Hardware status differs in VMware vCenter server and Veeam ONE

One of Veeam ONE’s monitoring features is monitoring and alerting on host hardware status changes.

These alerts are good to know in case of hosts in your environment have hardware issues, the issue will be notified in the alert, and the severity of the issue by VMware's color scale (Yellow - Something is wrong but doesn't involve data loss, Red - Data loss potential or production down, Unknown - Not knowing what the current status is of the sensor).

However, sometimes the hardware statuses in Veeam ONE are not matching the vSphere UI or hardware status alerts cannot be triggered even if the hardware status is changed to Yellow or Red.

Veeam ONE pulls hardware status information from vCenter’s API, however, at the same time, the VMware vSphere client uses a different method to obtain this type of data. Because of this difference, you may see different information in the VMware vSphere Client and Veeam ONE.

As for alarms, Veeam ONE uses one of the two following ways to trigger the host hardware alerts:

- Using vSphere hardware alerts (Default)

- Using hardware status changes (Alternative)

If the hardware status changed to Yellow or Red, but Veeam ONE didn’t trigger the alarm, then firstly the corresponding alarm needs to be checked on the vCenter side through the vSphere client.

In order to narrow down the issue, we should compare the hardware status information for monitored objects using both VMware vCenter’s MOB and Host’s MOB which are the mirrors of their APIs.

How to check the hardware sensors using VMware MOB (for example "VMware Rollup Health State"):

1. Open the VMware vCenter server's MOB web link using your Internet browser (https://[your_vCenter_server_address]/mob) and follow this path:
content -> rootFolder -> childEntity -> hostFolder -> childEntity -> host [select appropriate host] -> runtime -> healthSystemRuntime -> systemHealthInfo -> numericSensorInfo

2. Find HostNumericSensorInfo related to VMware Rollup Health State. Make sure that the summary string is “Sensor is operating under normal conditions” and the label string is “Green”.


As you can see from the screenshot, this host is having a problem according to the information provided in vCenter server's MOB (VMware Rollup Health State is in Red). What we where expecting to see is the "Green" status with running as normal conditions.

3. Then open the VMware HOST's MOB web link using your Internet browser (https://[your_VMware_host_address]/mob) and follow this path:
content -> rootFolder -> childEntity -> hostFolder -> childEntity -> host -> runtime -> healthSystemRuntime -> systemHealthInfo -> numericSensorInfo

4. Find HostNumericSensorInfo related to the VMware Rollup Health State. Make sure that the summary string is “Sensor is operating under normal conditions” and the label string is “Green”.


As you can see from the screenshot, this host is NOT having a problem according to the information provided in host's MOB (VMware Rollup Health State is in Green).

5. ​Make sure that vCenter’s and Host’s MOBs show you the same status/summary for the VMware Rollup Health State.

If you see any difference between the VMware vSphere client and/or VMware MOB statuses (as in the example above), open a support case with VMware's support team.

Please note that for Memory and Storage, hardware sensors will pull the data from additional sections of MOB.

Here are the paths for Memory:

Here are the paths for Storages:

If you see any difference between the VMware vSphere client and/or VMware MOB statuses (as in the example above), or if the vSphere client is not triggering hardware status alerts, please open a support case with VMware's support team.