The vmware.log file of a virtual machine reports >> and stops logging

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article describes a specific issue. If you experience all of the above symptoms, consult the sections below. If you experience some but not all of these symptoms, your issue is not related to this article. Search the Knowledge Base for your symptoms or Open a Support Request.


The issue described here with vmware.log throttling also affects a virtual machine's ability to take quiesced snapshots. If the log is throttled, taking a snapshot takes up to 10 minutes. Once the the throttling issue is resolved, the quiesced snapshot takes approximately 1 minute.

Symptoms:

• The last line in the vmware.log file of a virtual machine appears similar to:
  
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.Z: vcpu-3| <<< Log Throttled >>>
   
• After this message, the virtual machine stops logging.

Cause

This issue occurs when writes to a virtual machine's log file (vmware.log) exceed 1 KB/sec of data. By default, the vmware.log file is intended to be throttled if it attempts to write more than 1 KB/sec of data to the log file. Due to an issue with the throttling functionality, the log file never becomes un-throttled.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in ESXi/ESX 4.1 Update 3 released on August 30, 2012, and in ESXi 5.0. To download the latest ESXi release, see the VMware Download Center.

If the issue persists after upgrade, please do perform the workaround which has been provided in the workaround section.

Workaround:
To work around this issue, perform one of these options:

• vMotion the virtual machine to another host.
   
• Suspend and then resume the virtual machine
   
  1. Right-click the virtual machine
  2. Click Power and then click Suspend
  3. After the Suspend operation completes, right-click the virtual machine and click Power > Resume
      
• Power off and then power on the virtual machine
  1. Right-click the virtual machine
  2. Click Power and then click Shut Down Guest
  3. After the virtual machine is powered off, right-click the virtual machine and click Power > Power On