VMware critical notification alarm

The title looks scared, is it? Actually I don’t want to talk about any problem of VMware product but just a feature.

标题看起来吓人吧？其实这次打算只谈谈功能。

I noticed an alarm “VMware critical notification alarm” on my vCenter Server today, I never saw this before vCenter Server 5.5 U1. I did some research on internet but nothing. I’m not sure is that a new feature, or not.

今天在vCenter Server 上看到这么个报警“VMware critical notification alarm”，在vCenter Server 5.5 U1以前从来没见过。网上搜了一下也没找到任何信息，不知道是不是个新功能。

The alarm indicates a critical event in VMware patching system. You will see the detail if you go to Home – Update Manager – Notification on vSphere Client.

这个报警表示VMware补丁系统中有一个严重事件。在vSphere Client打开Home – Update Manager – Notification 就可以看到事件详情。

I think this is a good feature and probably can be enhanced. As you may know HP send monthly firmware/driver newspaper, they category it by Critical, Recommended, or Optional. Critical usually means the bug fixed on this release breaks production services. It’s easy for customer to know what it is and how to fix it. VMware does not have such communication, they just release KB on their website, it’s hard to know which KB is more critical, you have to go through all articles and make your own decision. It’s time consuming. I hope VMware can leverage this alarm to give customer more light of patch severity.

这个功能挺好，也许可以增强一下。比如，惠普每个月都会发布固件和驱动的邮件订阅。它把这些固件和驱动分为要命、推荐、 可做可不做 三种类型。要命 表示此版本修复的问题可能会影响生产环境的业务，一旦有问题包你通宵夜场。对于用户来说这样分类很好理解孰重孰轻。VMware并无类似的，只是提供知识库文章，你不得不大量阅读这些文章并自己判断哪个是要命的，非常浪费时间。希望VMware可以利用这个警报功能给客户更好的补丁级别管理体验。