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szilagyic
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Collecting View Agent logs on a non-persistent desktop after a crash

Hello:

We have a couple of users that have VMs within a non-persistent desktop pool that will completely crash once in a while (the VM will disconnect, and any applications they had open, will be forced closed).  When they log back in, everything is fine other than the applications that were closed.  I know the VM is crashing as in the Horizon Console we will see it get refreshed and the user will obviously log in to a different VM when they re-connect.

My question is if there is a way to redirect the View Agent logs to a location that will not get wiped when the VM crashes and gets refreshed.  Ideally it would be nice if I could change the logs location for one particular user and just have it write to their profile directory or some persistent place so that when the VM crashes we can retain these logs.  Otherwise they are flushed away when the VM is refreshed/rebooted.  I know there is a pool setting to refresh the logs when logging off, however this is a VM crash not really a logoff event so I'm not sure if that setting would even help setting to "Never".

Thanks for the help!

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techguy129
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You can setup a syslog server and tell the agent via GPO to send the logs there. You can use vRealize Log Insight

Documentation for VMware Horizon 7 version 7.1

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Magneet
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Do you get an immediate report when it crashes? Because then you could put the desktop in Maintenance mode and it will not be refreshed.

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TechMassey
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I use a very useful VMware KB 1017939 for logfile information for Horizon View. I checked and it also includes details on collecting agent logs remotely through the connection server itself! I just verified this and have not tested but it sounds cool!

KB 1017939 Article: Link

Here are the specific steps:

To collect Agent logs remotely from the Connection Server, run this command in a command prompt:

vdmadmin -A -getDCT -outfile file_name.zip -d pool_name -m virtual_machine_name

By default, the vdmadmin utility is located at C:\Program Files\VMware\Vmware View\Server\tools\bin in the Connection Server.


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szilagyic
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Hello and thanks for the replies.  To answer the questions:

Do you get an immediate report when it crashes? Because then you could put the desktop in Maintenance mode and it will not be refreshed.

Unfortunately the issue happens at random and we are not able to catch it before the VM does the refresh, which I am not sure if it honors the setting of the pool or not as it is not a clean logoff.  I have checked the logs on the VM that crashes and they are only from the point of the reboot and forward.  None of the logs prior to the crash are retained.

I use a very useful VMware KB 1017939 for logfile information for Horizon View. I checked and it also includes details on collecting agent logs remotely through the connection server itself! I just verified this and have not tested but it sounds cool!

I have tried this method in the past for collecting logs and not had much luck with it.  In most cases, the vdmadmin program will run indefinitely (I've had it run over 3 hours and no logs are collected).  I am almost certain all this utility does it collect the logs from the VM, but for a non-persistent pool I'm guessing it will just collect the same logs that are physically on the VM, which in this case is only from the point it is rebooted and forward which doesn't include crash information.

Thanks again for your feedback on this.

techguy129
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You can setup a syslog server and tell the agent via GPO to send the logs there. You can use vRealize Log Insight

Documentation for VMware Horizon 7 version 7.1

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szilagyic
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You can setup a syslog server and tell the agent via GPO to send the logs there. You can use vRealize Log Insight

Documentation for VMware Horizon 7 version 7.1

I didn't see that before about sending to syslog, so that might be the exact solution we are looking for.  Thanks for your help with this.

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