I introduced Opvizor a couple of days ago and figured why not give it a spin with a vm-support files of one of my hosts in my lab. I used vCenter to create the vm-support file, for those who have never done that it is really simple:
- open the vSphere Client
- Click Administration
- Click “Export System Logs”
- Select the server of which you want to dump the system logs and select the location where they need to be uploaded to
The next thing you will need to do is create an account on the opvizor website and login. After that you can simply upload the System Log File of the server. After uploading it takes a few seconds before the System Logs are processed but you can actually see the status at the lower right by clicking the icon. After uploading you can use one of the following two options:
- isLogViewer
- isClient
I guess it is pretty obvious what isLogViewer does. It enables you to view the logfiles of VMs and your Host. But not only logfiles, you can for instance also see the vmdk meta files and your vmx files. This can come in handy when troubleshooting issues and I can imagine that at some point opvizor will warn you when invalid or insecure settings / statements are used in those files. The isLogViewer also enables you to search logfiles as shown in the following screenshot where I did a search on “aam”.
Although it isn’t completely intuitive yet; it definitely has potential. Couple of things I would like to see added:
- color coding for error types
- direct linking to KB articles for known error codes
The second feature that is currently offered is “isClient”. This feature currently shows you more details about for instance the VM configuration and the host configuration. For me the most valuable feature here is “Issues”. Clearly it still needs to be expanded as many sections are not available, but again this has a lot of potential as you can see in the screenshot below:
Again I would like to see things like color coding added and possibly links to KBs and for instance references to best practices and recommendations. Think about things like Network redundancy, Storage PSP used, HCL check… you can go anyway with this and this could be the ultimate troubleshooting / health check tool. If all of this is added and if it is possible to upload support files of a full environment instead of just a single host.
All in all, I realize that opvizor is just in an early beta phase and because of that some features aren’t fully implemented yet. It clearly has a lot potential though and if everyone takes the time to check it out and give feedback I think this can become a killer tool.
Bill Griffith says
I’d be reluctant to upload customers log files to a website for analysis. I’d be much more willing to use a locally installed analysis program. Sounds like a great idea tho. I’ll check it out using some lab server files.
Duncan Epping says
That might be so Bill, but isn’t that what many companies do regularly when they face issues and phone up the vendor? I agree that from a regulations/compliancy perspective it might be a step to far for enterprise organizations, but for SMB it probably isn’t.
Diego Boscardin (CEO icomasoft) says
Bill, thank you very much for sharing your concerns with us.
We are committed to ensure the maximum possible security and privacy of customer logfiles and config data. Here’s what we do so far:
– Shared content is only visible to people you explicitly invite
– All transmissions are done through encrypted channel (HTTPS/SSL)
– All files stored on opvizor servers are military grade encrypted (AES-256)
If there are any procedures or features that should be implemented in order to satisfy regulations/compliancy, we would greatly appreciate if you shared these requirements wit us. Pls use the contact info on opvizor.com to start a direct communication with our technology C-level.
BTW: Among the many beta users who are actively using opvizor, there are even large Private Banks, Service Providers and many other companies with data security restrictions.
Jon Kohler says
A host named ESX5, eh? 1 of your 5+ ESX hosts or a host running version 5 of ESXi? 🙂
Anyways, yes, this is very cool, I would love to see color coding for errors, that would make flipping through these logs so much easier
Duncan says
1 out of the 6 hosts I have in my lab
Chad king says
Building a lab takes time and resources I am only using two but that is all you really need :). Just seems I always needing Memory…. I am going to download and check out this tool but right now our Lab vCenter at work continues to consistently break… :/
Bill Griffith says
Diego, thank you for recognizing the concerns of enterprises with tight security issues. I have worked with people who cannot tell the tech support person what the psod screen says, but yet they need a resolution to the psod. There are many environments with very difficult positions and it sounds like you have addressed many of those concerns. I am not a security specialist, but uploading log files to a remote source for analysis is something that popped into my mind as soon as I saw this tool.
It sounds like a really helpful tool and, in fact, I have come up with a use for it in my lab at this moment.
Thanks for your good work and I am looking forward to trying out the tool.
Dennis Zimmer (icomasoft) says
Thanks for your feedback! That helps us a lot getting a better view about the pain points and concerns.
Please use [email protected] for any feature requests you´re thinking of. btw. we have already color coding for warnings and errors for vmkernel, vmware.log and messages files.
Dennis