How to modify alarm Reporting frequency using PowerCLI

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides PowerCLI method to customize Reporting Frequency of an alarm.

Symptoms:

Alarm actions like Email alerts/SNMP traps are not triggered for state changes within 5 minutes from initial alarm trigger

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 8.0.x

Cause

By default, vCenter alarms are configured to have a 5-minute Reporting frequency to guard against repeatedly reporting insignificant alarm transitions and actions associated with it.

There are situations where default or custom alarms to have a lesser/higher reporting frequency.

Resolution

To resovle this issue:
 

1. Connect to the vCenter server using powerCLI VI-Connect cmdlet, see Basic connecting to vCenter or a vSphere Host. 
2. To list all the alarm definitions:

Get-AlarmDefinition|format-list

3. Select an Alarm to modify using ID or Name. Here using a sample ID (Alarm-alarm-97)
4. Get the .NET view object for the alarm:

$AlarmtoUpdate=get-view -id (get-alarmDefinition -ID Alarm-alarm-97).id

5. To see the current value of Reporting Frequency parameters:

echo $AlarmtoUpdate.info.Setting

6. Copy the alarm info item to a spec variable:

$specNewAlarmInfo = $AlarmToUpdate.Info

7. modify Reporting Frequency value in the spec variable 

$specNewAlarmInfo.Setting.ReportingFrequency = <value in seconds(NOT minute) 0-3600>

8. Once the spec variable is updated, it can be written back to the alarm definition:

$AlarmtoUpdate.ReconfigureAlarm($specNewAlarmInfo)

9. To validate the changes:

$AlarmtoUpdate=get-view -id (get-alarmDefinition -ID Alarm-alarm-97).id
echo $AlarmtoUpdate.info.Setting