I’ve been running Log insight for some time now, first as part of the beta and then continued after it became GA, the last upgrade to 1.5 GA was a real pleaser. This tool has fast become one of my favorite VMware products, the insight you get into your environment is astonishing. This is the first tool I login to every morgning, way before vSphere client, vCops or even mail.

So how can that be… Hopefully what comes next will make you understand what I mean

Log Insight Snapshot Content Pack

So I’ve had some time to work with Log insight, and as of recent got a new backup solution implemented. This one uses snapshot to do backup as with most implementations there are some fine tuning to be done after the initial implementation.This is where Log insight comes into play, and all of the logs from vCenter.

This is my first go at this, lets see what it contains, and who know might come an update at some point. As can be seen below there are two widgets with ten charts.

The first widget is a snapshot widget, which contains seven charts:

• Create snapshot request received by third party – This chart shows the amount of request over time coming from a thrid party
• Create snapshot request received  – This chart shows the amount of request over time, this contains all snapshot requests
• vssSyncStart errors per VM – This chart shows quiesced snapshot errors which are caused by vss failures
• Failed create snapshot events – This chart sort of explains it self.
• Snapshot request grouped by requester – This chart show the amount of snapshot request and from where they have been request. fx. There is multiple media servers in this setup, hence there are multiple requester. This can help with a better load balancing.
• Snapshot request queued – Request that have been queued
• Map disk region – This is sort an “experimental” chart, this have been include to see if there might be ways to speed up transfer of data – and I’ve been told that these events should disappear once we get CBT support in the backup solution also – So that might be useful for validation of this scenario.

The next widget is a disk consolidation widget, which only contains three charts

• The first chart shows disk consolidation failures per VM
• The second chart shows disk consolidation failures per user
• The last one show which event where disk consolidation is needed

Hope this can be of use to others, please leave your feedback or comments in the section below.

Lastly here’s the link to the vlcp file which is zipped Log Insight Snapshot Content Pack v1.0