Particular embodiments provide a system comprising a cluster of host machines for managing communication connections in a virtualization environment. Implementing a virtualization environment, each of the host machines may comprise a hypervisor, a user virtual machine (UVM), and an I/O controller. A virtual disk may include a plurality of storage devices, wherein the I/O controllers conduct I/O transactions with the virtual disk based on I/O requests received from the UVMs. A management module may implement a monitoring policy of rules associated with an operating status of components of the virtualization environment. The management module may receive data associated with the operating status of the components. In response to determining that the data associated with the operating status satisfies one or more rules in the monitoring policy, the management module may initiate an alert and also display a graphical user interface that includes a root cause analysis of the alert.