Manage cloud alarms
Introduction to alarms
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, then the worker takes action and activates the alert. 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.
You can create alarms for built-in VM metrics or scaling group metrics, as well as custom metrics created using the API for VMs, scaling groups, virtual appliances, and virtual datacenters.
You cannot create alarms for cloned VMs that are part of a scaling group. This is because scaling groups have aggregate alarms that are associated with the base VM.
When you create an alarm for a VM, the platform will display the alarm symbol on the VM icon.
If the alarm is activated, then the platform will highlight the alarm icon with a different color.
Display alarms in virtual datacenters
To display alarms in virtual datacenters:
Go to Virtual datacenters
Select a virtual datacenter or All virtual datacenters
Go to Alarms
Create an alarm
Before you begin:
Configure the metrics you will use in the alarm. See VM monitoring and metrics and Custom metrics resources.
As a shortcut, to create an alarm on a VM metric, you can go to the metric display and click the Create alarm symbol
To create an alarm:
Privileges: Access alarms section, Manage alarms
Go to Virtual datacenter → Alarms
Select virtual datacenter, virtual appliance, scaling group, or VM
Click the + add button
Enter the alarm details
Enter the alarm metric details, and for more information, see the Alarm UI fields table below.
Click Save
Alarm UI fields table
Field | Description |
|---|---|
Entity type | Select an entity with metrics from the list on the left. |
Entity name | The name of the entity |
Entity label | The label of the entity, which for VMs is shown in the list on the left |
Entity icon | The icon that the platform displays in the UI for VMs and virtual appliances |
Name | Name of the alarm with up to 128 characters. Alarm names must be unique for each metric |
Description | Description of the alarm. Used together with the alarm name and VM name to identify the alarm, for example, when creating an alert |
Metric | Select one of the metrics available for the VM |
Metric unit | The unit of the metric. Read only |
Metric description | The description of the metric. Read only |
Dimension | When the metric has multiple dimensions, optionally select one or more dimensions. |
Last datapoints in period | The number of datapoints that the platform will evaluate for the metric during the elapsed time. If you request the evaluation of an alarm more frequently than We recommend that you create alarms with longer evaluation periods, for example, |
Statistic | Statistic that the platform will use for evaluating the alarm, which can be: average, maximum, minimum, sum, count, dev |
Formula | Operator that the platform will use for evaluation of the alarm, such as, |
Threshold | Value that the platform will evaluate the alarm against, if appropriate |
The platform will create the alarm for the metric. If you would like the platform to notify you when an alarm is triggered, create an Alert.
Troubleshooting alarms that do not trigger
The minimum value of the time period to evaluate alarms is 1 minute, but the platform collects metrics data every 2 minutes by default. The administrator can also configure the time for each hypervisor or provider.
For the default configuration, to ensure that an alarm will activate, you should set the alarm to evaluate every 2 minutes as a minimum.
In addition, each provider sends metrics at different intervals, for example, with Amazon Basic monitoring, data is sent every 5 minutes, and with Advanced monitoring, every minute. In contrast, for vCloud, data is available on consultation.
For a scaling group, an alarm on a metric of the VM in the base workload will receive input from the metrics of all VMs in the scaling group. This means the base workload and/or the clone VMs. So an alarm for a scaling group can activate, even if the base workload is not deployed.
For API documentation about alarms on an entity, see the API documentation for the entity's resource. For example, for VMs, see VirtualMachinesResource.
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, "Active", 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.
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.
To delete an alarm:
Go to Virtual datacenters or Infrastructure → Alarms
Select the alarm and delete it by clicking on the trash bin delete button
To remove an alarm from an alert:
Go to Control → Alerts → edit alert
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.
Pages related to cloud alarms
Main VM configuration page Configure virtual machines
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