Fling: vSphere Alert Center

A new Fling is in town. Recently, a fling was released to fulfill the need of getting errors and critical alerts as a notification. When email exhaustion kicks in, it is not uncommon for administrators to start ignoring email alerts after receiving several thousand emails a day for transient issues.

The new fling, vSphere Alert Center is capable of retrieving alerts from not only one but many vCenter Servers simultaneously. Those alerts and errors are then presented as notifications just like a notification from applications, in a "text like" manner. This tool does not require any server resources as it is deployed on a desktop/laptop computer, whether the administrator uses a MacOS, Windows or Linux operating system.

So that is great news. No need to deploy another appliance and request IP addresses, among other deployment requirements in the datacenter. But does that mean the target device will now run out of space from all the alerts? The answer is no. The tool will retrieve these errors and alerts from one to multiple vCenters at a time. These alerts are then collected by the target device and removed once they are cleared from the vCenter(s). Retrieval intervals can be set from 1 minute up to 1 hour. This application also has tight integration with the vSphere UI, which can be opened with the embedded "Open vSphere UI" button. That is a really nice feature in my opinion, as it allows to not only quickly identify possible issues, but makes it easier to continue troubleshooting on the vSphere UI.

This tool provides administrators with an easy way to monitor vCenter errors and/or warnings without having to actively stare at the vSphere client. The credentials are stored safely on the file system in an encrypted manner. So even when all application windows are closed, the tool is still running on the background as a service, and it is accessible from the system tray. Having the flexibility to retrieve only errors, or errors and warnings, or just warnings is also a really nice feature; especially since this can be done per each vCenter added individually.

If you are interested in trying out this new fling, learn more in the flings page.

It is important to note that this tool is not meant to replace VMware products such as vRealize Operations, and Log Insight among others, but rather provide a free way for customers to receive those critical alerts and errors as a notification.