Monitor and prevent vCenter Appliance disks from filling

Products

VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article outlines methods for monitoring disk usage on the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) and offers strategies to mitigate disk space shortages.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.x

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0.x

Resolution

Monitor disk use
Configure alarms
Set email alerts
Manage the statistics level
Default retention policy
Burst events

Monitor disk use

For information on monitoring the disk use through the vSphere Appliance Management Interface, see Monitor Disk Use

Configure alarms

Alarms specific to /storage/seat and /storage/log partitions filling up were introduced in vCenter Appliance 6.7.

In the Hosts and Clusters view, select the vCenter Server.
Select the Configure tab > Alarm Definitions > Log Disk Exhaustion then the EDIT link to configure the thresholds.

If you wish to send email alerts/SNMP messages, select to Send email notifications and Send SNMP traps:

Email alerts from vCenter

You can configure alarms to email out from vCenter when there is a warning or critical state, see Configure Mail Sender Settings.

Manage Statistics Level

You can manage the statistics level by doing the following:

In the Hosts and Clusters view, select the vCenter Server object.
Select the Configure tab Settings > General then the EDIT link to configure what statistics level to use:

Note: It is highly recommended by VMware to keep statistics level at level 1 unless a higher level is required by a third-party product. Setting the level too high can lead to the /storage/seat partition filling up causing vCenter Server stability issues.

Default Retention Policy

A "retention policy" sets the thresholds for automated cleanup for events and tasks. This largely affects how full the /storage/seat partition gets.

vSphere 6.7 defaults are to have the policy enabled, with a retention period of 30 days.

To change the retention policy, see Configure Database Retention Policy

Burst Event Feature

Starting with vCenter Server 6.7 Update 1, the vCenter system automatically compresses events that are similar. This feature assists with keeping events from overwhelming the database.
Events are similar if they meet three conditions:

Equal event type
Associated with the same user
Associated with the same entity (ESXi host, virtual machine, etc...)

Up to a 3600-event burst will go into a single compressed event message. This compression is enabled by default.

Burst compression can be configured for syslog

In the Hosts and Clusters view, select the vCenter Server object.
Select the Configure tab Settings > Advanced Settings then the EDIT SETTINGS
Set the vpxd.event.burstFilter.compressToSyslog to true

Additional Information

When vCenter disks reach full capacity, the vCenter Server may become inaccessible via the client interface, potentially preventing management of the vSphere environment. For more information, see vCenter Server Appliance disk space is full