Actions explained

An action is an operation that will be perfomed in response to the alarm trigger. There are nine alarm type monitor options in vSphere:

  • Virtual Machines
  • Hosts
  • Clusters
  • Datacenters
  • Datastores
  • Distributed Switches
  • Distributed Port Groups
  • Datastore Clusters
  • vCenter Server

Each alarm type has three types of actions in common:

  • Send a notification email – informs you of the condition by email.
  • Send a notification trap – informs you of the condition by Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) trap.
  • Run a command – runs a script in order to correct the problem the object is experiencing.

The Host alarm type has the following additional types of actions:

  • Enter maintenance mode
  • Exit maintenance mode
  • Enter standby
  • Exit standby
  • Reboot host
  • Shutdown host

The Virtual Machine alarm type has the following additional types of actions:

  • Power on VM
  • Power off VM
  • Suspend VM
  • Reset VM
  • Migrate VM

The alarms can be set to trigger when the state changes:

  • Normal → Warning
  • Warning → Critical
  • Critical → Warning
  • Warning → Normal

The states listed above are denoted by colors and shapes in the Actions tab of the New Alarm Definition wizard:

actions colors shapes

As you can see from the picture above, a green circle represents the Normal state, a yellow triangle the Warning state, and a red diamond represents the Critical state.

An option can be specified for each color transition:

  • If nothing is present, no action will be taken in the transition.
  • Once means that the action will be taken only once.
  • Repeat means that the action will be repeated until another color change occurs, every 5 minutes by default.
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