help with logs

[wb2]

We had a host crash yesterday (esxi 4.1).  I've exported the logs from the vSphere client.  Is there any list that defines what log is what?  There are a lot of files in there.  Also, my second question would be, what logs would best help me find out what might have been happening before the crash.  The server actually crashed hard.  No purple screen.  Just just shut hard.

[DSTAVERT]

ESXi logs are written to a RAM disk. Unless you have changed the log destination to some persistant storage location (datastore) a crash wipes out the logs so you won't have reference to the time of the crash.

[DSTAVERT]

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021801 for a description of what logs hold what information.

You should also have a look through the VM logs which are persistant and are stored with the VM.