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ESXi 4: root cause "freeze", howto find in logging?

Hi,

We had an issue with a "freezing" esxi 4. It was rebooted before I actually could see what happened but now I would like to find out (it is in maintenance mode). I roughly have an idea when it happened (yesterday evening).

What I do can see is that time is totally wrong (January 2013), but how can I find what actually went wrong (looked into the logfile with vi but that's a pain in the ass to find anything usefull, isn't there something more userfriendly?).

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

With ESXi it will be difficult to find out after the event, when the server was restarted because the logs are not stored.

I would recommend setting up a Syslog Server or using vMA, to send the logs from the ESXi server to a remote logging server, so you will have all the logs the next time this occurs.

VMware KB: Enabling syslog on ESXi 3.5 and 4.x

VMware have just launched vCenter Log Insight, which is also a graphical Syslog server, based losely on Splunk!
http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-log-insight/overview.html

It's in Beta, but shows graphical syslog entries, which may be easier for you to diagnose. It's also FREE, easy to deploy via OVA/OVF appliance, and ready to run and collect syslog entries in 5 minutes.

But I would check hardware, memory, with memtest, re-seat any memory chips, check fans, heatsinks etc

janhoedt

ASKER

Thanks hanccoccka, but logfiles ARE stored, since we moved the scratch-partition to a LUN. So, I do have the logfiles. Please advise.
J.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

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janhoedt

ASKER

Ok, thanks for the input. So bottomline is: there is no easy way to anaylyze logfiles BUT a syslog-server.

ESXi 4: root cause &quot;freeze&quot;, howto find in logging?

ESXi 4: root cause "freeze", howto find in logging?