What sequence of actions should a vSphere administrator follow to monitor CPU usage of all virtual machines in a specific host cluster using alarms?

To effectively monitor CPU usage of all virtual machines within a specific host cluster using alarms, adding the alarm at the cluster level is the most efficient approach. When an alarm is set at the cluster level, it automatically applies to all virtual machines contained within that cluster. This allows the administrator to gain visibility into CPU usage across all VMs without needing to configure alarms for each individual virtual machine.

This is particularly advantageous in environments with a large number of virtual machines, as it simplifies management and ensures a standardized monitoring process. By setting the alarm on the cluster, any new virtual machines added to the cluster will also inherit this monitoring configuration, maintaining consistent oversight.

In contrast, setting alarms on individual virtual machines, on the host, or on a VMs folder would require either redundant configurations or wouldn't cover all relevant resources in the cluster uniformly. Thus, the optimal approach is to configure the alarm at the cluster level to ensure comprehensive and efficient monitoring of CPU usage across all virtual machines hosted within that cluster.