The Summary tab that is associated with the other object tabs summarizes Heath, Risk, and Efficiency badge alerts for the selected object and displays the top alerts that lead to the current state.
Use this tab as an overview of alerts for an object, object group, or application - to evaluate the effect that alerts are having on an object and to begin troubleshooting problems. For more detail on the badge Alerts, click Badge Alerts, further to the right on the tool bar.
Badge Alert Types
The Health, Risk, and Efficiency badge states are based on the number and criticality of the generated alerts for the selected object.
- Health alerts indicate problems that affect the health of your environment and require immediate attention to ensure that service to your customers is not affected.
- Risk alerts indicate problems that are not immediate threats but must be addressed shortly.
- Efficiency alerts tell you where you can improve performance or reclaim resources.
Alerts for an Object or an Object Group
For a single object, the Top alerts are the alerts generated for the object. The Top Alerts for Children are the alerts generated for any child or other descendant objects in the currently selected navigation hierarchy. For example, if you are working with a host object in the vSphere Host and Clusters navigation hierarchy, children can include virtual machines and datastores.
Object groups can include one object type, such as hosts, or multiple objects types, such as hosts, virtual machines, and datastores. When you are working with object groups, all the group member objects are children of the group container. The most critical generated alerts for the member objects appear as Top Alerts for Children.
For an object group, the only Top Alerts that might be generated are the predefined group population alerts. If the average health is above the Warning, Immediate, or Critical threshold, a group population alert considers the health of all group members and is triggered. If a group population alert is generated, the alert affects the badge score and color. If a group population alert is not generated, then the badges are green. This behavior is because an object group is a container for other objects.
Summary Tab and Related Hierarchies
The alerts that appear on the Summary tab for an object can vary depending on the currently selected hierarchy in the Related Hierarchies in the left pane.
Depending on the selected hierarchy, you see different alerts and relationships on the Summary tab for an object. The current focus object name is on the center pane title bar, but the children alerts depend on the relationships that the highlighted hierarchy defined in the Related Hierarchies list in the upper left pane. For example, if you are working with a host object relative to virtual machines in the vSphere Hosts and Clusters hierarchy, then children commonly include virtual machines and datastores. But if you are working with the same host as a member of an object group, then any alerts on virtual machines that are also members of the group do not appear. The alerts do not appear because the host and the virtual machines are considered children of the group and peers among each other. In this example, the focus of the Summary tab is the host in the context of the group, not the vSphere Hosts and Clusters hierarchy.
Summary Tab Evaluation Techniques
You can evaluate the state of objects, starting with the Summary tab, by using one or more of the following techniques.
- Select an object or object group, click the alerts on the Summary tab, and resolve the problems that the alert indicates.
- Select an object, review the alerts on the tab, and select other objects, comparing the volume and types of alerts generated for different objects.
