Configuring Alarms on Vcenter

[thewisedude]

I am trying to configure an alarm with the goal of notifying myself when there is a VM migration. So I start out by creating an Alarm for the datacenter.

On the General Tab

I have chosen the option to Monitor Virtual Machines for specific Events

On the Triggers Tab

I have chosen the Event as 'VM migrated' and the status is 'Unset'  with no conditions set.

On the Action Tab

This is where I am confused. I have chosen action as "send a notification trap". Configuraton is blank. However, there are four other columns[Normal->Warning, Warning-> Alert, Alert-> Warning, Warning->Normal] and atleast one of them needs to be set. What does this mean? Does that mean that the notification is sent only if the VM's state change matches the column(s) that I have selected?  Or does it mean that the occurence of the event is going to change the state of the VM based on which column was chosen? From the picture that is attached, can you tell me what is going to happen?

My goal again is to just be notified of a migration only.

[bobbygedwards]

You only need to use the default Once in the "Warning to Alert" column.  This will trigger whatever action you have selected when the virtual machine is migrated. 

In the picture you have attached only one event will be triggered.  So you will only be alerted once that the VM has been migrated.

[nielse]

Keep in mind that you have to configure a trap target if you want to work with the notification trap.

If you just started with alerts you might want to start with sending e-mails first to learn the way they look / are.

[thewisedude]

Thanks for the response. I am still confused about what those various states mean (Normal, Warning, Alert). When I choose "once" for the state (Warning to Normal)? I still get the SNMP trap. I get the SNMP trap no matter what state transition I have chosen. So I am trying to understand how it works?

[MauroBonder]

For more information about the settings related to alarms, see Working with Alarms in:

• vSphere 4.0 Update 1 Basic System Administration Guide
  
• vSphere 4.0 Basic System Administration Guide
  

[thewisedude]

Frankly, my question is very specific, so I would appreciate a specific response. Also, I went through this document before posting on this website. The document does not say, what those state transitions mean or what they indicate! There are 4 state transitions, what does it mean, if I pick "ONCE" on one of them as opposed to another.