Collecting vCenter Server appliance support bundle in case of CPU spikes

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information and steps for collecting more information to further investigate in case the issue with CPU spikes persist from the vCenter Server appliance.

Note: The vCenter Server CPU spikes can be caused by any processes in the vCenter Server. This article provides steps on collecting more information specifically for the case that CPU spikes are caused by the Content Library process (vmware-content-library) in vCenter Server. You can verify which process causes the vCenter CPU spikes through the vimtop or top command.

Symptoms:

• The vCenter Server appliance CPU spikes.
• The vCenter Server appliance has an alert similar to:
  
  CPU exhaustion on <vCenter Server_Name>

Cause

This issue occurs due to some content library activities such as library sync or ovf import. The vimtop or top command displays the vmware-content-library process is the one that is causing the CPU spikes.

Resolution

To further investigate the issue, there is a need to collect more information when symptom persists:

1. Log in to the vCenter Server appliance through SSH.
2. Acquire the PID of the vmware-content-library by running this command:
   
   ps aux | grep -i 'vmware-content-library'
    
3. Create a shell script file using this information:
   
   INTERVAL=30
   while [ true ]
   do
   top -n 1 -H -p $1 -b >> /var/log/vmware/content-library/top.txt
   kill -3 $1
   sleep $INTERVAL
   done
    
4. Run the shell script for couple of minutes (eg, 5 ~ 10) with PID that was retrieved from step 2.
5. Stop the script, ensuring the top.txt file is generated under /var/log/vmware/content-library and thread dump is available in content-library-runtime.log.stdout.
6. Gather the vCenter Server support bundle. For more information, see Collecting diagnostic information for VMware vCenter Server 4.x, 5.x, 6.x and 7.0 (1011641).