Invetisgating ESX logs

[peter79]

Guys,

I'm a VCP and am cerified in vSphere but recently I've been asked to investigate ESX logfiles (we have been experiencing wide scale disconnects across our hosts). To be honest I would I'm fairly week in this area.

Could somone point me in the direction of some good guides or books in this area.

What logs should I look at and what kind of info should I be looking for.

Thanks guys I understand this is a fairly broad question and would greatly appreciate any help.

Thanks.

[jamesbowling]

Are you running ESX or ESXi hosts? Most ESX Classic hosts will have logs sitting in /var/log. If you are running ESXi then you may want to look at /var/log/vmware/hostd.log

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[peter79]

Yeah I'm working with ESX hosts. I suppose what I'm looking for is a good guide to understanding and interprating the log files.

[jamesbowling]

Here is a few links regarding logs, some are for 3.5 but should still stand true for 4.X:

http://vmetc.com/2008/05/13/troubleshooting-esx-logs/

http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/mdc9694.pdf - Not as much how to read logs but good for how to troubleshoot ESX.

Not sure how much help those will be to you but it is at least a start. What specifically do you want to know about the logs?

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[jamesbowling]

And here is an application by Xtravirt.com that can help you traverse logs. http://xtravirt.com/xd10132

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