Have you ever gone through your vCenter and configured alarms to email?  If you have, you know that if anything ever screamed for automation within vSphere, it’s this, as it is extremely tedious.  You really want to use a PowerCLI script to masnage vCenter alarm email actions!

For one, the action must be set individually on each alarm. On top of that, you configure each alarm with the email address(es) you want  to be sent alerts.  You can also set repeated email actions on each alarm.  While this provides granularity and customization opportunities, it creates a boring snoozefest, inviting confusion and human error in configuring them.  Plus, vCenter contains many alerts, and many people do not know which ones you should configure for emails, and how critical each one is.

Introduction to PowerCLI Script to Configure vCenter Alarm Email Actions

I found a good script about a year ago to do this with PowerCLI script using a CSV of the alarms.  I cannot seem to find who made it now.  If you stumble on this and know who originally made the similar script, please comment below.  I very much want people recognized for their hard work.

Not to simply take the script, I added additional functionality to it, to provide end to end configuration, including vCenter SMTP email server settings, as well as the ability to configure multiple vCenter servers in one fell swoop.  Also, I really love the design of this script for several reasons:

• Simplicity rules this script.  Even if you want the script to do something else, it’s easy to follow and adapt.
• One can easily adapt the script to new versions of vSphere.  Each version of vSphere adds, removes, or changes alarms.  I can easily dump those alarm names into a new CSV and set their values.
• It provides a three-tiered priority system for email frequency.   Don’t like them?  It’s easy to change them within the script.
• Ongoing maintenance of the alerts is a snap.  Change the values within the script, and simply rerun it.
• The CSV file provides an opportunity to track changes to alerts and a deliverable document.  I intend also to maintain the CSV files here as I receive feedback on the alarms.

Ready to use a PowerCLI script to configure vCenter alarm email actions?

Directions for PowerCLI Script to Configure vCenter Alarm Email Actions

This PowerCLI script to configure vCenter alarm email actions is very straight forward.  You simply set the variables at the beginning of the script, which includes info such as vCenter servers, the CSV file to be used, vCenter user name and password, the SMTP server and port to use, etc.

Next, set the values within the CSV according to how you want that alert configured within the Priority column.  The values are as follows :

• Low Priority – Removal of all email alert actions, and reconfigured to send one email without repeat emails for non-critical alerts.
• Medium Priority – Removal of all email alert actions, and reconfigured to send one repeated email daily for more serious alerts.
• High Priority – Removal of all email alert actions, and reconfigured to send one repeated email every four hours for more serious alerts.  (I originally set this to hourly, but customer feedback said this was far too much.)
• Disabled – Removal of all email alert actions.  Use this on alerts that are far too chatty (looking at you VM CPU and memory usage!), and you wish to turn emails for them off.
• Blank (aka no value) – Leave the alarm as is in case you manually configured the alert and wish to keep it that way.

$vcenterservers = "vcenter1.vs6lab.local","vcenter2.vs6lab.local"
$vcenterusername = 'administrator@vsphere.local'
$vcenteruserpwd = 'P@ssw0rd'
$alarmfile = import-csv c:\scripts\vsphere60-alarms.csv
$AlertEmailRecipients = @("email1@domain.com","email2@domain.com")
$SMTPServer = "FQDNorIP.domain.com"
$SMTPPort = "25"
$SMTPSendingAddress = "sender@domain.com"

#Import PowerCLI module
import-module -name VMware.PowerCLI

#----These Alarms will be disabled and not send any email messages at all ----
$DisabledAlarms = $alarmfile | where-object priority -EQ "Disabled"

#----These Alarms will send a single email message and not repeat ----
$LowPriorityAlarms = $alarmfile | where-object priority -EQ "low"

#----These Alarms will repeat every 24 hours----
$MediumPriorityAlarms = $alarmfile | where-object priority -EQ "medium"

#----These Alarms will repeat every 4 hours----
$HighPriorityAlarms = $alarmfile | where-object priority -EQ "high"

foreach ($vcenterserver in $vcenterservers){
Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$False
Connect-VIserver $vcenterserver -User $vcenterusername -Password $vcenteruserpwd
Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vcenterserver -Name mail.smtp.server | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value $SMTPServer -Confirm:$false
Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vcenterserver -Name mail.smtp.port | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value $SMTPPort -Confirm:$false
Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vcenterserver -Name mail.sender | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value $SMTPSendingAddress -Confirm:$false

#---Disable Alarm Action for Disabled Alarms---
Foreach ($DisabledAlarm in $DisabledAlarms) {
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $DisabledAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail| Remove-AlarmAction -Confirm:$false
}

#---Set Alarm Action for Low Priority Alarms---
Foreach ($LowPriorityAlarm in $LowPriorityAlarms) {
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $LowPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail| Remove-AlarmAction -Confirm:$false
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $LowPriorityAlarm.name | New-AlarmAction -Email -To @($AlertEmailRecipients)
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $LowPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Green" -EndStatus "Yellow"
#Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $LowPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Yellow" -EndStatus "Red" # This ActionTrigger is enabled by default.
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $LowPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Red" -EndStatus "Yellow"
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $LowPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Yellow" -EndStatus "Green"
}

