Steps to manually collect a support bundle on a bare metal server when the collection via vdefend-cli fails

Products

• SSP
• VMware vDefend Firewall

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to collect a support bundle on a bare metal server using the vdefend-cli tool, the process may fail or hang. This typically occurs when the installer-service is unresponsive or unable to process the collection request.

Environment

• Product: VMware vDefend SSP
• Version: 5.1 and higher
• Platform: Bare Metal Server

Cause

The failure is generally caused by the installer-service entering a CrashLoopBackOff state or otherwise failing to respond to API calls. Because the CLI tool relies on this service to aggregate logs, the standard collection method fails when the service is unhealthy.

Resolution

This issue is slated for resolution in a future release of vDefend SSP. In the interim, use the following workaround to manually aggregate and compress the necessary diagnostic data.

Manual Collection Procedure   

1. Log in to the bare metal server via SSH as the root user.   

2. Create a temporary directory for the support bundle by running:

mkdir -p /tmp/supportbundle/logs /tmp/supportbundle/config   

3. Copy the vDefend Logs to the newly created directory

cp -r /var/log/vmware/vdefend/* /tmp/supportbundle/logs/

4. Capture the journal logs for the required services (installer-service, bm-agent, mon-agent, vdefend-metrics, nsx-agent). Run the following command for each service, replacing {service} with the service name:

journalctl -u {service}.service --no-pager > /tmp/supportbundle/journalctl_{service}.log

5. Copy the vDefend configuration directory for the required services (installer-service, bm-agent, mon-agent, vdefend-metrics). Run the following command for each service, replacing {service} with the service name:

cp -r /opt/vmware/vdefend/{service}/config /tmp/supportbundle/config/{service}



6. Copy the vDefend configuration directory for the nsx-agent service:

cp -r /opt/vmware/vdefend/nsx-cfgagent/bin/nsx-agent*.yaml /tmp/supportbundle/config

 

7. Create the final archive for upload to Broadcom Support:

tar -czf /tmp/supportbundle.tar.gz -C /tmp supportbundle

8. Cleanup (Optional) Remove the temporary working folder once the file is uploaded to the support case:

rm -rf /tmp/supportbundle