Everything you need to know about Maintenance Windows in VMware Aria Operations for Applications

With the recent release of the VMware Aria Operations for Applications product we have made some improvements to Maintenance Windows. Maintenance windows that are refined by point tags, sources, or source tags no longer apply to alerts in the NO DATA state. So how does this affect you the user? If you have alerts that are in NO DATA state but they satisfy the criteria of the Maintenance Window , they will not be affected by the Maintenance Window settings.

So now that we know what’s new, let’s look at Maintenance Windows in VMware Aria Operations for Applications…

What are Maintenance Windows?

Maintenance windows are periods of time where it prevents the application (in this case VMWare Aria Operations for Applications) alerts from firing. The most common use case for them, is for example, when disruptive operations occur as a result of system maintenance, upgrades, or testing.

Some other uses of Maintenance Windows are:

• Create a maintenance window to prevent alerts from firing. You can target the maintenance window only to certain sources, alert tags, point tags, etc.
• Close (end) maintenance windows early or make them longer.
• Selectively extend some or all maintenance windows.
• Send alert notifications to an alternate alert target during the maintenance window.

To create and manage maintenance windows, you can select Alerting > Maintenance Windows.

Creating a Maintenance Window

Creating a maintenance window consists of three simple steps:

1. Specify the required information, including a description and start and end dates.
2. Narrow down the scope. By default, no alerts fire during the maintenance window. However, you can target only specific alerts, for example, alerts for specific sources or environments that will be in maintenance.
3. Optionally, you can specify one or more alternate alert targets (topic for another post here). By default, no notifications are sent during a maintenance window.

Narrow Down the Scope

A maintenance window by nature of its being stops all alerts during the specified time. Usually, you’ll want to stop alerts only from a specific set of sources, or in a certain availability zone or environment. As an example, you could specify a set of hosts that you expect to take down or decide not to alert for a certain point tag (e.g. env=dev). You could also specify a set of sources with a certain source tag, for example, if you know that an availability zone will be temporarily offline.

So in order to narrow down the scope of your Maintenance Window you can specify one or more of the following:

• Alert Tags: Type one or more alert tag names to suppress any alert that has one or more specified alert tags. All alerts are included if you don’t specify any alert tags.
• Point Tags: Suppress any alert that has the specified alert tags and one or more specified point tags. For example: “dev”.
• Sources: Type one or more source names to suppress any alert on a source that has a matching source. For example: “app-14”.
• Source Tags: Type one or more source tag names to suppress any alert on a source that has a matching source tag.

Specify Alternate Alert Targets

By default, no alert notifications are sent during a maintenance window that match the specifics of the maintenance window. The alert is mute. You can instead specify alternate alert targets to notify your users during the maintenance window. Note that this is optional and not a requirement for setting up a Maintenance Window.

Note:

• You can also extend the duration of a maintenance window if required.
• Or you can close the window preemptively to enable alerts before the window is scheduled to finish.

Let’s Take a Look at an Example of a Maintenance Window:

In this scenario, you have a group of alerts that are used primarily as demo samples. These alerts have alert tag paths such as sample.latency.dev, sample.latency.prod, sample.network.dev, sample.network.prod, and so on.

To suppress the sample alerts, you can create a maintenance window as explained above, and fill in Affected Alerts and Sources according to your use case:

• To suppress all of the alerts from firing on any source having a tag starting with ‘sample’:
  • In Affected Alert Tags, specify the tag path sample.*.
• To suppress just the sample latency alerts from firing either a specific source that has the source tag EastCoastSources, or on the source named app-1:
  • In Affected Alert Tags, specify the tag path sample.latency.*.
  • In Affected Source Tags, specify the source tag EastCoastSources.
  • In Affected Sources, specify app-1.

Note: If you wanted to suppress the alerts from firing on app-1 only if that source also has the source tag EastCoastSources, you can click on OR and select AND

Note:

While every user can view maintenance windows, you must have the Alerts permission to manage maintenance windows. If you do not have the requisite permission, the UI menu selections, buttons, and links you use to perform management tasks are not visible.

Now that we have looked at Maintenance Windows in-depth for VMware Aria Operations for Applications (Wavefront by VMware) we suggest you give this a try and report any suggestions and improvements based on your usage and provide feedback via official channels if any …! To learn about Maintenance Windows in-depth check out our detailed documentation. You can also learn more about other VMware Aria Operations for Applications features on TechZone!

Start your VMware Aria Operations for Applications free 30-day trial now! All features are available including the Maintenance Windows described in this blog: click here.