PowerVC

Dynamic Resource Optimizer (DRO) is a feature that has been part of PowerVC for the last many releases. One can read more about DRO at ‘Dynamic Resource Optimizer’. Customers using DRO might be well aware of the “DRO Event” tab in the PowerVC UI, which logs all the different DRO related operations going on within PowerVC. This tab helps track all DRO activities with additional details about when and against which hosts the activities were performed. A lot of administrators first enable DRO in the “advice mode”, have a close watch on the advises that are logged, before they move on to the “active mode”.



While the ‘DRO Events’ tab is a great place to check on the DRO events, there could be times when PowerVC administrators do not have access to PowerVC UI and might not be aware of the operations that are happening, keeping them at a loss on what’s happening in their infrastructure from a DRO perspective. This is where our new feature comes to the rescue!

With PowerVC 1.4.4 Cloud Edition, comes in support for email notifications for DRO. With this, PowerVC administrator can now enable DRO related notification emails in real-time. This is of course in addition to being able to view them from the ‘DRO Events’ tab on the PowerVC UI. With this feature, all configured email addresses now get mail notifications both in advice or active mode for all DRO operations.

If you haven’t tried any of the email notification features associated with PowerVC yet, it will be a good idea to first go through the “Configuring Email” section in the PowerVC KC. Email Notifications is a feature that is specific to PowerVC Cloud edition. So, don’t be surprised if you have standard edition and you see this feature missing there. Configuring DRO and Email server details are prerequisites towards PowerVC being able to send any DRO-related email notification.


New email template for DRO
To provide support with this feature, a new brand-new email template named “DRO Event Notifications” of type “Admin” has been introduced under Configuration > Email Templates. This template is in disabled state by default, indicating that DRO email notifications will not be functional until an administrator explicitly activates the template by enabling it.






DRO Event Notification Template Details
The DRO template provides information on what constitutes the subject and body of the email when a DRO event occurs. As with other templates, an administrator has the option to make changes to the subject and body of the email template. Note that irrespective of the DRO event, the same DRO event notification template will be used to send the email.



Project-Specific Behavior
Both the email server configuration and the email template customizations are specific to each project. If there are two different PowerVC projects, with email server and addresses configured only for one of the projects, DRO email notifications will obviously be sent to the administrators of only that project. Any customization made to the email template is also project-specific and will not apply across all projects.

Troubleshooting
If you find DRO email notifications to be not working, following are the things you should consider validating:
a) Is email server correctly configured against the project?
b) Are the email addresses correctly configured?
c) Is DRO enabled and are DRO events getting generated? Are you able to see these events under the ‘DRO Events’ tab on PowerVC UI?
d) Is the DRO notifications email templated enabled?

Some sample DRO notification emails have been listed below for reference:
**************************************************************************************************************************
From: PowerVC Cloud

Conclusion
Go ahead and check out DRO with email notifications to get real time details of all the continuous optimizations happening in your infrastructure.
If you have any questions about this topic, please comment below. Watch this space for more information about troubleshooting your environment. In the meantime, don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.