Impact of Closing an Alert

In System Center 2012 – Operations Manager, an alert can be generated by a rule or a monitor. Alerts have two possible resolution states, by default: New and Closed. (Administrators can add custom alert resolution states to a management group. For more information, see How to Set Alert Resolution States).

The impact of setting the alert resolution state to Closed depends on whether the alert was generated by a rule or a monitor. Click the alert to display the alert details. The details for an alert will either list Alert Rule or Alert Monitor.

If you close an alert that was generated by a rule and the issue continues or occurs again, another alert will be sent. Closing an alert that was generated by a rule when the issue is not fixed is not a problem, because the rule will generate another alert.

However, an alert that is generated by a monitor is sent only when the state for the monitor changes from healthy to some other state (warning or critical). If you close an alert that is generated by a monitor when the issue is not fixed, no other alerts will be sent.

For example, a monitor for free disk space detects that disk space on a computer is below the configured threshold. The monitor changes the health state to critical (red) and sends a single alert. After the monitor has sent the alert, it will not generate future alerts so long as the health state does not change from critical to healthy (green). If you close the alert while the object is in a warning or unhealthy state, the problem remains unresolved but no further alerts will be generated.

Generally, before you close an alert, you should verify that the issue is resolved. If the alert was generated by a monitor and the alert does not resolve automatically, check Health Explorer and the health state of the computer to ensure that the states have returned to healthy before you close the alert.