How to Create an Alarm Notifying About New Snapshots

This example shows how to create a task-based alarm that notifies about VM snapshots. The example is based on the following scenario:

Users in your organization often forget to delete snapshots they do not use. And according to the organization policy, there must be no more than 3 snapshots for a VM. You want Veeam ONE Monitor to notify the administrator each time a user creates a snapshot on a VM that already has 3 and more snapshots. However, you need to exclude VMs that are used for testing: these VMs can have more than 3 snapshots.

To create an alarm that will notify you on new snapshots, follow these steps:

1. At the bottom of the inventory pane, click Infrastructure View.
2. In the inventory pane, right-click any VMware VM for which a snapshot has been created.
3. In the information pane, open the Tasks & Events tab.
4. Search for an event with the following parameters:

• Type: Info
• Description: Create virtual machine snapshot
• Event name: TaskEvent

5. Right-click this event in the list, select Add this event to the existing alarm and choose Virtual Machine.

6. In the Select Alarms window, search for the alarm Too many snapshots on the VM. Select this alarm in the list and click Add.

7. In the Alarm settings window, open the Rules tab. This tab shows two rules: a predefined rule (VM snapshots count) and a new rule (Event).

8. For the VM snapshot count rule, change the following settings:

1. In the Warning, snapshots number field, specify ‘2’.
2. In the Error, snapshots number field, specify ‘3’.

9. For the new event-based rule, specify the following settings:

1. In the Event text field, replace the asterisk (*) symbol with the following text: create virtual machine snapshot.
2. In the Severity field, specify Warning.
3. In the Ignore after field, specify ‘0’.

10. Select the check boxes for both rules and click Link on the right.

11. In the Rule condition window, specify the And condition and click Apply.

12. In the Alarm settings window, open the Assignment tab and do the following:

1. In the Assignment for alarm section, click Add and select Infrastructure tree.
2. Select a node to which the alarm must be assigned. This can be a host or virtual infrastructure server.
3. Click Assign.

13. On the Assignment tab, do the following:

1. In the Excluded objects section, click Add and select Infrastructure tree.
2. Select check boxes for objects to exclude from this alarm.

In this example, we exclude VMs used for testing purposes.

3. Click Exclude.

14. Open the Actions pane and do the following:

1. Select the default action (Send notifications to default group) and click Remove.
2. Click Add.
3. From the Actions list, select Send email notification.
4. In the Value filed, enter email address of the virtual infrastructure administrator who should receive alarm notifications: admin@veeam.com.
5. From the Conditions list, select Errors only.

15. Click Save.

Result

• Each time a user creates the 2-nd snapshot on a VM, Veeam ONE Monitor will fire a Warning alarm.
• If a user creates the 3-rd snapshot, Veeam ONE Monitor will fire an Error alarm and will notify the administrator about the excessive number of snapshots on a VM.