#---Set Alarm Action for Medium Priority Alarms---
Foreach ($MediumPriorityAlarm in $MediumPriorityAlarms) {
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $MediumPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail| Remove-AlarmAction -Confirm:$false
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $MediumPriorityAlarm.name | Set-AlarmDefinition -ActionRepeatMinutes (60 * 24) # 24 Hours
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $MediumPriorityAlarm.name | New-AlarmAction -Email -To @($AlertEmailRecipients)
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $MediumPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Green" -EndStatus "Yellow"
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $MediumPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | Get-AlarmActionTrigger | Select -First 1 | Remove-AlarmActionTrigger -Confirm:$false
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $MediumPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Yellow" -EndStatus "Red" -Repeat
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $MediumPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Red" -EndStatus "Yellow"
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $MediumPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Yellow" -EndStatus "Green"
}

#---Set Alarm Action for High Priority Alarms---
Foreach ($HighPriorityAlarm in $HighPriorityAlarms) {
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $HighPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail| Remove-AlarmAction -Confirm:$false
Get-AlarmDefinition -name $HighPriorityAlarm.name | Set-AlarmDefinition -ActionRepeatMinutes (60 * 4) # 4 hours
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $HighPriorityAlarm.name | New-AlarmAction -Email -To @($AlertEmailRecipients)
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $HighPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Green" -EndStatus "Yellow"
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $HighPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | Get-AlarmActionTrigger | Select -First 1 | Remove-AlarmActionTrigger -Confirm:$false
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $HighPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Yellow" -EndStatus "Red" -Repeat
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $HighPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Red" -EndStatus "Yellow"
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $HighPriorityAlarm.name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Yellow" -EndStatus "Green"
}
}

File downloads:

PowerCLI script to configure vCenter alarm email actions

Recommended alarm configurations for vSphere 5.5

Recommended alarm configurations for vSphere 6.0

Recommended alarm configurations for vSphere 6.5

These CSV files include the alarms for each version, what I’ve found with customer feedback so far as the best values for each one, a notes field that has any relevant info that may help you decide how to configure each one, and an IfUsed column for each one I’ve set to disabled if you want to enable it what I would recommend.

When to Run PowerCLI Script to Configure vCenter Alarm Email Actions

I designed the PowerCLI script to configure vCenter alarm email actions not just for initial configurations, but also to set any changes that are made.  That’s why the script removes any email alarm actions for Low, Medium, High, and Disabled.  If you wish for the script to not change an alarm’s configuration, leave the Priority column blank for the alarm.

This way, you will have a current documented configuration of alarms that you can simply update and run the script again.p

One of the least used features in vSphere that I think almost all admins could really make use of but don’t is the ability to create custom vSphere tags within vSphere.

I wanted to take the time to point this feature out, and perhaps give people some ideas on how to make use of of them.  This can help with management and automation quite a bit.

What are vSphere Tags?

vSphere Tags are effectively custom metadata type info that can be applied to objects within vCenter.  You get to make your own to fit your own needs.  They assist basically with locating objects for more efficient administration and management.

They’re unique to other things such as folders for your VMs in that you can assign multiple tags to the same VM or other objects.

Let’s break this down by comparing vSphere tags to MP3 management software like iTunes.  An individual MP3 file must be in one file system folder or another.  It can’t be in both.  But suppose you want to find all your songs by an artist, by genre, or by album?  We intuitively understand this now with MP3s.

But we have the same problem with VMs.  You can organize your VMs into VM folders in vCenter, but a single VM can only be in one folder or another.  What if you wanted to organize your VMs by criticality?  By whether or not they have SQL?  Whether or not they need to be backed up?  Trying to do this with folders would be a nightmare to manage.  Plus, remember a VM folder is the mechanism for assigning permissions, too.  Maybe you don’t want this metadata having any impacts on anyone’s permissions to manage it.

That’s when you use vSphere tags!

Use Cases for vSphere Tags

Use cases for this functionality are numerous:

• Criticality of VM – this would allow the expedited power up or down of VMs based on this nature.  Running out of resources within your cluster due to sudden host failures?  Power down the non-critical VMs.  It would also be helpful for vSphere Admins who aren’t the application admins to know when to handle a VM with care before doing anything to it.
• Application groupings – Maybe it doesn’t make sense to put VMs that work together to provide an application or service, but you want to know those groups.  That could allow a SQL server that serves the backend of multiple application groups to be identified for both simultaneously.
• Presence of a common application like SQL – This can be helpful for locating VMs that may require special settings on backup jobs to quiesce the file system before backing the VM up.  You might also use this to find potential VMs that other VMs are dependent on, so you can set their restart priority so they boot up first in an HA event scenario.
• Lab/Test VMs – You could set the resource allocation for Lab/Test VMs to low to help ensure they are given less resources than production VMs.

OK, I convinced you (hopefully)!   Let’s make some tags.

Basic Concepts for vSphere Tags You Need To Know

You can create vSphere tags in both within the vSphere Web Client and with PowerCLI.  It’s simple, but you need to know a few concepts.

