Root partition reaches high utilization or fills up when generating Support Bundle via vSphere Client

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware Telco Cloud Platform
• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

 

• Administrators observe a "Disk Space Low" or "Filesystem Full" or "Root Disk Exhaustion" alert on the vCenter Server Appliance root partition.

• The alert coincides with the execution of the "Export System Logs" task in the vSphere Client.

• The root partition usage drops after the bundle is downloaded and deleted, or remains high if the download fails/persists.

 

Environment

VMware vCenter Server

Cause

When a support bundle is triggered via the vSphere Client UI, the appliance constructs the bundle in the following staging directory: /etc/vmware-vpx/docRoot/diagnostics

This directory is mounted on the Root partition (/). In large environments, a support bundle can exceed 10GB. If the root partition is already partially consumed (e.g., 40-50%), the addition of this large temporary file can trigger capacity alarms or fill the partition completely.

Resolution

Clean up existing staged bundles

1. Connect to the vCenter Server via SSH as root.

2. Navigate to the staging directory: cd /etc/vmware-vpx/docRoot/diagnostics

3. List files to confirm their size: ls -lh

4. Remove the support bundle: rm *.tgz

Workaround

Use CLI for large bundle generation: To avoid stressing the root partition, generate the bundle via the command line and target the larger /storage/core partition.

1. SSH into vCenter Server.

2. Execute the log collection command: vc-support -w /storage/core

3. Once complete, use SCP/SFTP to download the file from /storage/core.