Recently, We missed an alert notification that had been generated in VMware vRealize Log Insight (vRLI) outside of office hours. This had caused a disruption that we could have avoided if we had been informed in time. The alert notifcation had been sent via email but email is not always accessed outside of business hours. Which I can well understand. In this blog, I will explain what I have come up with to notice these types of alerts earlier.

Use Case – Increase the ability to notice prio 1 alerts outside of office hours with the available technical resources.

Goal – In addition to the standard vRLI alerts, we also want to have the option available to receive alerts through Microsoft (MS) Teams.

Solution – Use vRLI Webhook to send alerts to MS Teams

Setup – In order to have vRLI alerts sent to MS Teams, we need to set up two things.

1. Setup a MS Teams Connector to receive alerts
2. Setup the vRLI Webhook configuration to push alerts

Setup a MS Teams Connector to receive alerts

First, decide in which Teams Channel you want to receive the vRLI Alerts or add a new Teams Channel. I have created a new Channel called VRMware VMware Alerts.

Click on the 3 dots on the right side and select Connectors.

Select Configure Incoming Webhook.

Provide a friendly name, upload an image and create the connector.

After creation copy the url to the clipboard. We need this URL later to configure the vRLI Webhook.

Before we move on to vRLI we need to enable the channel notifications. Click once again on the 3 dots on the right side and select Channel notifications > All activity.

Setup the vRLI Webhook configuration to push alerts

Go to the Administration section and open Configuration > Webhook > New Webhook. Choose a name. From the Endpoint drop down menu select Custom. Copy the Webhook URL that was copied from MS Teams connector. From the Content Type drop down menu select JSON and from the Action drop down menu select POST. The Webhook Payload will be described under the picture.

Webload Payload

The Webload Payload was the hardest part to configure. Thanks to my colleague Roger who has figured out how the Webhook Payload layout should look like.

As far as I know, from vRLI Webhook only clear text can be used to send notifications to MS Teams. It’s possible to use one or more parameters in the script. For an overview of the parameters see the picture above here. Because the notictions are send in clear text it’s not possible to use all parameters. In our case not a problem because MS Teams is not used to replace monitoring software. It is just an additional option to be informed in a timely manner.

I wouldn’t go indepth how we found out the layout of the Webhook Payload code. That’s why I’m only sharing the code with you, so you can start testing for yourself.

{
   "type":"message",
   "attachments":[
      {
         "contentType":"application/vnd.microsoft.card.adaptive",
         "contentUrl":null,
         "content":{
            "$schema":"http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json",
            "type":"AdaptiveCard",
            "version":"1.2",
            "body":[
                {
                "type": "TextBlock",
                "text": "${AlertName}",
				"weight": "bolder",
                "wrap": true
                }
            ]
         }
      }
   ]
}

After completing the Webhook configuration you may want test the Webhook configartion. Press the Send Test button.

Finally Save the Webhook configuration.

Open the MS Teams Channel where the connector was created earlier. You should see here the Test Alert.

The last part is sending a notification to MS Teams when a ESXi host have entered Maintenance Mode.

I have created an vRLI alert with the name “TEST VRMware VRLI Alert: vSphere Host entered Maintenance in vCenter“.

I have decided that I would like to be notified by both email and MS Teams. This can be set under the Trigger Conditions.

If everything is configured correctly we should receive the Send Test Alert Results after sending a test alert.

Save the Alert. Now we are ready for the final test. I put a ESXi host in maintenance mode and we should receive within 5 minutes a MS Teams notification. It works!

I hope this blog post will help you configure vRLI to send notifications to MS Teams. Please remember that MS Teams is not a monitoring tool. So be selective with the alerts you forward. I have chosen to only forward alerts that I know need to be acted on as soon as possible.