Alarm question for VM's ?

[larbet]

If possible I would like to set up an alarm that if a VM goes down sends a notification email to our group. I see the standard alarms and I see one if a host goes down but not one if a VM goes down. My boss is bugging me for an email to be sent to our group when a VM goes offline.

Any suggestions would be great!

Thanks.

[RichardB1000]

Hi,

If you create a new alarm definition against the VM you want to monitor you can add the trigger, Virtual Machine State and from there set an action to generate an e-mail.

Hope this helps?

Richard

[Rick_Smith · Accepted solution]

I do this at the DataCenter level for all my VMs with a single alarm setup like previously suggested. VM Connection State changes to RED (Powered Off) , we get emails. Right-Click your Datacenter and Add Alarm...

[dwight]

I would set up a monitor to alarm on the virtual machine heartbeat.

From the Virtual Center

1. Select the cluster from the inventory

2. Click on the Alarms tab

3. Go to the Definitions view

4. Right click anywhere in the view area and select "New Alarm..."

5. Under the General tab, Fill in the Alarm name and description to something appropriate like VM down or heartbeat lost.

6. Under the General tab, select "Virtual Machine" for the Alarm Type

7. Go to the triggers tab and click "Add"

8. Change the Trigger type to "Virtual Machine Heartbeat"

9. Go to the actions tab and add an action to email to the appropriate address.

10. Click OK

RHCE, VCP

[larbet]

Thank you guys I don't know why I didn't see that. I went to add an alarm and did not nitce that there was a drop down.

Thanks for your help.

[johnswb]

Can anyone tell me the differences between "Virtual Machine State" and Virtual Machine Heartbeat" ? I've looked in the VI client help menu and could not find anything that talked about the Heartbeat other then settings for HA. From what I understand the state is when the VM has been powered off, rebooted, etc. My guess would be no network connectivity on the VM's for the heartbeat?

[mmmather]

The virtual machine state refers to whether the vm is powered on / off / standby / etc.

This is an old document that refers to GSX but it is still valid regarding heartbeat.

http://www.vmware.com/support/gsx3/doc/manage_mui_oview_gsx.html#wp1003277

The heartbeats are sent by the VMware Tools service to the virtual machine from its guest operating system; the percentage is relative to the number of heartbeats the virtual machine expects to receive for the minute before the page was last updated. Heavily loaded guest operating systems may not send 100% of the expected heartbeats, even though the system is otherwise operating normally; in general, only when the heartbeat percentage drops to zero should the virtual machine or guest operating system be considered abnormal.

Note: If VMware Tools is not installed or is not running, the guest operating system does not send any heartbeats to its virtual machine and this meter is disabled.