Hi
Are there any recommendations on what logging levels to use on the ESXi host? or is it personal perference?
Thanks
John.
I would recommend keeping the default. As-is, ESX/ESXi is quite verbose. ESX/ESXi generates up to 250MB of syslog data a day assuming there is no issue on the host. Typically, logging would only be increased for troubleshooting reasons as requested by VMware Support. For more information, see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1004795.
It really comes down to personal/group preference and/or compliance requirements. I'm trying to determine whether to use verbose or info log levels. I have a tiny test environment -- with a mere four ESXi hosts and one vCenter -- that's collected over 9 million messages in only two and a half weeks. Everything is set to the default of verbose logging but there are way too many useless messages.
But I'm not finding any detailed information about exactly what differences exist between verbose and info log levels. I've read quite a few posts about people using one or the other but never a comparison between the two that gives any detailed info. I'm going to change everything to info logging and make a comparison myself but I'll keep looking to see whether there's any solid answer about verbose and info logging.
I agree there is a lot of information and I also agree that there is a lot of noise. There is no comparison between the different verbosity levels (not many products offer such a comparison). The recommendation is always to keep the default logging level because if the level is too low you may miss important messages and may have a harder time troubleshooting (e.g. VMware support may not be able to assist you because the logs needed were not collected) and if the level is too high you may receive even more noise that is only helpful for particular troubleshooting.
Log Insight helps navigate you through the noise of vSphere logs with the vSphere content pack. Perhaps this feature request is what you are looking for: Drop specific incoming messages - The VMware vCenter Log Insight Community
