New in Operations - Payload Templates Scope Enhancements

A significant new enhancement in VMware Aria Operations 8.17.1 is the Payload Templates Scope Enhancements.

Essentially, this feature allows you not only to include an object that is affected by an issue in a notification but also to include its descendant objects.

Why is this feature significant?

Consider a scenario where there is an outage on one ESXi host. This issue is primarily a concern for the infrastructure teams responsible for operations, but it also impacts the workloads and could potentially affect service levels.

+-----------------+ 
|                 | 
|    ESXi Host    |
|   * DOWN *      | 
+----|--------|---+ 
     |        |                                                         
     |        |     
  +--|-+   +--|-+      
  | VM |   | VM |   
  +----+   +----+   

Now, with this new feature, you can include affected virtual machines as descendants in the notifications regarding the host outage.
With this enhancement, notifications about the host outage can now include affected virtual machines as descendants. This feature supports more complex use cases, such as linking utilization metrics (e.g., IOPS per datastore to HBA throughput).

High-level walkthrough

Here’s a simple step-by-step guide demonstrating the use of this feature:

Creating the Payload Template

Navigate to the ‘Payload Templates’ under the ‘Alerts’ section in the ‘Configuration’ menu.

Create a new payload template.

Select ‘Host System’ as the object type

and add ‘Virtual Machines’ as descendants.

Optionally, add supporting metrics and properties to the payload. For simplicity, this example only includes virtual machines without further information.

Setting Up Notifications

Go to ‘Notifications’ under the ‘Alerts’ section in the ‘Configuration’ menu.

Create a new notification.

Choose an appropriate outbound method, such as the standard mail plugin. Use the ’test notification’ feature to simulate an outage without actual hardware disconnection.

Choose an appropriate outbound method, such as the standard mail plugin. Use the ’test notification’ feature to simulate an outage without actual hardware problem.

Adjust the settings to refine alert criteria

and select a specific host to validate the results.

If validation fails, as in the case of an incorrect mail server setup, the content body should still display the intended outcome showing the downed host and a list of affected VMs.