Create a custom CPU alarm for VM using PowerCli

[nikpetrov95]

Hello! I need to create an alarm on the CPU for each virtual machine, after the alarm has worked, I need to send a message to the user's mail, mail information should be taken from the user attribute of VM (I did it myself). Please help me with this matter.

[nikpetrov95]

No, I want to make changes to the current script.

$ErrorActionPreference= 'Stop'
$metricName = 'cpu.usage.average'
$mGroup,$mName,$mRollup = $metricName.Split('.')
$si = Get-View ServiceInstance
$perfMgr = Get-View -Id $si.Content.PerfManager
$metric = $perfMgr.PerfCounter |
    where{$_.GroupInfo.Key -eq $mGroup -and
          $_.NameInfo.Key -eq $mName -and
          $_.RollupType -eq $mRollup}
$VMcluster=read-host "Enter Cluster name"
$VM_with_contact=(Get-Cluster $VMcluster|get-vm |Get-Annotation -CustomAttribute 'Contact'|where{$_.Value -ne ""}).AnnotatedEntity.name
Get-VM $VM_with_contact|?{$_.Name -notlike  "*Template*" -and $_.Name -notlike  "*Old*"} -PipelineVariable vm |
ForEach-Object -Process {
    $userEmail = (Get-Annotation -Entity $vm -CustomAttribute 'Contact').value -replace " "
    $sAlarmTrigger = @{
        Metric              = Get-Metric -MetricGroup 'CPU' -Name 'usage' | where{$_.Key -eq $metric.Key}
        MetricAlarmOperator = 'Above'
        Red                 = 9500
        RedIntervalSeconds  = 86400
        EntityType          = 'VirtualMachine'
    }
    $trigger = New-AlarmTrigger @sAlarmTrigger
    $sAlarmAction = @{
        Email   = $true
Body = "$vm CPU Usage is above 95% for 24 hours , please check your OS."
        Subject = "High CPU Usage $vm"
        To      = @($userEmail.Split(';'))
    }
    $action = New-AlarmAction @sAlarmAction
    $sAlarmDef = @{
        Name         = "CPU High $vm"
        Description  = 'Trigger alarm when CPU utilisation is too high'
        Entity       = $vm
        AlarmTrigger = $trigger
        AlarmAction  = $action
    }
    New-AlarmDefinition @sAlarmDef|ft -AutoSize
}
$ErrorActionPreference= 'Continue'

And after running the script, I want to see the following:

Get-AlarmDefinition -Name "CPU High DBA340"| Get-AlarmAction |Get-AlarmActionTrigger

StartStatus     EndStatus       Repeat

-----------     ---------       ------

Yellow          Red             TRUE

[LucD]

Ok, try like this

$vmNames = 'test01','test02'

$metricName = 'cpu.usage.average'

$mGroup,$mName,$mRollup = $metricName.Split('.')

$si = Get-View ServiceInstance

$perfMgr = Get-View -Id $si.Content.PerfManager

$metric = $perfMgr.PerfCounter |

    where{$_.GroupInfo.Key -eq $mGroup -and

          $_.NameInfo.Key -eq $mName -and

          $_.RollupType -eq $mRollup}

Get-VM -Name $vmNames -PipelineVariable vm |

ForEach-Object -Process {

    Get-AlarmDefinition -Name 'CPU High' -Entity $_ -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |

    Remove-AlarmDefinition -Confirm:$false

    $userEmail = (Get-Annotation -Entity $vm -CustomAttribute 'Contact').value

    $sAlarmTrigger = @{

        Metric              = Get-Metric -MetricGroup 'CPU' -Name 'usage' | where{$_.Key -eq $metric.Key}

        MetricAlarmOperator = 'Above'

        Red                 = 7500

        RedIntervalSeconds  = 300

        EntityType          = 'VirtualMachine'

    }

    $trigger = New-AlarmTrigger @sAlarmTrigger

    $sActionTrigger = @{

        StartStatus = 'yellow'

