AlarmVM is used by VMware Administrators to detect problems in the VMware environment and proactively notify administrators. alarmVM is a 24/7 alarm monitoring tool that detects problems in VMware objects, including VMs, hosts, clusters, datastores and vCenter Servers. When alarm conditions are detected, alarmVM notifies VMware Administrators via email and/or SNMP trap.
Key Benefits:
- alarmVM can be installed and set up to monitor a VMware environment in less than 20 minutes.
- It automatically activates out-of-the-box alarms so an entire VMware environment is being monitored simply by registering a vCenter Server.
- By default, alarmVM notifies all configured contacts about each alarm, eliminating the need to set up contacts for each alarm.
- Using inheritable alarm policies, it is easy to change default alarm behavior on entire sets of vSphere objects (e.g. all VMs in a datacenter or all VMs in a folder).
- A 30 day history of alarms is kept, so you can see what happened in the past. During this period, alarmVM shows graphs for metric-based alarms with the underlying detailed data that would not be available in vSphere Client.
- alarmVM shows how alarms are trending so you can see if trouble is easing or mounting in your VMware environment.
alarmVM consists of a multi-tiered architecture consisting of an alarmVM Server, Web Clients, a Repository database and Monitored vSphere Servers.
- alarmVM: The alarmVM Server performs two key functions. First, it collects data from the monitored VMware servers. Second, it presents web pages to alarmVM users and sends notifications (emails and SNMP traps) when alarm conditions are detected. It is installed on a server that has network access to the Repository and each of the monitored servers. Although this process performs many functions, it appears as a single process on the operating system.
- alarmVM Repository: The Repository database instance is accessed by the alarmVM Server, and holds all of the collected alarm information. A default Repository is installed with alarmVM, but alarmVM can be configured to use another database instance for the Repository.
- Monitored Servers: alarmVM’s agentless monitors remotely connect to each VMware vCenter Server or ESX/ESXi host and cause less than 1% overhead on the monitored systems. No software is installed in the vCenter Server, ESX/ESXi host or Virtual Machines. A vSphere user (aka monitoring user) with administrator privileges is needed for monitoring.
- Web Browsers: alarmVM users view alarm data in a web browser. From this interface, users register VMware servers, configure alarms and contacts for alarm notification.
