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---
aliases:
- /docs/grafana/latest/alerting/fundamentals/state-and-health/
- /docs/grafana/llatest/alerting/unified-alerting/alerting-rules/state-and-health/
description: State and Health of alerting rules
keywords:
- grafana
- alerting
- guide
- state
title: State and health of alerting rules
---
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# State and health of alerting rules
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The state and health of alerting rules help you understand several key status indicators about your alerts.
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There are three key components: [alert rule state ](#alert-rule-state ), [alert instance state ](#alert-instance-state ), and [alert rule health ](#alert-rule-health ). Although related, each component conveys subtly different information.
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## Alert rule state
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An alert rule can be in either of the following states:
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| State | Description |
| ----------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Normal** | None of the time series returned by the evaluation engine is in a `Pending` or `Firing` state. |
| **Pending** | At least one time series returned by the evaluation engine is `Pending` . |
| **Firing** | At least one time series returned by the evaluation engine is `Firing` . |
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> **Note:** Alerts will transition first to `pending` and then `firing`, thus it will take at least two evaluation cycles before an alert is fired.
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## Alert instance state
An alert instance can be in either of the following states:
| State | Description |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Normal** | The state of an alert that is neither firing nor pending, everything is working correctly. |
| **Pending** | The state of an alert that has been active for less than the configured threshold duration. |
| **Alerting** | The state of an alert that has been active for longer than the configured threshold duration. |
| **NoData** | No data has been received for the configured time window. |
| **Error** | The error that occurred when attempting to evaluate an alerting rule. |
## Alert rule health
An alert rule can have one the following health statuses:
| State | Description |
| ---------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Ok** | No error when evaluating an alerting rule. |
| **Error** | An error occurred when evaluating an alerting rule. |
| **NoData** | The absence of data in at least one time series returned during a rule evaluation. |
## Special alerts for `NoData` and `Error`
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When evaluation of an alerting rule produces state `NoData` or `Error` , Grafana Alerting will generate alert instances that have the following additional labels:
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| Label | Description |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **alertname** | Either `DatasourceNoData` or `DatasourceError` depending on the state. |
| **datasource_uid** | The UID of the data source that caused the state. |
You can handle these alerts the same way as regular alerts by adding a silence, route to a contact point, and so on.
