How to Generate an Email Alert for vSAN Drive Failure

There are multiple ways to generate email alerts, from VMware vSAN. vRealize Operations at scale is a powerful tool that allows multicluster and Datacenter to roll up, LogInsight can generate email alerts, SNMP based alerts, and use webhooks to push alerts into several other operational tools.

Also, 3rd party tools from server vendors can monitor hardware health independently of vCenter Server.
This blog focuses on a simple method to generate an email alert from the native vCenter tooling.

First off you need to configure vCenter itself to send an email.

At the vCenter level this can be found under configure –> General –> Mail –> Edit.

Next up you need to enter the SMTP server and the sender that the mail will come from. Note you will potentially need to configure an SMTP relay server that will trust the IP Address of the vCenter server as authentication is not supported.

Next up, at the vCenter Server level browse to Configure –> Alarm Definitions –> and search for the ‘Physical Disk Health’ vSAN alarm.

If you do not see the ability to edit the alarm make sure you have clicked the radial button and are at the vCenter Server level. You can not edit this at the datacenter or cluster level.

Next up this alarm has two rules you will potentially want to add an email notification for. Alarm Rule 1 is for warnings, while Alarm Rule 2 is for Critical alarms.

Lastly, confirm on the summary page that alarms have been generated as expected. Once complete considering creating an alarm for a rule that is easily triggered (or for a healthy state of an alarm) to verify that email alerts are flowing as intended.