Knowledge Base

Create a Rule to Receive Notifications When an Alert Occurs

You can create a rule to select the alerts that trigger alert notifications, provide the email addresses to which vCenter Operations Manager sends these notifications, and select specific objects or alert criticality levels that can trigger alert notifications.

1. Click the Notifications link at the upper right of the main vCenter Operations Manager page.
2. In the Notifications dialog box, click the Add Rule icon to add a new notification rule.
3. Type a rule name.
4. Type the email addresses that must receive the notifications.
   Use semicolons to separate multiple addresses and do not leave blank spaces between email addresses. For example, type abc@maildomain.com;cde@maildomain.com;yuv@maildomain2.com, and so on.
5. Select the alert types and sub-types that trigger the notification.
   Note: Because vCenter Operations Manager does not generate alerts for threshold violations of the top-level badges, you cannot configure a rule to send notifications for the Health, Risk, or Efficiency badge. Alert notifications are set at the sub-badge level. Similarly, you must specify the sub-types of Administrative alerts that trigger alert notifications.
6. (Optional) To filter notifications based on alert criticality, select the criticality levels that trigger the notification.
7. (Optional) To activate notifications for a specific object, start typing the name of this object in the Object Name text box.
   vCenter Operations Manager lists all objects that match the name you specify, so you can select an object from the list.
   Note:
   • For rules that contain administrative alert triggers, if you specify objects that trigger the notification, vCenter Operations Manager does not send alert notifications for administrative alerts that are not related to the specified objects. For example, vCenter Operations Manager does not send alerts related to analytics, collector service, active MQ, web resources, and so on.
   • For rules that contain badge threshold alert triggers, if you do not select a specific object, vCenter Operations Manager sends alerts notifications for all objects in the inventory.
8. (Optional) To activate notifications for child objects of a selected object, specify the name of the object in the Object Name text box, and select the child objects for which you want to enable notifications.
   • To activate notifications for all child objects, select the Include Children check box.
   • To activate notifications for specific child object types, select the Include Children check box, and select the check boxes that correspond to the object types.
9. Click OK to save the rule.

Example: Create a badge threshold rule to enable notifications for an object called Production-Cluster and all virtual machine objects that belong to this cluster

1. In the Add Rule dialog box, type a name for the rule, and specify at least one email address.
2. Start typing Production-Cluster in the Object Name field.
   vCenter Operations Manager lists all objects that match the text that you type.
3. Select Production-Cluster from the list.
4. Select the Include Children check box to enable notifications for child objects.
5. Select the VM check box to enable only notifications related to virtual machine objects.
6. Click OK to save the rule.

Modify an Alert Notification Rule

1. Click the Notifications link on the main vCenter Operations Manager page.
2. In the Notifications dialog box, select the rule that you want to modify, and click the Edit Rule icon.
3. Modify the rule and click OK to save your changes.

Delete an Alert Notification Rule

1. Click the Notifications link on the main vCenter Operations Manager page.
2. In the Notifications dialog box, select the rule that you want to delete, and click the Delete Rule icon.
3. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.

Notifications Backup

• The SMTP/SNMP configuration on the Administration portal is incorrect. For example, you might have provided an incorrect IP address or port number for the SMTP server.
• The email server fails.
• The network connection fails.