script
Amir
