ESX, ESXi, and Virtual Machine Logs

Logs can help you find out what happened if commands do not have the desired results. On ESXi 5.0 systems, find all logs in the /var/log directory. Some of the items in that directory are symbolic links from the /var/run/log directory.

On ESXi 4.1 systems, you can find the following logs.

Component	Location
ESX Server 3.x or ESX service log	/var/log/vmware/hostd.log
vSphere client agent log	/var/log/vmware/vpx/vpxa.log
Virtual machine kernel core file	After you reboot your machine, files /root/vmkernel-log.<date> and /root/vmkernel-core.<date> are present.
Syslog log	/var/log/messages
Service console availability report	/var/log/vmkernel
VMkernel messages, alerts, and availability report	/var/log/vmkernel
VMkernel warning	/var/log/vmkwarning
Virtual machine log file	vmware.log in the same directory as the VMX file for the virtual machine
Virtual machine configuration file	<virtual_machine_name>/<virtual_machine_name>.vmx located on a datastore associated with the managed host. Use the virtual machine summary page in the vSphere Web Client to determine the datastore on which this file is located.