Metrics & Alerts

Overview

Monitoring evaluates metric-based alert rules continuously against live time-series data. When a rule’s condition is met for the configured evaluation period, Monitoring fires an alert to the configured notification channels. This page covers creating, managing, and troubleshooting alert rules.

Prerequisites

An active Polystack account with project access
At least one notification channel configured (see Alert Rules Advanced)

Creating Alert Rules

Dashboard
CLI

Navigate to Alert Rules

Navigate to Monitor Center > Monitoring (Alerting section, admin view) and click New Alert Rule.

Define the condition

Configure the alert trigger:

Field	Description
Name	Descriptive label for the rule (e.g., `high-cpu-utilization`)
Metric	The time-series metric to evaluate (e.g., `polystack_compute_cpu_utilization`)
Condition	Threshold operator: `>`, `<`, `>=`, `<=`, or `== NaN`
Threshold	Numeric value that triggers the alert
Evaluation Period	Duration the condition must persist before firing (e.g., 5 minutes)
Severity	`Critical`, `Warning`, or `Info`

Assign a notification channel

Under Notifications, select one or more configured channels (email, webhook, or on-call integration). Multiple channels can be assigned per rule.

Alert rules with no notification channel assigned are evaluated but never delivered to operators. Always assign at least one channel for production rules.

Save and activate

Click Save and Enable. The rule enters the Active state and begins evaluating on the next collection cycle.

Alert rule appears in the Active Rules list with state Evaluating.

Create from a definition file

Create alert rule from file

monitoring alert rule create --file alert-cpu-high.yaml

alert-cpu-high.yaml

name: high-cpu-utilization
metric: polystack_compute_cpu_utilization
condition: ">"
threshold: 90
evaluation_period: 5m
severity: warning
notification_channels:
  - ops-email
  - pagerduty-oncall

List existing rules

List all alert rules

monitoring alert rule list

Show specific rule details

monitoring alert rule show high-cpu-utilization

Update or delete a rule

Update rule threshold

monitoring alert rule update high-cpu-utilization --threshold 85

Delete a rule

monitoring alert rule delete high-cpu-utilization

Viewing Alert History

Dashboard
CLI

Navigate to Monitor Center > Monitoring (Alert History, admin view) to see a timestamped feed of all alert fire and resolution events.Filter by:

Rule name — view history for a specific alert rule
Severity — show only Critical or Warning events
Time range — focus on a specific incident window
Status — Active (currently firing) or Resolved

View alert history for a rule

monitoring alert history --rule high-cpu-utilization --last 24h

View all active (currently firing) alerts

monitoring alert list --status active

Acknowledge an active alert

monitoring alert acknowledge <ALERT_ID> --comment "Investigating high CPU on compute-node-03"

Common Alert Rules Reference

Alert	Metric	Condition	Threshold	Evaluation Period
High CPU	`polystack_compute_cpu_utilization`	`>`	90%	5m
Low memory	`polystack_compute_memory_free_pct`	`<`	10%	5m
High disk I/O latency	`polystack_storage_osd_apply_latency_ms`	`>`	20ms	10m
Pool capacity warning	`polystack_storage_pool_used_pct`	`>`	70%	15m
Host unreachable	`up{job="node_exporter"}`	`==`	0	2m
Replication lag	`disaster_recovery_replication_lag_seconds`	`>`	RPO target	5m

Next Steps

Alert Rules (Advanced)

Compound conditions, silences, inhibition rules, and escalation policies

Monitoring Admin — Alert Channels

Configure email, webhook, PagerDuty, and Slack notification channels

Dashboards

Visualize the metrics your alert rules monitor

Troubleshooting

Diagnose alert rules that are not firing as expected

Core Services

Other Services

Overview

Creating Alert Rules

Navigate to Alert Rules

Define the condition

Assign a notification channel

Save and activate

Create from a definition file

List existing rules

Update or delete a rule

Viewing Alert History

Common Alert Rules Reference

Next Steps

Alert Rules (Advanced)

Monitoring Admin — Alert Channels

Dashboards

Troubleshooting

​Overview

​Creating Alert Rules

Navigate to Alert Rules

Define the condition

Assign a notification channel

Save and activate

Create from a definition file

List existing rules

Update or delete a rule

​Viewing Alert History

​Common Alert Rules Reference

​Next Steps

Alert Rules (Advanced)

Monitoring Admin — Alert Channels

Dashboards

Troubleshooting

Overview

Creating Alert Rules

Viewing Alert History

Common Alert Rules Reference

Next Steps