Trigger Alarm on MKS Event - why is this not working?

[rjs74]

OK, so I'm trying to get an alarm to trigger and send an email notification when one of a group of VMs acquires an MKS ticket (i.e. someone opens a console session on the VM). I've defined an alarm on the VM folder, along the following lines:

IF

     VM acquired MKS ticket

THEN

     Trigger the alarm and - Keep the target's current state

     Send email notifications - enabled - populated Subject/Email to as necessary

Alarm is enabled.

The problem is, this alarm never seems to get triggered. If I open up a VMRC session on one of the VMs, I see the MKS event, but I do not see the alarm trigger or receive the email notification.

What am I missing here? TIA.

Notes: Using VCSA 6.5U2. I can get other alarms to trigger and send email notifications successfully.

[daphnissov]

I have not ever personally tried to configure such an alarm in vCenter, but one option that would work is to capture these logged events with Log Insight and create an alert based on them. It requires a few things (obviously vRLI), but may be a viable alternative.

[rjs74]

Thanks for the suggestion daphnissov, vRLI is an option for me, just seems that what I am attempting to do should work unless I'm missing something. I'll keep your suggestion in mind if I don't get any further with the vCenter alarm alone.

[EvanEverett]

I happen to be looking for this same type of alerting for users accessing certain VM consoles. I *believe* the issue is due to it not actually triggering a warning or critical alarm since it's only an informational alert. I'll update on this thread if I find a good alternative or workaround.

[rjs74]

Thanks Evan, that might make some sense.

I've not had a chance to look at this since my original post, but will get back to it at some point...

[EvanEverett · Accepted solution]

I tried multiple ways of getting the alert to fire using ESXi 6.0, 6.5, and 6.7 including the Flex and HTML5 clients. None worked. I went ahead and opened a VMware support ticket and this was confirmed as a bug. Looks like we'll have to wait for a fix sadly. Per VMware:

"Thank you for your time over the call. As discussed this has been raised as a bug and the RND team is working on it .It is planned to be fixed on esxi 7.1 at the earliest."

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[rjs74]

Thanks for the update Evan, great to get that figured out even if it's a slightly disappointing result.

The response from VMware seem strange though...  esxi 7.1????????

Thank you for your time over the call. As discussed this has been raised as a bug and the RND team is working on it .It is planned to be fixed on esxi 7.1 at the earliest.

Anyway, seems clear it's a bug so I'll go ahead and mark your reply as the Correct Answer.

Thanks again!