Use the SoS utility to collect the logs for various software components in the system.

Use these options when retrieving support logs from your environment's various components.

  • If you run the SoS utility from SDDC Manager without specifying any component-specific options, the SoS tool collects SDDC Manager, API, and VMware Cloud Foundation summary logs. To collect all logs, use the --collect-all-logs options.
    Note: SoS log collection may time out after 60 minutes, which could be an issue with large workload domains. If the SoS utility does time out, collect component-specific logs or limit log collection to specific clusters using the options described below.
  • If you run the SoS utility from Cloud Builder without specifying any component-specific options, the SoS tool collects SDDC Manager, API, and Cloud Builder logs.
  • To collect logs for a specific component, run the utility with the appropriate options.

    For example, the --domain-name option is important. If omitted, the SoS operation is performed only on the management domain. See SoS Utility Options.

After running the SoS utility, you can examine the resulting logs to troubleshoot issues, or provide to VMware Technical Support if requested. VMware Technical Support might request these logs to help resolve technical issues when you have submitted a support request. The diagnostic information collected using the SoS utility includes logs for the various VMware software components and software products deployed in your VMware Cloud Foundation environment.

Table 1. SoS Utility Log File Options
Option Description
--esx-logs

Collects logs from the ESXi hosts only.

Logs are collected from each ESXi host available in the deployment.

--vc-logs

Collects logs from the vCenter Server instances only.

Logs are collected from each vCenter server available in the deployment.

--sddc-manager-logs

Collects logs from the SDDC Manager only. sddc<timestamp>.tgz contains logs from the SDDC Manager file system's etc, tmp, usr, and var partitions.

--vxrail-manager-logs Collects logs from VxRail Manager instances only.
--psc-logs Collects logs from the Platform Services Controller instances only.
--nsx-logs

Collects logs from the NSX Manager and NSX Edge instances only.

--wcp-logs

Collects logs from Workload Management clusters only.

--vrealize-logs

Collects logs from VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle.
--no-clean-old-logs

Use this option to prevent the utility from removing any output from a previous collection run.

By default, before writing the output to the directory, the utility deletes the prior run's output files that might be present. If you want to retain the older output files, specify this option.

--test

Collects test logs by verifying the files.

--no-health-check

Skips the health check executed as part of log collection.

--api-logs

Collects output from REST endpoints for SDDC Manager inventory and LCM.

--rvc-logs

Collects logs from the Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) only. RVC is an interface for ESXi and vCenter.

Note: If the Bash shell is not enabled in vCenter Server, RVC log collection will be skipped .
Note: RVC logs are not collected by default with ./sos log collection. You must enable RVC to collect RVC logs.
--vm-screenshots Collects all VM screenshots.
--system-debug-logs Collects system logs to help with debugging uncommon issues.
--collect-all-logs Collects logs for all components, except Workload Management and system debug logs. By default, logs are collected for the management domain components.

To collect logs for all workload domain, specify --domain-name ALL.

To collect logs for a specific workload domain, specify --domain-name domain_name.
--log-dir LOGDIR Specifies the directory to store the logs.
--log-folder LOGFOLDER Specifies the name of the log directory.
--domain-name DOMAINNAME

Specify the name of the workload domain name on which the SoS operation is to be performed.

To run the operation on all domains, specify --domain-name ALL.

Note:

If you omit the --domain-name flag and domain name, the SoS operation is performed only on the management domain.

Procedure

  1. Using SSH, log in to the SDDC Manager appliance as the vcf user.
  2. To collect the logs, run the SoS utility without specifying any component-specific options. 
    sudo /opt/vmware/sddc-support/sos
    Enter the vcf password when prompted.
    To collect logs for a specific component, run the utility with the appropriate options. 
    sudo /opt/vmware/sddc-support/sos --option-name
    Note: By default, before writing the output to the directory, the utility deletes the prior run's output files that might be present. If you want to retain the older output files, specify the --no-clean-old-logs option.
    If you do not specify the --log-dir option, the utility writes the output to the /var/log/vmware/vcf/sddc-support directory in the SDDC Manager appliance

Results

The utility collects the log files from the various software components in all of the racks and writes the output to the directory named in the --log-dir option. Inside that directory, the utility generates output in a specific directory structure.

Example

vcf@sddc-manager [ ~ ]$ sudo /opt/vmware/sddc-support/sos --domain-name MGMT --skip-known-host-check --log-dir /tmp/new
[sudo] password for vcf
Welcome to Supportability and Serviceability(SoS) utility!
Performing SoS operation for MGMT domain components
Logs : /tmp/new/sos-2019-09-03-21-04-40-11793
Log file : /tmp/new/sos-2019-09-03-21-04-40-11793/sos.log
Log Collection completed successfully for : [HEALTH-CHECK, SDDC-MANAGER, NSX_MANAGER, API-LOGS, ESX, VMS_SCREENSHOT, VCENTER-SERVER, VCF-SUMMARY]

What to do next

Change to the output directory to examine the collected log files.