Location of ESXi log files
Article ID: 306962
Updated On:
Products
VMware vSphere ESXi
Issue/Introduction
This article outlines the default locations of log files on vSphere ESXi hosts.
Environment
VMware vSphere ESXi
Resolution
Logs for ESXi host are grouped according to the source component:
/var/log/auth.log: ESXi Shell authentication success and failure./var/log/dhclient.log: DHCP client service, including discovery, address lease requests and renewals./var/log/esxupdate.log: ESXi patch and update installation logs./var/log/lacp.log: Link Aggregation Control Protocol logs./var/log/hostd.log: Host management service logs, including virtual machine and host Task and Events, communication with the vSphere Client and vCenter Server vpxa agent, and SDK connections./var/log/hostd-probe.log: Host management service responsiveness checker./var/log/rhttpproxy.log: HTTP connections proxied on behalf of other ESXi host webservices./var/log/shell.log: ESXi Shell usage logs, including enable/disable and every command entered. For more information, see Auditing ESXi Shell logins and commands/var/log/sysboot.log: Early VMkernel startup and module loading./var/log/boot.gz: A compressed file that contains boot log information and can be read using zcat /var/log/boot.gz|more./var/log/syslog.log: Management service initialization, watchdogs, scheduled tasks and DCUI use./var/log/usb.log: USB device arbitration events, such as discovery and pass-through to virtual machines./var/log/vobd.log: VMkernel Observation events, similar tovob.component.event./var/log/vmkernel.log: Core VMkernel logs, including device discovery, storage and networking device and driver events, and virtual machine startup./var/log/vmkwarning.log: A summary of Warning and Alert log messages excerpted from the VMkernel logs./var/log/vmksummary.log: A summary of ESXi host startup and shutdown, and an hourly heartbeat with uptime, number of virtual machines running, and service resource consumption.
/var/log/Xorg.log: Video acceleration./var/log/vpxa.log: vCenter Server vpxa agent logs, including communication with vCenter Server and the Host Management hostd agent./var/log/fdm.log: vSphere High Availability logs, produced by the fdm service. For more information.
For ESXi version specific information on Log files, refer to the below links:
Additional Information
For information on sending logs to another location (such as a datastore or remote syslog server), see Configuring syslog on ESXi.
For other products and versions, see Location of log files for VMware products.
For using collecting ESXi diagnostic information using vm-support, see vm-support” command in ESXi to collect diagnostic information
For information on ESXi shell login and commands, see Auditing ESXi Shell logins and commands
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