Alerting on vCenter Polling Status

Question

Hi all.

I'm trying to configure alerts for the vCenter Polling Status on the Virtual Center server itself. I know I can trigger an alert on node polling using the "(Now - last sync) in minutes" alert criteria, but that appears to be how vCenter polls the VM's on the hosts - I can't find how I can trigger an alert based on the vCenter Polling Status itself. The key filed I am trying to monitor is the vCenter Polling Status as shown here:

The trigger I want to implement is: If the vCenter Polling Status changes from "vCenter Polling OK" to anything else, send email / SMS / page ....

Any advice on what I need to do to get this working? What trigger event/s should I be looking for to set up this alert?

Thanks!

jsbajada · Accepted Answer

OK after finding time to have a good shot at it, got this sorted!

On the Trigger Condition, I used a Custom SQL Alert, based on the Node trigger query. The rest of the SQL is:

join VIM_PollingTasks VMPT on VMPT.NodeID = Nodes.NodeID

where VMPT.LastPollStatusMessage is not null

If everything is going well, the LastPollStatusMessage field is empty, and it only gets populated when there is a problem. The Trigger Action also makes use of the SQL code (as a custom variable) to send an email with the specific node name and updated status text if it changes away from null.