I have a user asking for a monitor/rule to alert for an error in VMware for Linux virtual machines ONLY. 

The error in VMware is "an error occured while saving a snapshot: msg.snapshot.error-QUIESCINGERROR."

1) I'm not sure if I should use a rule or a monitor for this alert?

2) How do I go about formulating an alert for this error in VMware for Linux virtual machines?

Thanks for your help.

Hi

Where does this error occur? If you are "lucky" this is an alert that is dropped into an event log on the VMWare VCenter server (which is likely to be a windows box). If so, you can just use windows based monitoring.

If this alert is only exposed within the ESX Host then you'll need to use SNMP to monitor. You won't be able to discover the ESX Host as a Linux server as it isn't a supported Linux OS.

http://www.scom2k7.com/monitoring-vmware-esx-using-a-scom/

If you want to go more in depth VMWare monitoring then there are 3rd party solutions such as:

- Veeam

- OpsLogix

- Bridgeways

There are probably others. Best to evaluate them all against your requirements to find a balance between cost \ functionality that suits your needs.

Regards

Graham

As per Graham said, where this error is saved and when this error is occurred.

If this error is stored in windows box event log , you can use monitor to monitor this event.

If this is log into ESX Host , you may using SNMP. For detail on how to use snmp to monitor ESX host, pls. refer to

http://system-center.me/opsmgr/monitor-vmware-esx-with-scom-vcenter-for-free/

Roger