Compare Alerts and Events Over Time in Response to a Datastore Alert

To evaluate an alert over time, compare the current alert and symptoms to other alerts and symptoms, other events, other objects, and over time.

As a network operations engineer, you use the Events > Timeline tab to compare this alert to other alerts and events in your environment. This way, you can determine if you can resolve the problem of the datastore running out of disk space by applying one or more alert recommendations.

Prerequisites

Verify that you are addressing the alert for which you received an alert message in your email. See Respond to an Alert in Your Email.

Procedure

1. From the left menu, click Troubleshoot and then clickAlerts. Select the alert name in the data grid.
   The alert details appear to the right.
2. Click View Events > Timeline.
   The Timeline tab displays the generated alert and the triggered symptoms for the affected object in a scrollable timeline format, starting when the alert was generated.
3. Scroll through the timeline using the week timeline at the bottom.
4. To view events that might contribute to the alert, click Event Filters and click the check box for each event type.
   Events related to the object are added to the timeline. You add the events to your evaluation of the current state of the object and determine whether the recommendations can resolve the problem.
5. Click View From and select Host under Parents.
   Because the alert is related to disk space, adding the host to the timeline enables you to see what alerts and symptoms are generated for the host. As you scroll through the timeline, ask: when did some of the related alerts begin? When are they no longer on the timeline? What was the effect on the state of the datastore object?
6. Click View From and select Peer under Parents.
   If other datastores have alerts related to the alert you are currently investigating, seeing when the alerts for the other datastores were generated can help you determine what resource problems you are experiencing.
7. To remove canceled alerts from your timeline, click Filters and deselect the Canceled check box.
   Removing the canceled alerts and symptoms from the timeline clears the view and enables you to focus on current alerts.

What to do next

• If your evaluation of alerts in the timeline indicated that one or more of the recommendations to resolve the alert are valid, implement the recommendations. See Run a Recommendation on a Datastore to Resolve an Alert.
• If you need more information about the affected object, continue your investigation. See View the Affected Datastore in Relation to Other Objects.