Summary: How to configure alarms in VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.1.
Date: Around 2010
Refactor: 21 April 2025: Checked links and formatting.

Site Recovery Manager has the option to enable alarms, and have the alarms send to an email inbox. This is very fortunate because if something goes wrong you really want to be aware of what is happening. There are a lot of alarms that can be triggered, including and not limited to:

• Licensing issues
• Recovery Plans
• Permissions
• VM Protection status
• Protection Groups

And many more. I tried to count them and came up to 90 alarms (SRM 5.1). As far as I know it's not possible to create custom alarms, but I can't think of any alarm that is not available.

Alarms at my company are configured to send an email (although other options are available) and for email configuration the SMTP settings from vCenter are used. To check or configure these settings start the vSphere Client → Go to Administration → vCenter Server Settings → Mail.

Also note:

• that alarms are disabled by default, so after configuring do not forget to enable them.
• that alarms are configured per site, in bidirectional configurations you'll have to configure alarms on both sites.

Before you can enable an alarm you have to configure it first. Follow these steps to configure and enable an alarm:

• Doubleclick the alarm you want to enable
• Click the Actions tab
• Click Add and a new action will appear. By default this is “Send Email” to the email address that was provided during the installation of SRM.
  • Change the action if required
  • Change the email address or other value if required
    • We use the distribution group srm-alarms@getshifting.com
• Click the General tab
• Enable the alarm by checking the appropriate checkbox

• Remote Site Down
• Remote Site Ping Failed

• Permissions Added
• Permissions Deleted
• Permissions Updated

• Protection Group Reconfigured
• Protection Group Removed

• Recovery Plan Destroyed
• Recovery Plan Edited
• Recovery Plan Execute Test Begin
• Recovery Plan Started

• Placeholder VM Deleted
• Protected Virtual Machine Removed
• Protected VM Deleted
• Protected VM Invalid
• VM Not Protected

• Remote Site Down
• Remote Site Ping Failed

• Permissions Added
• Permissions Deleted
• Permissions Updated

• Placeholder VM Deleted
• Protected Virtual Machine Removed
• Protected VM Deleted
• Protected VM Invalid
• VM Not Protected