An alert definition comprises one or more symptom definitions, and the alert definition is associated with a set of recommendations and actions that help you resolve the problem. Alert definitions include triggering symptom definitions and actionable recommendations. You create the alert definitions so that the generated alerts tell you about problems in the monitored environment. You can then respond to the alerts with effective solutions that are provided in the recommendations.
Predefined alerts are provided in vRealize Operations as part of your configured adapters. You can add or modify alert definitions to reflect the needs of your environment.
Symptoms in Alert Definitions
Symptom definitions evaluate conditions in your environment that, if the conditions become true, trigger a symptom and can result in a generated alert. You can add symptom definitions that are based on metrics or super metrics, properties, message events, fault events, or metric events. You can create a symptom definition as you create an alert definition or as an individual item in the appropriate symptom definition list.
When you add a symptom definition to an alert definition, it becomes a part of a symptom set. A symptom set is the combination of the defined symptom with the argument that determines when the symptom condition becomes true.
A symptom set combines one or more symptom definitions by applying an Any or All condition, and allows you to choose the presence or absence of a particular symptom. If the symptom set pertains to related objects rather than to Self, you can apply a population clause to identify a percentage or a specific count of related objects that exhibit the included symptom definitions.
An alert definition comprises one or more symptom sets. If an alert definition requires all of the symptom sets to be triggered before generating an alert, and only one symptom set is triggered, an alert is not generated. If the alert definition requires only one of several symptom sets to be triggered, then the alert is generated even though the other symptom sets were not triggered.
Recommendations in Alert Definitions
Recommendations are the remediation options that you provide to your users to resolve the problems that the generated alert indicates.
When you add an alert definition that indicates a problem with objects in your monitored environment, add a relevant recommendation. Recommendations can be instructions to your users, links to other information or instruction sources, or vRealize Operations actions that run on the target systems.
Modifying Alert Definitions
If you modify the alert impact type of an alert definition, any alerts that are already generated will have the previous impact level. Any new alerts will be at the new impact level. If you want to reset all the generated alerts to the new level, cancel the old alerts. If they are generated after cancellation, they will have the new impact level.
