Streaming Events to a Remote Syslog Server

You can stream to a remote syslog server the information about the events that your vSphere system generates. Streaming events is supported only for the vCenter Server Appliance.

The streaming of events to a remote syslog server is disabled by default. You can enable and configure the streaming of vCenter Server events to a remote syslog server from the vCenter Server Appliance Management Interface. After you enable remote streaming, vCenter Server Appliance starts streaming and only the newly generated events are streamed to the remote syslog server.

All syslog messages begin with a specific prefix. You can distinguish the vCenter Server Appliance events from other syslog messages by their Event prefix.

The syslog protocol limits the length of syslog messages to 1024 characters. Messages that are longer than 1024 characters split into multiple syslog messages.

In the syslog server, events have the following format:

<syslog-prefix> : Event [eventId] [partInfo] [createdTime] [eventType] [severity] [user] [target] [chainId] [desc]

Item	Description
syslog-prefix	Displays the syslog prefix. The <syslog-prefix> is determined by the remote syslog server configuration.
eventId	Displays the unique ID of the event message. The default value is Event.
partInfo	Displays whether the message is split into parts.
createdTime	Displays the time when the event was generated.
eventType	Displays the event type.
severity	Displays whether the event is a piece information, a warning, or an error.
user	Displays the name of the user who generated the event.
target	Displays the object the event refers to.
chainId	Displays information about the parent or the group ID.
desc	Displays the description of the event.

Split of Long Event Message into Multiple Syslog Messages

Events that are longer than 1024 characters split into multiple syslog messages in the following manner:

<syslog-prefix> : Event [eventId] [1-X] [payload-part-1]
<syslog-prefix> : Event [eventId] [2-X] [payload-part-2] 
...
<syslog-prefix> : Event [eventId] [X-X] [payload-part-X]

The X stands for the number of the event message parts.