        EndStatus = 'red'

        Repeat = $true

    }

    $actionTrigger = New-AlarmActionTrigger @sActionTrigger

    $sAlarmAction = @{

        Email   = $true

        Subject = 'CPU Usage high'

        To      = $userEmail

        AlarmActionTrigger = $actionTrigger

    }

    $action = New-AlarmAction @sAlarmAction

    $sAlarmDef = @{

        Name         = 'CPU High'

        Description  = 'Trigger alarm when CPU utilisation is too high'

        Entity       = $vm

        AlarmTrigger = $trigger

        AlarmAction  = $action

        ActionRepeatMinutes = 5

    }

    New-AlarmDefinition @sAlarmDef

}

[nikpetrov95]

LucD​, Thank you so much!

[mk5213]

Hi, I am a bit confused on the creation of alarms in vcenters. I have seen CreateAlarm used but only a long time ago, is that deprecated and New-AlarmDefinition the new way of creating alarms in PowerCLI? Sorry if I am a bit misinformed on the topic. Any input is greatly appreciated, Thanks!

[LucD]

You are corrected, there are a number of new cmdlets for Alarms.

See

Get-Command -Name *Alarm*

Some features of Alarms can not be created by these cmdlets, for those you will still need the API.

[mk5213]

Thank you LucD, that clears it up. Right now I am just creating alarms at the datacenter level, but is there a way to create alarms for the entire vcenter? I read this here but I am a bit confused if I can make alarms for the entire vcenter?

[mk5213]

[LucD]

Use the Folder named Datacenters

[mk5213]

Thank you that worked, is it possible to use for example a json or csv to initialize alarms in PowerCLI?

[LucD]

No, not directly.

You can store the variable data (AlarmName, Description...) in an external file.

But you would still need a script to define the Alarms (using the data from the external file).

[mk5213]

Hey LucD, I am trying to get the input for alarms working with json files. I have a json file that gets taken in and successfully have everything stored in a hashtable of hashtables, but I cant get the cmdlet to work with it for some reason:

$actionTrigger = New-AlarmActionTrigger $json.sActionTrigger

This is the error message for this line, as well as the contents of $json.sActionTrigger:

[LucD]

Did you already try casting your value from the JSON file to ManagedEntityStatus type

[VMware.Vim.ManagedEntityStatus]$json.sActionTrigger.Value

[mk5213]

Just tried the following:

$actionTrigger = New-AlarmActionTrigger [VMware.Vim.ManagedEntityStatus]$json.sActionTrigger.Value

and got the following output:

[LucD]

What exactly do you have in $json.sActionTrigger.Value?

Or else share part of the JSON file.

[mk5213]

Now that you say that just checked what is stored in $json.sActionTrigger.Value and nothing comes up. But if I do run $json.sActionTrigger it shows the correct name value pairs like in my above picture, I am confused why this is.

[mk5213]

The only thing I have stored in the JSON is the hashtable sActionTrigger:

[LucD]

How did you create that JSON file?
That field should contain green,yellow or red

[mk5213]

Yeah so I actually got this to work without nested objects in the json file. So before I just had the json only contain the startstatus, endstatus and repeat and it worked perfectly. But I am trying to contain all the hastables in one json file, so i am testing right now with just doing one hastable in the hashtable but I am hoping to add them for all the other hastables in the script. I just don't understand why the cmdlet works with a hastable, but I cant get it to work with a hashtable within a hastable. It may not be possible but I was just trying to see if you would possibly know what is wrong

[LucD]

I would need to see the relevant part of your code and a sample JSON extract to further analyse.

[mk5213]

Ok if need be I can do that but I think I have an idea of what the issue is. I basically have a hash table variable I am trying to splat with. I didn't assign it  in the script like you created your splatting variable in your example, I have a function create a hashtable from a json file. I read somewhere that you cannot splat with a created hashtable, do you think this is the issue? It is treating my hashtable as the first parameter instead of using the name-value pairs in the hashtable