VCAP-DTA Objective 2.3 – Configure Syslog and View Events Database

Time for another relatively short section, this objective deals with logging. Skills and abilities from the blueprint :-

• Configure Events database – This is relatively short and easy task, provided you remember something which I think is a little quirky about this task. Usually when you hook up vCenter/VMware components up to a database (and in my case I’m going to say SQL as I know it best), you configure an ODBC connection from within Control Panel in Windows. For events logging in View, you don’t use this. You still need to configure a database using Management Studio or the Oracle equivalent and create a user with access to write to this database. My supposition is that this will be done in advance for you in the exam, there is no mention of SQL management skills on the blueprint.
  • Before you start, you will need to know the DNS name or IP address of the database server, plus the port number (1433 SQL/1521 Oracle). Also the database name and a prefix for the events tables. You also need SQL to be configured to use SQL authentication and not Windows authentication, but it’s highly unlikely you’ll have to configure that.
  • Go to View Administrator and in the left hand column, click View Configuration and then Event Configuration.
  • In the Event Database section, click Edit and fill out the fields for Database server (IP address/DNS name), Database type (SQL/Oracle), port (1433 SQL/1521 Oracle), Database name, Username, Password, Confirm Password and Table Prefix. Once completed, click OK.
  • You may also have to set Event Settings using the dialog below. There are two settings here, click Edit and select Show Events in View Administrator for and select the appropriate value from the drop down. You can also edit Classify events as new for if asked to on the exam. Chances are you will!
  • Click OK to save away the settings. To confirm successful configuration, click Monitoring in the left hand column and select Events, you should see event messages stacking up in the database. If you don’t, go back and check your settings.
• Configure Syslog using vdmadmin – This objective is interesting as it purposely states you have to set syslog logging from the command line, rather than View Administrator. There is a typo in version 1.5 of the exam blueprint that says to use “vdiadmin”. Don’t get confused here, this command doesn’t exist.
  • vdmadmin.exe can be found in C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Server\tools\bin and a quick way to see your options is to type vdmadmin -help. This will give you a big list of commands and switches and it’s easy to see what they all do.
  • To configure syslog events to a remote server, type vdmadmin -I -eventSyslog -enable -path \\logserver\share\ViewEvents -user mydomain\myuser -password mypassword
    
    
  • You can also configure local logging if the syslog server is on the Connection Server by typing vdmadmin -I -eventSyslog -enable -localOnly
  • To log to a specified path, use vdmadmin -I -eventSyslog -enable -path path
  • To disable syslog, use vdmadmin -I -eventSyslog -disable