Create a user alert

Create a user alert when you need to monitor metrics with thresholds, filters, or evaluation logic that differs from the default system alerts. User alerts let you tailor alert behavior to your operational needs, ensuring that notifications fire only when conditions meaningful to your environment are me.

When creating a user alert, keep the following limits in mind:

• Metrics per alert: An alert can monitor up to 5 metrics.
• Dimension filters per alert: An alert definition can include up to 5 dimension filters.
• Entities per alert: An alert can target up to 100 entities.
• User alerts per account: Up to 100 user alerts can be created per account.
• Notification channels per alert: An alert can be associated with up to 5 notification channels.
• Access: You can create alerts only for entities within your access scope.
• If multiple metrics are being evaluated, the minimum supported polling interval is the upper limit of the minimum aggregation interval for the selected metrics.

To create a user alert in Cloud Manager:

1. Log in to Cloud Manager, expand Monitor in the main menu, and select Alerts.

2. Click Create Alert.

3. Complete the General Information section. For a description of each field, see Alert parameters.

4. Assign entities to the alert:

   • Use the search and filter tools to locate the entities you want.
   • Select an entity to assign or unassign it.
   • Repeat until all required entities are assigned.

5. Specify the evaluation criteria that must be met to trigger the alert. For example, to fire an alert when CPU usage exceeds 90% for 5 polling intervals, you might configure:

   • Data field: CPU Usage
   • Aggregation type: Average
   • Operator: >
   • Threshold: 90
   • Evaluation period: 10 min
   • Polling interval: 1 min
   • Blip interval: 5

   Note: At present, the available evaluation period is fixed at 5 minutes, and the polling interval is fixed at 5 minutes. For details about these values, see Alert parameters.

6. Add a notification channel. During beta:

   1. Click Add Notification Channel.
   2. Select Email as the type.
   3. Select the preconfigured Read-Write Channel. This channel sends an email notification to all users with read/write access to the impacted entity.
   4. Click Add Channel to save your selection.

7. Click Submit to create the alert.

It may take up to five minutes for your new alert to be created. You can monitor the alert's status on the Definitions tab of the Alerts page. A status of In Progress means the alert is still being created. This status will change to Enabled once the alert is active.