I have already discussed this briefly during my 7.0 U2 video presentation, which can be found here, but I also wanted to share the demo I recorded with you, and provide some additional details. Over the past years, one of the most requested features for Skyline Health, or Health Check as it used to be called, was the ability to go back in time to see what has happened between certain dates. This functionality was demonstrated at VMworld, and a few VMUGs the past year, and now finally made it into the release with vSAN 7.0 U2.
The “health history” feature simply provides a toggle that enables you to go back in time. When you tick the toggle, you can specify a date range. Note that the range can be anywhere between the current date, and 30 days back. The health check data is stored, for 30 days, in the vCenter Server database. This is important to know because if you feel that there’s no need to store the data, you can disable the feature under vSAN Services in the Configuration tab. When you disable the feature the data is deleted from the vCenter Server database. Now if you flip the toggle, set a date range, and look at the different checks you should see green checks. If a check is not green, but rather red or orange you can click the check.
When clicking on the red square, you will see which check failed, and when exactly it failed. The number in the square or circle refers to the number of checks that were run and resulted in the same state. In other words, 37 red, 45 green, 54 red checks etc. When you click on it, you will see the below.
Hopefully, this will then allow you, during troubleshooting, to correlate particular failures or configuration changes, to the issue that bubbled up in the health check. I feel that having the date/time is already very useful, as it will allow you to focus on a more specific date/time range while reading logs or going through the events section.
Anyway, if you would like to see the feature in action, check out the demo below.