All vSphere tags belong to a Category.  There are two main types of categories.  This notion is called Cardinality.  It sounds more complicated than it is.  Basically, you can have a category where only a single tag from that category can be applied to any given object.  For example, let’s say you want to tag VMs by criticality.  Logically, a VM will only have one criticality rating, not multiple.  IE, it makes zero since for a VM to be both low and medium as far as how critical they are.

However, sometimes you might want a category that multiple tags could apply to the same object.  For example, let’s say you want to make a category called “Special Applications” to identify very specific apps within a VM to easily identify SQL servers, Domain Controllers, and Exchange servers.  While I wouldn’t recommend it, it’s possible for a single VM to be all three simultaneously.

vSphere tags can apply to all kinds of objects as well, not just VMs.  You can select which objects a tag can be applied to within the category.

Managing vSphere Tags Using the Web Client

To create tags within the vSphere client, navigate to the Tags section of the web client.

You must create a category first if there isn’t one already made.  Click the Categories button, and then click the create categories icon.

For this example, we will make a category for criticality ratings for VMs.  We want one tag per object, not more, and we only want the tag to be applied to VMs or vApps.

Now that we have our category, we can create tags within it.  Click on Tags, and the new tag icon.  Be sure to select the category during tag creation.

Rinse and repeat for all the tags you want to create for the category.  One tip I recommend is to name the tags with incuding their category name, which refers to some kind of concept.  Since you usually search by the tag name, you want for example LowCriticality instead of Low.  (See below for search examples.) Low in and of itself could mean a lot of things.  Low resource usage, low criticality, etc.

To apply a tag to an object, simply right click the object, point to Tags & Custom Attributes > Assign Tag…

A new dialog box appears where you can filter categories or see all categories and select the vSphere tags you wish to assign.  Also, notice you can remove tags here, too.

Managing vSphere Tags Using PowerCLI

PowerCLI has full tag management functionality within it, too.

Creating a category:

New-TagCategory -Name VMCriticality -Description "Criticality of the VM" -Cardinality Single -EntityType "VirtualMachine","VApp"

Creating a tag:

New-Tag -Name "LowCriticality" -Description "Non-Critical VMs" -Category VMCriticality

Assigning a tag to a VM:

get-vm Shoretel | New-TagAssignment -Tag "HighCriticality"

You can do lots of things with PowerCLI and tags.

Using vSphere Tags

Now that you have tags created and applied, you can now make use of them to make your life easier.

You can make use of tags in both the vSphere Web Client and via PowerCLI.  To find all VMs with a tag within the vSphere Web Client, simply type the tag value in the search box.  The tag name will automatically populate.

Click on it.  Boom, you got your objects with that tag!

There’s also a parameter on PowerCLI’s Get-VM cmdlet to identify the VMs with that tag.  You can then pipe that to another cmdlet.  Say for example you want to shutdown your non-critical VMs because you suddenly experience multiple host failures, so you need to make sure your more important VMs get the resources they need:

Get-VM –Tag “LowCriticality” | Shutdown-VMGuest

Imagine if you set up vSphere tags to identity all your VMs with SQL.  Imagine you’re setting up Veeam backup jobs, and you need to know which VMs you need to setup special quiescing.  You could easily just get that list of VMs.

That’s how to use vSphere tags!

How do you think you might be able to use them, or how do you use them within your environment?

Let’s face it. Starting and stopping SSH in ESXi is pain through GUI methods.  I often as a consultant need to connect via SSH to hosts to run data collect scripts, assess NIC and HBA firmware and driver versions, and for troubleshooting purposes, like to run esxtop.  The good news is you can manage ESXi SSH Using PowerCLI.  How cool is that?

Just remember to use get-vmhost to narrow down the specific hosts you want to execute the following commands.

Get the current status of ESXi SSH Using PowerCLI

get-vmhost  hostname | get-vmhostservice | where-object {$_.key -eq "TSM-SSH"} | select-object vmhost,policy,running

Policy is the start up mode.

• Automatic = Start automatically if any ports are open, and stop when all ports are closed
• On = Start and stop with host
• Off = Start and stop manually

Start ESXi SSH Using PowerCLI

get-vmhost hostname | get-vmhostservice | where-object {$_.key -eq "TSM-SSH"} | start-vmhostservice -confirm:$false

Note the confirm switch.  If you don’t specify that, it will prompt you.

Stop ESXi SSH Using PowerCLI

get-vmhost hostname | get-vmhostservice | where-object {$_.key -eq "TSM-SSH"} | start-vmhostservice -confirm:$false

Note the confirm switch.  If you don’t specify that, it will prompt you.

Set startup policy for ESXi SSH Using PowerCLI to start and stop with host

get-vmhost hostname | get-vmhostservice | where-object {$_.key -eq "TSM-SSH"} | set-vmhostservice -policy "Off"

Be careful if you have any third party products that use SSH.  Nutanix for example comes to mind.  If you goofed and need it set to start and stop with host, just use “On” for the policy parameter.