[ TIP OF THE DAY ] A VM unexpectedly powered off. Which VM logs files should be considered to troubleshoot.

If a VM is unexpectedly powered off. Which VM logs files should be considered to troubleshoot the issue? By default, ESXi hosts store virtual machine-specific logging in the same directory as the virtual machine's configuration files. The default log file name is vmware.log. The vmware.log file is located in virtual machine folder along with the vmx file. SSH a session to your host for example: To identify the location of vmware.log files of all VMs:

find /vmfs -name "vmware.log*"

If a VM unexpectedly powered off, you should check vmware.log and hostd.log files to troubleshoot the issue. Also, when the vmware.log file is next archived, the existing vmware-1.log file is renamed vmware-2.log & so on. Virtual machine logs can be reconfigured to archive at different intervals, with different names, in different volumes, or when the log reaches a specific size. Optional: Skyline Health Diagnostics (SHD) is a tool that analyses log files to detect known issues and recommend solutions/KBs.