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An alarm activates when a metric passes a certain threshold. If you imagine a dashboard for your metrics, alarms are like red lights that light up when conditions change, for example, when there is a problem. 

If you would like the platform to notify you when an alarm activates, create an Alert for it in Control view. Alerts are a group of one or more alarms. They are like a worker monitoring a group of alarms; when all the lights for the group are lit up, the alert is activated. Alerts can also trigger action plans to perform automated actions when their alarms activate. After you create an alert, create an action plan in Control view with the alert as a trigger.

In Infrastructure view you can create alarms for custom metrics on infrastructure elements. You can also create alarms for built-in metrics for deployed VMs that you can access through the infrastructure path of their providers.

Screenshot: Infrastructure alarms

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This page describes how to create alarms on infrastructure metrics, including custom metrics from the API and built-in metrics on VMs deployed in the infrastructure,

To create alarms for virtual appliances and virtual datacenters, see Manage cloud alarms

You can display alarms in Infrastructure view on the Alarms tab.

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To create custom metrics for infrastructure elements, including datacenters, racks, physical machines, and VMs, use the API. See Custom metrics resources

To automatically fetch metrics for all VMs

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:

  1. Configure VM monitoring and metrics

  2. Go to Configuration view → General

  3. Set the option to Enable virtual machine monitoring by default.

Create an alarm

To create an alarm:

  1. Go to InfrastructureAlarms

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Enter the alarm details. For more details see the Alarm table below 

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The platform will create the alarm for the metric. If you would like the platform to notify you when this alarm activates, create an alert for it in the Control view. You can create multiple alerts that include multiple alarms.

To create alarms for virtual appliances and virtual datacenters go to Virtual datacentersAlarms. See Manage cloud alarms

Alarm table

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Field

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Description

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Entity type

  1. Select

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  1. a physical machine,

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  1. rack, or datacenter with custom metrics

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Entity name

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The name of the entity

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Entity label

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The label of the entity, which for VMs only is shown in the list on the left

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Name

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Name of the alarm with up to 128 characters. Alarm names must be unique for each metric

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Description

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  1. , or a VM from the hierarchy

  2. Click the + add button

  3. Enter the alarm details

    1. The Name must be unique and it can be up to 128 characters

    2. The platform will use the Description with the alarm name and if appropriate the VM name to identify the alarm, for example, when creating an alert

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Metric

    1. For the Metric select one of the available metrics. The platform fetches all metrics, even if you do not display them.

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Metric unit

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The unit of the metric. Read only

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Metric description

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The description of the metric. Read only

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Dimension

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    1. Optionally, select one or more Dimensions if the metric has multiple dimensions. For example, if a VM has multiple hard disks, then the

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    1. disk read bytes

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    1. metric may have a dimension for each disk.

    2. For Last datapoints in period

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    1. , the default value is All data points and the minimum value of the time period is 1 minute

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Statistic

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Statistic that the platform will use for evaluating the alarm, which can be: average, maximum, minimum, sum, count, dev

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Formula

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Operator that the platform will use for evaluation of the alarm, for example, greater than. Values can be: notequal, greaterthan, greaterthanorequalto, lessthan, lessthanorequalto, trendup, trenddown

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Threshold

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    1. . However, it is not useful to evaluate metrics more often than the server is obtaining them. We recommend a value of 60 minutes.

       Create an alarm from Infrastructure viewImage Added
  1. Click Save

The platform will create the alarm for the metric. If you would like the platform to notify you when this alarm activates, create an alert for it in the Control view. You can create multiple alerts that include multiple alarms.

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Edit an alarm

When you edit an alarm, you cannot modify the metric or the entity.

When you edit an alarm, there is an extra field,

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called Active

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, that shows if the alarm is activated or not.

After you save the alarm, the platform will start to evaluate it again with new data when it receives the next set of metrics datapoints.

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Delete an alarm

You can delete any alarm at any time, even if it is part of one or more alerts. The platform will not warn you that the alarm is used in an alert. However, you can check this in Control view. After you delete an alarm, you cannot recover it.

You can also remove an alarm from an alert.

Panel

Privileges: Access alarms section, Manage alarms, Manage alerts

To delete an alarm:

  1. Go to Virtual datacenters or Infrastructure →  Alarms

  2. Select the alarm and delete it by clicking on the trash bin delete button

To remove an alarm from an alert:

  1. Go to ControlAlerts → edit alert

  2. Select the alarm, click the trash bin delete button, and confirm
    The platform will remove it from this alert, but it will remain in all other alerts that it is associated with

If you delete a VM, the platform will delete any alarms associated with its metrics.

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