Using Logs to Troubleshoot VMware vRealize Operations Management Packs

By: Wesley Creager

Within VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) there are many great solutions for monitoring applications. These solutions range from VMware’s core technologies to a wide array of third-party technologies.

Because of the numerous products monitored through vROps, configuration for third-party monitoring technology can vary greatly in scope and complexity. This variety can create the need to troubleshoot problems with the operation of third-party management packs.

While this is a small sacrifice to make for the ability to monitor a wide range of technologies from vendors such as Citrix, SAP, and NetApp, it still creates hurdles to overcome.

Logging Capabilities

There are extensive and powerful logging capabilities built into vROps for troubleshooting. Logging within vROps is centered around the vROps data collector process, responsible for storing data gathered for the collector logs. Data that pertains to specific third-party management packs is written to one log per adapter instance, allowing administrators and support personnel to more easily parse logs for relevant details about a specific management pack.

In vROps, editing log level is as simple as changing the collector process properties, as shown in Figure 2 below. This automatically sets the log level for each log found in the collector folder. When choosing log level, debug level logging can be very useful for troubleshooting, but can create logs that are unnecessarily large when everything is functioning normally.

For the troubleshooting of everyday issues, info level logs contain enough relevant data to provide sufficient information without creating overly cumbersome logs.

Troubleshooting third-party management packs often requires logs to be sent to the third party for support and analysis purposes. To this end, VMware provides a support bundle creation tool. While this tool is primarily aimed at creating support bundles to submit to VMware directly, it also has functionality for users to create support bundles that contain third-party management pack logs. To do this, users must simply create a full support bundle, and select the node or nodes they wish to analyze as shown in Figure 3. A light support bundle will not include any third-party management pack log data.

Using the comprehensive logging features provided in vROps, IT professionals can more quickly and easily overcome issues in third-party management packs.

For more information on Blue Medora’s offerings for vRealize Operations, visit our product page and follow the Blue Medora blog to stay up to date on our newest releases.