Which logs to look at?

[rterra]

Hello folks,

I am looking for a little insight as to which logs to look at. This morning, our network folks were doing some maintenance on a couple of switches. For reasons which we are attempting to determine, the switch failover(s) didn't work as they should've. When one of the switches was restarted, we lost connection to a bunch of stuff. I'm just attempting to help them with as much information as I can.

Can someone point me as to which ESX logs I should be looking at to determine things such as NICs losing connection, etc? This is not a vmware issue. I'm just trying to do some information gathering from the ESX end (along with others) that might shed some light to them as to what may have happened.

Thanks in advance!

- Bob

[Troy_Clavell]

all critical logs should go to /var/log/messages. You can start there

[rterra]

Thanks very much for your quick response! I did check out /var/log/messages. Unfortunately I didn't find anything there. I do find what I was looking for in /var/log/vmkernel. It showed me when NICs were down, up, etc. I've passed along the info.

Thanks again for your help!

- Bob

[Texiwill · Accepted solution]

Hello,

For pNIC and SCSI issues look at /var/log/vmkernel

For HA issues look at /var/log/vmware/aam/*.log

For hostd issues look at /var/log/vmware/hostd.log

There are plenty of other logfiles of interest as well but those are the three primary ones.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

SearchVMware Blog: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/

Blue Gears Blogs - http://www.itworld.com/ and http://www.networkworld.com/community/haletky

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[rterra]

Thank you Very Much!!!

That is VERY good information to know!!

Enjoy your weekend!!

- Bob

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Enjoy your week end as well. Please remember to award points by marking answers as helpful and correct. It is another way to show your appreciation and thanks.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

SearchVMware Blog: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/

Blue Gears Blogs - http://www.itworld.com/ and http://www.networkworld.com/community/haletky

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization