Continuous disk space alerts for /storage/archive Guest File System in Aria Operations

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

Please view this article to understand the nature of the archive file system:
"File system /storage/archive is low on storage space" warning in vCenter Server Appliance 6.7/7.x/8.x

Symptoms:

• You are receiving the following alert for your vCenter Server Appliance's /storage/archive partition:

One or more guest file systems of the virtual machine are running out of disk space. Check the symptom details to identify the affected guest file system

Environment

VMware Aria Operations 8.x

Resolution

To exclude this file system from triggering the alert, perform the following steps.

1. Log in to Aria Operations with a user account with privileges to create symptom definitions.
2. Expand Environment, navigate to Custom Groups, and click Add to create a new Custom Group
   
    Note: Users running Aria Operations 8.18, click Operations > Configurations, and then click the Custom Groups tile. Click Add to add a new group. 
   
   
3. Give it a name, set Group Type to Environment, check the box to Keep group membership up to date. 
4. Under Define Membership Criteria, select Object Name, then Contains, and enter your vCenter Server Appliance name(s).
5. Click the Preview button to ensure the group membership has populated. Save your custom group.
6. Navigate to Configure > Alerts > Symptom Definitions.
7. Filter for Guest file system and from the ellipsis menu, make a clone of the Guest file system space usage at critical level symptom.
   • Change the name of the Symptom as desired, to identify it as a custom definition
   • Expand Advanced Settings and select the box Evaluate on instance Metrics. Doing this will allow you to exclude the archive file system.
   • Expand Guest File System on the right and then expand /storage/archive.
     Note: If /storage/archive cannot be found, click the square Select Specific Object button to select a VM known to have this metric, filtering for your vCenter Server Appliance.
   • Under the /storage/archive/ filesystem, drag the Partition Utilization (%) metric over so it appears under the list of excluded metric instances.
   • Click Save.
8. Highlight the symptom definition you just created and click Clone.
   • Change the name of the symptom as desired.
   • Change the Critical drop down to Warning.
   • Change the Numeric value to 90.
   • Click Save.
9. Navigate to Configure > Alert Definitions 
10. Filter for Guest file system and make a clone of the One or more virtual machine guest file systems are running out of disk space alert definition.
    • Change the name of the Alert as desired, to identify it as a custom definition
      Delete the two original symptoms for Guest file system space usage at critical level & Guest file system space usage at warning level.
    • Click Symptoms in the righthand pane and filter for the symptoms created in steps 3 & 4.
    • Drag the new symptoms to the right under the Self-Virtual Machine section.
    • Click Create
11. Navigate to Configure > Policies > Policy Definition.
12. Select the vSphere Solution Default Policy and click Edit Policy in the top right.
13. Click Alert/Symptoms Definitions.
14. Filter for guest file system in the Alert Definitions tab and set the State drop down to deactivated for the One or more virtual machine guest file systems are running out of disk space alert.
    Filter for the newly created/cloned Alert Definition and set the State drop down to Activated (enabled on older versions)
15. Filter for guest file system in the Symptom Definitions tab and set the State drop down to Deactivated for the Guest file system space usage at critical level & Guest file system space usage at warning level symptoms.
16. Filter for the newly created/cloned Symptom Definitions and set the State drop down of each to Activated (enabled on older versions)
17. Click Save.
18. Navigate to Configure > Policies > Policy Definition.
19. Click the Add to add a new policy.  Give it a name that identifies it as a custom policy, and tell it to inherit from the vSphere Solution Default Policy that we made changes to in earlier steps of this article
20. On the last tile, Groups and Objects, assign the policy to the custom group from step 2
21. Click Save.

Note: After creating the new policy and assigning it to your Custom Group from step 2, use the top right magnifying glass to search for, and navigate to, your vCenter(s).  In the top right, you should see the name of the policy you assigned to the VM(s). 

If you do not, and see another policy listed, navigate back to Policies and using the re-order icon on the right of the policy names, drag your new policy above the old in the hierarchy.