Configure vCenter alarms for "VMFS heartbeat timeout" VMkernel Observations(VOB) message

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

When ESXi detects a datastore heartbeat timeout, an event is reported in the vobd.log.

Example:

--/var/run/log/vobd.log

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS In(14) vobd[2097763]:  [vmfsCorrelator] 614045975024us: [esx.problem.vmfs.heartbeat.timedout] ########-########-####-############ Test_Datastore

Environment

VMware vSphere (All Versions)

Resolution

Follow the below steps to configure the Alarm in vCenter UI:

1. Navigate to vCenter Server -> Configure -> Alarm Definitions

2. Click Add

3. Input alarm name "VMFS volume connectivity degraded" or "VMFS heartbeatbeat timeout".

4. Choose the "Target type" as Hosts and click Next

5. In the "Alarm Rule1" page, Input "esx.problem.vmfs.heartbeat.timedout" and press enter two times to accept the event definition.

6. Select severity as "Show as Critical"

7. Optionally, you can configure email notification or SNMP traps or running any script whenever such alarm is triggered
   
   

8. Click Next

9. In the Review page, verify if the alarm rules is set correctly and make sure the "Enable this alarm" option is enabled.

10. Click CREATE.

Additional Information

Understanding lost access to volume messages in ESXi

With vCenter 8.0U3 and earlier
    DO NOT use the "VMFS Volume Connectivity Degraded" from the list as the trigger condition, there are two alarms defined with this name and one is a legacy rule, this will lead to bad rules being created.