How to handle ERROR messages in the Solarwinds Collector log regarding VM alarms?

Question

Our Collector.Service.logs is flooded with messages like the following

Parent entity VMVC:32 is missing for entity VMAL:3554637

From what I've gathered VMVC is VCenter and VMAL is an alarm. I don't see any way to view the alarms in the web console and thus don't know how to fix what looks like a broken relationship between alarma and vCenter. There are hundreds of these messages each minute so it makes it hard to gain actualy information in the Collector logs. I also don't know if this is an actual issue or if I can ignore these.

I've confirmed the all the vCenter IDs in the messages exist and are being monitored successfully. Any help is appreciated.

mugbukdotcom · Answer

Thank you for the response Jeremy. Do you have any details on how to force a full vCenter resync and clear stale alarm data? I don't see anything online when I search for that.

jeremymayfield · Answer

The Parent entity VMVC:x is missing for entity VMAL:x messages are orphaned VM alarm relationship errors generated when VMAN's internal topology cache cannot resolve the parent vCenter entity for a discovered alarm object.

While the vCenter nodes themselves are healthy and monitored, the alarm relationship table is out of sync. This is predominantly a data integrity / cache issue, not a live infrastructure fault but the log flood must be resolved to restore Collector log utility.

Force a Full vCenter Resync, then clear the stale alarm data in the VMAN DB.  Restart the collector service after cleanup.