An update in the vCenter 6.5b patch that I have been anticipating is the ability to change the mail sender address vCenter utilizes for email alerts. Releases prior to 6.5b sent e-mail alerts from root@VCSA_FQDN by default. Even if the Mail Sender was changed within the appliance, e-mails would still have that same root return-path. This proved to be problematic in environments who leveraged SMTP relay servers to pass e-mail authentication or encryption (ie. Office 365 relays). Relay servers in those environments typically are configured to reject e-mails that do not come from a specified e-mail address or FQDN. To remedy this, the 6.5b patch now allows admins to specify an e-mail address to Send As.

Configure Mail Server and Mail Sender

Log into vCenter and Edit the General settings on your vCenter instance. This is done from the Configure tab.

Under Edit Settings, navigate to Mail. Enter the Mail Server and Mail Sender address.

Configure vCenter Alarm to Send E-mail Alerts

Alarms can be set as granularly as one would like; Ranging from high-level objects (vCenter) to low-level objects (virtual machines).

To begin, select the Monitor tab of the specified vCenter object. Under Monitor, select Issues followed by Alarm Definitions. From here, choose the desired Alarm. With the alarm selected, click the Edit button.

Navigate to the Actions menu and select the plus sign to add an action. Under Action, choose Send a notification email. Enter the e-mail address to send the alert to in the Configuration box. Lastly, set the criteria on when the alarm should trigger.

That is all for setting up the e-mail alerting process. On alarm trigger, you will receive an e-mail with the Target, Alarm Definition, and Event Details.

If you aren’t on vCenter Server 6.5b yet, you can set the root account on the VCSA to masquerade as another account.

VMware KB – Configuring an email alert in vCenter