The Recommended Actions widget displays recommendations to solve problems in your vCenter Server instances. With recommendations, you can run actions on your data centers, clusters, hosts, and virtual machines.
How the Recommended Actions Widget and Configuration Options Work
The Recommended Actions widget appears on the Home dashboard, and displays the health status for the objects in your vCenter Server instance. At a glance, you can see how many objects are in a critical state, and how many objects need immediate attention.
From the Recommended Actions widget, you can focus in on problems further by, for example, clicking an object where the alerts triggered, and by clicking an individual alert.
You can edit the Recommended Actions widget on the Home dashboard, or on another dashboard where you add the widget. With the widget configuration options, you can assign a new name to the widget, set the refresh content, and set the refresh interval.
The Recommended Actions widget includes a selection bar, a summary pane, a toolbar for the data grid, and alert information for your objects in a data grid.
Where You Find the Recommended Actions Widget
The widget might be included on any of your custom dashboards. From the left menu, click to see your configured dashboards.
To customize the data that appears in the dashboard widget, from the left menu, click . To create your dashboard, from the left menu, click . From the Dashboards panel, click Create. To edit your dashboard, from the left menu, click . From the Dashboards panel, select the dashboard you want to edit and select . Toggle between the Views and Widgets option to view and add a widget or view to the dashboard. The widgets list panel displays a list of all the predefined widgets. Drag a widget to the dashboard workspace in the upper panel.
Recommended Actions Widget Selection Bar and Summary Pane
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Scope | Allows you to select an instance of vCenter Server, and a data center in that instance. |
| Object tabs | Displays the object types with the number of objects affected in parentheses. You can display the actions for virtual machines, host systems, clusters, vCenter Server instances, and datastores. |
| Badge | Select the Health, Risk, or Efficiency badge to display alerts on your objects. Health alerts require immediate attention. Risk alerts require attention in the immediate future. Efficiency alerts require your input to reclaim wasted space or to improve the performance of your objects. For each badge, you can view critical, immediate, and warning alerts.
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| Search filter | Narrows the scope of the objects that appear. Enter a character or a number to search and display an object. When a filter is active, the name of the filter appears below the Search filter text box. |
Recommended Actions Widget Toolbar Options
The toolbar allows you to address an alert, and to filter the alert list.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Cancel Alert | Cancels the selected alert. You cancel alerts when you do not need to address them. Canceling the alert does not cancel the underlying condition that generated the alert. Canceling alerts is effective if the alert is generated by triggered fault and event symptoms because these symptoms are triggered again only when subsequent faults or events occur on the monitored objects. If the alert is generated based on metric or property symptoms, the alert is canceled only until the next collection and analysis cycle. If the violating values are still present, the alert is generated again. |
| Suspend | Suspends an alert for a specified number of minutes. You suspend alerts when you are investigating an alert and do not want the alert to affect the health, risk, or efficiency of the object while you are working. If the problem persists after the elapsed time, the alert is reactivated and it will again affect the health, risk, or efficiency of the object. The user who suspends the alert becomes the assigned owner. |
| Quick Filter | Narrows the search to one of the available filter types. For example, you can display all alerts that are related to the Compliance Alert Subtype. |
Recommended Actions Widget Data Grid Options
The data grid displays the alerts that triggered on your objects. To resolve the problems indicated by the alerts, you can link to the alerts and the objects on which the alerts triggered.
For more information, see All Alerts and Administrative Alerts.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Criticality | Criticality is the level of importance of the alert in your environment. The alert criticality appears in a tooltip when you hover the mouse over the criticality icon. The level is based on the level assigned when the alert definition was created, or on the highest symptom criticality, if the assigned level was Symptom Based. |
| Actionable | When an alert has an associated action, you can run the action on the object to resolve the alert. |
| Suggested Fix | Describes the recommendation to resolve the problem. For example, for Compliance alerts, the recommendation instructs you to use the vSphere Hardening Guide to resolve the problem. You can find the vSphere Hardening Guides at http://www.vmware.com/security/hardening-guides.html. You can view other available recommendations and their associated actions, if any, to resolve the problem when you click the drop-down menu. |
| Name | Name of the object for which the alert was generated, and the object type, which appears in a tooltip when you hover the mouse over the object name. Click the object name to view the object details tabs where you can begin to investigate any additional problems with the object. |
| Alert | Name of the alert definition that generated the alert. Click the alert name to view the alert details tabs where you can begin troubleshooting the alert. |
| Alert Type | Describes the type of alert that triggered on the selected object, and helps you categorize the alerts so that you can assign certain types of alerts to specific system administrators. For example, Application, Virtualization/Hypervisor, Hardware, Storage, and Network. |
| Alert Subtype | Describes additional information about the type of alert that triggered on the selected object, and helps you categorize the alerts to a more detailed level than Alert Type, so that you can assign certain types of alerts to specific system administrators. For example, Availability, Performance, Capacity, Compliance, and Configuration. |
| Time | Date and time that the alert triggered. |
| Alert ID | Unique identification for the alert. This column is hidden by default. |
Recommended Actions Widget Configuration Options
On the title bar of the widget, click the Edit Widget icon to configure the widget.
The configuration options are grouped into one or more sections. You can select the objects on which you want to base the widget data and refine the objects in the following sections. Each section filters the objects further and pushes the filtered objects to the next section. The widget data is based on the objects that are the output of the last section.
The Configuration section provides general configuration options for the widget.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Title | Enter a custom title that identifies this widget from other instances that are based on the same widget template. |
| Configuration | |
| Refresh Content | Activate or deactivate the automatic refreshing of the data in this widget. If not activated, the widget is updated only when the dashboard is opened or when you click the Refresh button on the widget in the dashboard. |
| Refresh Interval | If you activate the Refresh Content option, specify how often to refresh the data in this widget. |
| Self Provider |
Indicates whether the objects for which data appears in the widget are defined in the widget or provided by another widget.
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