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Create your first alert

This guide gets your first Native Alert notification to you in about 10 minutes. You create an Email recipient, then set an alert for when a Virtual Machine's CPU goes above 80%.

Prerequisites​

  • Native Alert open in the right VPC. See Access Native Alert.
  • At least one running Virtual Machine in the VPC.
  • An email address you can check right away.

What you will build​

An alert named vm-cpu-high that monitors a Virtual Machine's CPU, emails you when CPU goes above 80%, and emails you again when CPU returns to normal.

Create an Email recipient​

Create the recipient first so you can select it in the Notify to field when you create the alert.

  1. In Native Alert, open the Recipient tab and click Create recipient.
  2. Enter ops-email as the Name.
  3. Keep Method set to Email and enter the email address in Address.
  4. Keep Level set to VPC.
  5. Click Create.

Create Recipient page with Name set to ops-email, Method set to Email, Address filled in, and Level set to VPC

Create a CPU Resource alert​

The create page already fills in a CPU above 80% condition, so you only need to pick the Virtual Machine and the recipient.

  1. Open the Resource alert tab and click Create resource alert.
  2. Enter vm-cpu-high as the Name.
  3. Keep the defaults: Type is Virtual Machine, Metric type is CPU usage (%), Operator is > Greater than, and Threshold is 80.
  4. In Apply To, select the Virtual Machine to monitor.
  5. In Notify to, select ops-email.
  6. Click Create.

Create alert page with Type set to Virtual Machine, Metric type set to CPU usage, Threshold 80, and Notify to set to ops-email

Check the alert​

The vm-cpu-high alert appears on the Resource alert tab with State set to OK and Enable turned on.

Resource alert tab with alert vm-cpu-high, State OK, and Enable turned on

When CPU stays above 80% for one Alert interval (3 minutes by default), State changes to Alarm and an email is sent to ops-email.

tip

To test the channel right away, temporarily set Threshold below the current CPU level, wait one interval, then set the real threshold back.

Next steps​

  • Manage recipients — send alerts to your on-call team's Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Telegram.
  • Create a Resource alert — set alerts for Load Balancer, Object Storage, VPN Site-to-Site, and Auto Scaling.
  • Manage alerts — view history, pause an alert, or change its threshold.