"Update option values" - need to track down what's going on

[Cyberfed27]

Hey folks,

We are seeing a strange trend here on our vCenter server (vCenter 5.5).

Under tasks we periodically see "Update option values" being performed some of our VMware hosts (ESXi 5.1)

At the same time we get email alerts from vCenter Alarm.HostConnectionStateAlarm and Alarm.HostConnectivityAlarm showing that our hosts have dropped offline.

However they are not offline! VM's continue to work and you can access them as well as you can access the the host.

Question - where in the VMware logs can I find out exactly what "update option values" means or what was changed. I've downloaded the logs from a host but I am beyond a newbie at knowing out to read VMware's cryptic logs. I don't even know what folder to look in. Can anyone point me to the right folder/file I should be looking into?

Last thing that I will add the user account that is doing this is the vCenter service account so its not a human doing it.

Cheers!

[f10]

In general I would check /var/log/hosts.log to track any changes made to the host config. Depending on the source which initiates this task I would also check the vpxd.log on the vcenter server.

-f10

[Cyberfed27]

I have a hostd.log log but not a hosts.log in the /var/log folder is that the same?

[f10]

Yeah, sorry for the typo.